Behind the windows of the Haus der Begegnung in Heidelberg, a baritone bursts into a Hallelujah, a small choir sings after him. Thomas Hampson warms up the voices of his masterclass students. The American has been the artistic director of the Heidelberger Frühling Liedakademie in the southern German city for about fifteen years. ‘Singing,’ he warns the students on this sunny June day, ‘is a form of open-heart surgery.’ Just so they know. He tells the pianists: ‘A lieder recital consists of three people: the left hand, the right hand and a singer.’

With many of his instructions, Hampson wants to encourage the talents to let their hearts speak more and their heads less. ‘Anyone who gets on their bike for a ride here’, he tells them, ‘wants to admire the beauty of Heidelberg and the nature along the banks of the Neckar. You don’t do that to understand the mechanics of the bicycle. Although you do have to know them, otherwise accidents happen. But the technique is not the reason for the bicycle’s existence.’ During the four annual sessions in Heidelberg, Hampson wants to impress upon his students the necessary fundamental principles of art. ‘If you don’t feel better after singing than you did before, you’re on the wrong track’, is the mantra this morning.

That afternoon, the baritone is in the Alte Universität. He is looking ahead to his seventieth birthday, a milestone he is marking with a short tour that will include Het Concertgebouw – ‘that sacred place’. 

Stages of Grief

Now – nine months after Heidelberg – the time has come. Hampson is travelling to European venues these weeks with the Latvian accordionist Ksenija Sidorova. 

‘She is a magician on her instrument,’ he thinks. ‘I admire the musical colours she can paint with it. We tried out some songs last season at a small festival around Lucerne. And the first song that came to mind was ‘Der Leiermann’ from Franz Schubert ‘s . The sound of the accordion seemed ideal to me for the hurdy-gurdy of the organ grinder, with whom the lonely wanderer in this cycle has an encounter. Not every song from Winterreise Winterreise lends itself to the accordion, so we are doing twelve, half of them, and after the break songs by Kurt Weill.’

For Hampson, Schubert ‘s twenty-four songs about a wandering youth have been a travelling companion for most of his working life. He labels them a timeless cycle, not about death per se as many think –   ‘although we carry the weight of mortality with us all the time’ –   but rather about the inevitable farewell to idealism and naivety. 

‘The main character doesn’t just wander through the snow, whining and disconsolate. He goes through various stages of mourning for something that is lost sooner or later in every existence. I sang my first WinterreiseI sang with the pianist and conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch. He was more than thirty years older than me and knew the songs inside out. Our rehearsals were intense. We had deep conversations about the poems of Wilhelm Müller. I believe that all voices and ages can sing the cycle. Because everyone has to complete such a metaphorical journey in life.’

In Hampson’s eyes, Winterreise tells the story of the pain of growing up, of growing awareness. ‘On that path of life, everyone suffers losses, in love for example. Two people who stay together since their teenage years, beautiful, but an exception. For those who experience this… Congratulations! Mazzeltov . Although they too will experience pain in love: thoughts and feelings that they cannot or do not want to talk about. Winterreise poses existential questions about what we encounter on our path. In which part of my life cycle am I? Why is this happening to me?’

Stay awake

‘The main character has been rejected by his future bride. We do not know why. Her side of the story remains obscure. His journey begins with that lost love. Then this naive person gradually becomes aware of the world around him, he discovers its often cruel mechanisms. That is why I see in these songs above all the ‘death’ of the adolescent, who has to watch his childish dreams  being overtaken by time. Such an awareness is accompanied by depression, cynicism and here also anger: if this is all, then I do not want it. In the song ‘Im Dorfe’ he resolves not to resemble the adults later on, the people in the nocturnal village he passes through, who are lulled to sleep and deceived by illusions. No, let him stay awake.’

‘A key line from Winterreiseis for me the final line from ‘Der Wegweiser’: ‘Eine Strasse muss ich gehen, die noch Keiner ging zurück.’ The main character must walk a path from which no one has ever returned. This is the first of the four final songs from the cycle, which in my view form a coda , a conclusion. I do not believe that the ‘Leiermann’, the organ man from the last poem, embodies death, as is often thought. It dawns on the main character that he only has his song to give to the world. ‘Will I find that, when I go with you?’ he asks the organ grinder.

The meaning of life

‘And the ‘Strasse die noch Keiner ging zurück’ is, I think, the time that cannot be turned back, that keeps chasing us. We do not know where to, only that we cannot do anything but move forward. This sentence often reminds me of a quote from Doctor Faust from the opera of the same name by Ferruccio Busoni. Students tease the scholar by asking scholastic questions about existence. Faust loses his self-control, calls them to silence and says: ‘Wir kommen, um zu gehen.’ We are born to die. And between those two moments it happens, that is where you have to be with your attention. It is about that eternal riddle: what is the meaning of life?’

Hampson repeats the question a few times and stares into space. ‘That line from Doctor Faust reminds me of the American anthropologist and philosopher Joseph Campbell. I never met him, but I devoured his books. He made a beautiful TV series The Power of Myth with interviewer Bill Moyers. There is an impressive moment. Campbell knows he is dying of cancer, in a final show Moyers says: ‘Joe, you know so much about religious experiences. What is the sum? What can we take from it into our existence?’ And Campbell answers: ‘It’s not so much about the meaning of life, it’s about the meaning in life.’

‘It’s such a beautiful statement. I think that’s what art is all about. That’s why I love songs so much, because they are treasure troves of meaning. They allow me to empathize with the disillusioned and searching boy from Winterreise . I had a beautiful childhood, but my teenage years were hard. Through the ages, songs form a diary of our behavior, a prism of the essential  questions we have asked ourselves since the beginning of humanity. That continuum fascinates me. I am part of it. We can leaf through the big book, come across a random poem, hear a song, and find something of ourselves in it. For example, the path to adulthood in Winterreise , a monumental event in every life.’

Revelation

As a teenager, Hampson discovered the richness of poetry through his singing teacher in the provincial city of Spokane, in the northwestern state of Washington. He was an inquisitive and athletic boy with many talents, ‘who did not excel in anything’. After high school, Hampson began studying political science. He knew some German Christmas carols, because the religious community to which his parents belonged collected money for the poor by singing them in December. ‘So a lot of German phrases floated through my head’, he says. ‘My singing teacher pointed me to the songs of Schumann and Schubert. She gave me scores and recordings of Hermann Prey and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. They opened my eyes and ears. That period was a revelation. I fell into the rabbit hole of poetry, history and psychology. History has always fascinated me. I do not consider the past as past. On the contrary, it is part of the sum of who we are now.’

‘A Schubert is not someone from the past. The importance of such a great mind and genius is eternal. Research into his life and times remains fascinating, but I find it especially a relief to notice that our ancestors struggled with the same questions about life. That is why art is so important. It tells us: ‘Give yourself a break.’ The questions, the frustration, the melancholy, the euphoria, all the feelings that are active in us, we find in music, poetry, novels. People who do not know this or deny this, are left behind in loneliness, with the idea that their pain is unique. That is why I do not understand the current discussion about the importance of art. Money or technology –   however useful and beautiful –   are means, not an end in themselves. They should help us further. In the meantime, they have been made the focal point of our existence. But man is a spiritual being. We long for a deeper meaning. Denying this is nonsense. At the moment we are committing cultural suicide. And I find that astonishing, because our access to knowledge is greater than ever.’