Schubert - Gretchen am Spinnrade (Harmonic Analysis)

The poem “Gretchen am Spinnrade” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe appears in his tragic play Faust. Schubert used the poem to depict the intensity of Gretchen’s love for Faust in song. The poem and music together place the listener in the scene “Gretchens Stube” (Gretchen’s Room).

The song tells the story of a young girl, Gretchen, in heavy distress over her new love Faust as she is seated spinning thread at a spinning wheel. Gretchen’s emotional intensity and instability as felt through her pedal movements and circular motion of the spinning wheel, is captured in the music.

The harmony as a whole utilizes temporary tonicization of different keys. You will find passages that move to different key areas but never settle in one. For example, the short progression of dominant function chords (V chord or vii chord) in the ‘secondary key,’ mostly occurring at the end of verses. We also have extended sequences involving a progression of multiple secondary dominants (verse 4 and 5, 7 and 8). The passages briefly touch on these keys before returning to the original key.

This temporary shift in tonality seems to represent a change in mood in relation to Gretchen’s emotional experience. The opening verse repeats like a chorus section. This repeated A section represents ‘reality’ and is based in the original key of D minor using mostly chords within the key. The contrasting verses represent Gretchen's imagination, a fantasy of what life would be like with her love, and the music explores different key areas in these sections to create harmonic intensity. Then the original key comes back and Gretchen returns to singing of lost peace and a heavy heart as she spins the wheel to the end of the song.

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