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When Ludwig van Beethoven completed his “Liederkreis” An die ferne Geliebte op. 98 in April 1816, its purpose seemed clear: a requiem for the recently deceased wife of his long-time patron Lobkowitz. Yet, as a counterdraw to Beethoven’s “heroic” period (including Symphonies 3–8), it is credited with paving the way for music that defies any association with “masculine“ determination: for it denotes yearning, searching, and failing; standing both textually and in its melodic-harmonic language within the “musical subjunctive” (Raymond Knapp 2003): What if? — What if, for example, the (decidedly male) poetic subject could follow into another, a better world? Here, withdrawal rather than triumph appears as the preferred course of action. This paper aims to discuss a set of specific gestures in Beethoven’s op. 98 previously linked to “heroic” motions: For instance, the characteristic jump gesture of the piano reply at the end of each verse in No. 1; or, more subtle, the enigmatically inverted sigh gesture of the culmination point in No. 6 (b. 26/283, Molto adagio). The talk concludes by considering the potential of musical gesture as a category for exploring gender attribution in 19th-century art song, with particular attention to compositions in the tradition of Beethoven’s “Liederkreis.”
Frithjof Vollmer studied Double Bass Performance, Historical Musicology, and Philosophy in Weimar (Germany), Eugene (USA), and Stuttgart (Germany). Research Assistant 2019–2025 at the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts, PhD thesis on musical gestures in string instrument performance in the first half of the 20th century. Lectureships at the University Halle-Wittenberg (2023), University Tübingen (2024), and Nuremberg University of Music (since 2025), Germany. Recent publications include performance histories of the 19th and 20th century as well as the co-edition of a volume concerned with the current state of digital analysis in performance research (Softwaregestützte Interpretationsforschung. Grundsätze, Desiderate und Grenzen, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2023).
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