Analysis Of Webern's Op 4 By Traurige Tänze

Webern took the last poem he set to music in his Op. 4 from Traurige Tänze (Mournful Dances), the third and final section of Das Jahr der Seele. Most of the cycle’s thirty-two poems were written around March 1895 in Munich. Schultz (2005) remarks on their simple expressiveness, metric variety and rhythmic musicality. She writes “The themes of seasons and hours play loosely throughout, and despite his grief the lyrical “I” and his companion(s) continue to roam the landscape.” Friedrich Gundolf, a close friend of George, described Traurige Tänze as magic spells, “where dark powers resound ‘als Schicksalsmächte, und wer wüßte über diese unmittelbar etwas auszusagen!‘”
George’s contemporaries perceived “Ihr tratet zu dem herde”, the twenty-eighth
Although the speaker addresses the group directly, he does not interact with them. The group moved to a hearth which was no longer illuminated from inside by the fire but from outside by the moonlight. Due to the past tense in both the first and the second verse, the order and causality of the events remain uncertain. They might have come to the hearth while the fire was dying down or when it was already extinguished, or the movement of their arrival might have caused the fire to die. The third and fourth verse are ambiguous as the word “leichenfarb” could either be a short form of the adjective “leichenfarben” meaning “corpse-hued” or “deathly pale”, or a short form of the noun “Leichenfarbe” meaning “colour of a corpse”. The sparse punctuation adds to the ambiguity. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to understand that the only light on earth came from the pale moon. Different readings might, however, reveal different nuances of the scene. One could, for example, read that the earth resembles a dead body in the pale light of the moon, or one might imagine that the light of the dying moon is unsteady or disappears slowly. Most likely, George used the image of the moon’s corpse-hued light to contrast the former living light of the fire. The personification of the embers, which died (“verstarb”, v. 2) instead of just “going out” or “being extinguished”, enhances the contrast. Because of the two
The moon is personified, yet it does not seem to be able to speak. It makes a consoling gesture, and the speaker asks the group to see, not to listen. The ambiguous metre of the eighth verse continues, and the tenth verse is a foot shorter, thus drawing attention to the moon’s recommendation. In the last two verses, the speaker takes the moon’s position and explains its gesture for the group. The sudden trochaic metre might indicate the moon’s tiredness and emphasises its advice to give up and step away. The last verse provides the moon’s reasoning: “It has become late” could either mean it is time to rest, or indicate that it is too late, i.e. impossible to restart the fire. According to Rasch, the consolation of the moon’s light lies in surrender and the acceptance of decay. Written in the style of strict symbolism, the poem uses only the two images of the hearth and the moon to give a terse verbalisation of a bitter truth and reveals only in the end its key word