“Play your broken music to my broken song?” Contemporary Implications of Performing Schubert Lieder in English Translation

This study uses the songs of Franz Schubert as a foundational example to consider the contemporary implications of performing Lieder in English translation. Over the last 150 years such translations have been written, published, performed, and rationalized in a variety of ways. However, their “validity” is now broadly dismissed in both pedagogical and performance contexts. This begs the question: how did performance in the original language become an essential aspect of Lieder performance across the English-speaking world? In probing this question, my objective is to reimagine the possible role of such a translational approach in mediating, or even repairing something that is currently “broken” in Anglophone encounters with Lieder. To fulfil this objective, an initial discussion of ontologies of Lieder attempts to examine singing translations alongside other approaches that extend, transform or otherwise challenge the traditional boundaries of the genre, and the ways that these approaches aim to satisfy less dominant notions of “authenticity”. This is followed by an examination of the historical and contemporary debate and attempts to establish adequate translational methodologies amongst a range of aesthetic, nationalistic, and theoretical issues. In addition to this engagement with public documents (including translations, paratextual materials, articles and reviews), I have solicited the views of a range of contemporary stakeholders on the implications of the practice and assembled a collection of thirty-three distinct singing translations of “Der Leiermann”, the final song of Schubert’s 1828 song cycle, Winterreise (D911, op. 89). This collection serves to demonstrate a plurality of translational approaches, the inevitable subjectivity of the translational role, the impossibility of a “definitive” translation, and new avenues of expression engendered by that lack of definition. In considering “the English Lied”, this study has two aims: to provide insight into the complicated relationship we have with language and meaning in this repertoire, and to prompt a reconsideration of singing in translation: one that does not limit itself to concepts of fidelity and failure, but rather opens itself to the creative possibilities of interacting with the repertoire in this way.D.M.A