‘Song recitals aren’t meant to be like this’: reinventing Schubert … with a puppet

I’m at a festival on the west coast of Denmark, in an industrial port that started out as a handful of farms in the 16th century and ended up having the longest dock in Europe, 12km long, by the late 19th. On my way to rehearsals, music fills the squares of the town. It’s a lively, noisy place.

The auditorium itself is full, and spontaneous applause keeps interrupting the flow. We’re not entirely sure why (was it the wine-tasting that preceded the concert?) but the audience hang on every moment, word and gesture. We’re performing a song cycle by Franz Schubert, set to words by Wilhelm Müller, called Die Schöne Müllerin (The Lovely Maid of the Mill). A love-sick boy is doomed to romantic failure. I’m the main singer and I’m also operating a puppet. Behind me, the rest of the Alehouse Boys (AKA the international classical collective Barokksolistene) are playing their instruments, including shaking the rustling leaves of a tree branch hung above the stage. The crux of our story, the boy’s suicide, is accompanied by a gasp and more spontaneous clapping. The room is hot and getting hotter. I tell a joke.

Song recitals aren’t supposed to be like this. Traditionally, polite, knowledgable audiences in rows face white-tie-and-tails-clad singers standing in the curve of a large, shiny, black grand piano, where the similarly attired pianist plays with reserve and deference. This is where opera singers lay claim to being “real” artists, painting colours with their voices into miniatures of detail and poetic beauty. Song recitals – drenched in a kind of classical music code, reliant on reference to written material in the programme – are often seen as events only the cognoscenti can enjoy.

Schubert, whose star was snuffed out by syphilis-induced typhoid in 1828 at the age of 31, is a darling of the song recital stage. He wrote more than 600 exquisite little melodic gems, bursting with originality, tenderness, emotion, character and passion. He also developed the song cycle: narrative and concept-driven sequences of songs that explore themes that resonated with the times.

But for what, where and whom did he write his song cycles? Back then, if you had leisure, and maybe some education, your evenings might well have included things we, in the age of TV, have lost: parlour games, charades, reading out loud, music making, all doused to some extent in alcohol and the light of a roaring fire. This was the world for which Schubert wrote his songs, quite removed from an elegant recital hall, graced with a well-travelled singer and (what would been to Schubert) an inconceivably large piano.

There’s nothing wrong with tradition. We have a tradition of classical art song recitals, and very beautiful things can happen in them. I grew up listening to and learning songs like these in traditional form and adored the 1950s recordings of Gérard Souzay. But my musical and theatrical journey as an adult has been about discovering a different kind of engagement and storytelling: one more about improvisation, collective collaboration and creativity. With each step on the journey I’ve come to understand that this is the world of Schubert songs. Not the apparently closed off world of the recital hall, or a conservative obsession with some narrow view of “what the composer wanted”.

Schubert’s songs grew from entertaining evenings of spontaneous, alcohol-fuelled interaction, with dressing up, games and stories. There’s an amusing story about him nicking a book of poems from an annoyed friend late one night, only to return it the next morning with half of them set to music. Another tells of him spilling beer in a near punch-up in a pub while debating the merits of an opera singer he and his friends had just heard. The culture in which Schubert was writing his songs was knockabout, collaborative and exciting.

In addition, “cycles” like the one we’re performing were never played all in one sitting, as is nowadays the norm – or not until 1852 when Julius Stockhausen did it (see Natasha Loges’ enlightening article). Back in Schubert’s day, it was a question of “Do that one where he drowns himself!” or “Do that one where she’s not interested!”

So, while it’s not that we’ve been getting it wrong, exactly, we do have a responsibility to ask how we can make this timeless music accessible and fresh. I’m not talking about mucking about with it unnecessarily – often the reaction of directors nowadays. I’m talking about understanding what it actually is – storytelling between friends over a drink or two – and then sharing that spirit.

Back in Denmark, inspired by the reaction of the audience, the players behind me are working their socks off and sounding rather good. It’s been fun making arrangements of the songs. Although Schubert wrote for an early form of the piano to accompany the voice, he also accompanied singers himself on the guitar. And, at these sociable evenings, we know people would bring instruments – cellos, violins, penny whistles – and improvise. Improvising is what the band behind me are particularly good at. In other concerts, as well as letting me sing, they let me play the fiddle. We’re used to taking an old tune, improvising on it, developing an arrangement, then changing it to amuse ourselves and the audience and keep it fresh. With Schubert’s music we might be a little more disciplined, to support the storytelling, but it’s the same approach.

And what about the puppet? We’ve found it a fabulous tool to draw attention away from the 21st-century singer and on to the story. Puppets are magical. The moment when the audience collectively believes that the figure is real, their imaginations – and their ears – open. They facilitate listening. They also, famously, die brilliantly. You just walk away from them (which will come in handy for the end of our story).

There’s nothing definitive about this approach, and it has to, and does, change from performance to performance. That’s part of our storytelling responsibility. It has to be spontaneous, and it has to react to the space it’s in and the audience who are there. So, what can you expect at one of our song cycles? Hopefully the unexpected. Maybe some alcohol. Maybe not all the songs, or not in the right order. And jokes? I can’t promise good ones, but you never know.