Music, Expression and the German Language

Music, they say, is a universal language. It expresses the way nothing can, and can make you feel things like nothing else is capable of.

I find it highly ironic that I find myself in our class now, learning the German language due to my opinion that although the romantic languages (Spanish, French, Italian, etc.) have been widely used in composition of a lot of Arias for operas, I rarely find any as raw and expressive as those sung in German.

I remember a certain scene in the movie Amadeus which speaks of the life of legendary German composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, where Emperor Joseph II speaks of commissioning Mozart to compose for his court. The emperor's people had a common outlook towards the option of having Mozart create an opera in German: Italian was, at that moment, what they found to be the proper language for the opera (even reasoning out that all educated people were aware of such) and that German was simply too brute a language for singing.

Despite the qualms of the emperor's men (the Opera director and the Kapellmeister), Mozart was allowed to compose his operas in Deutsch. But little did they know that the language's brute nature would not put a stop to the music's ability to extensively express what the character and much more, the composer, desired to express. Despite Deutsch's non-inclusion in the romantic languages, such would be a language that would be equally, if not exceedingly more able to justify the composer's intended emotions.


"Ach Ich Fuhls", An emotional Aria by Pamina, an excerpt from Mozart's famous last singspiel "Die Zauberflöte"


Another Aria ("Ruhe sanft, mein holdes leben") from Mozart's unfinished "rescue" opera, "Zaide"


I am part of this German language class thanks to the first song. I had been part of the College of Music's english production of the Singspiel as part of the chorus and hearing the song (finally willing myself to search it sung in it's original Deutsch text in youtube) inspired to add a new dimension of understanding to my singing. I find that as it is my reason for taking up this course, such music- these arias masterfully crafted by Germany's master musicians and geniuses- whether it be by learning new arias (two birds with one stone! my voice teacher should be proud :D) or by just simply listening and immersing myself in the music, will be able to aid me in not just learning but fully understanding German beyond our four classroom walls.