The Connectionist Approach

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Oscillations

The work Oscillations is a cycle of three pieces inspired by the lieder cycle Winterreise, written by W. Müller and set to music by F. Schubert. Winterreise explores themes of isolation, loneliness, existential questioning, and the search for purpose amid despair. I believe these themes remain profoundly relevant in today’s society. In the following discussion, I will examine some relevant aspects of this work, and later, I will trace some connections between these and the creative process for Oscillations.

Schubert-Müller’s Winterreise* Schubert and Müller's Winterreise has been extensively discussed in numerous books, articles, and academic dissertations. Particularly relevant to me are Susan Youens, Retracing a winter's journey : Schubert's Winterreise (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), Kindle ed., and the collection of essays The Cambridge Companion to Schubert's ‘Winterreise', ed. Marjorie W. Hirsch and Lisa Feurzeig, Cambridge Companions to Music, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Winterreise (German, Winter trip in English), is probably one of Schubert’s most profound compositions. It has been described as “inspired by the poetry of Müller and its poeticized philosophy of existential torment”.* Susan Youens, Retracing a winter's journey: Schubert's Winterreise The protagonist of the story is a young wanderer who embarks on a solitary journey after being abandoned by his beloved. However, Müller extends this theme beyond mere grief over a sweetheart’s infidelity, raising fundamental questions about the meaning of existence. As he travels, the wanderer seeks to understand both his own nature and that of Humanity through observing the external world as a fleeting landscape and through introspection and inward exploration.* In this context, the idea of inward exploration refers to the search for deeper meaning or truth within oneself. The Weg nach Innen (German for path inward) is a concept from German Romanticism, particularly associated with the poet and philosopher Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) and found in his unfinished novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Müller was familiar with Novalis’ work.

Throughout the cycle, the wanderer speaks to himself as if entirely alone, drawing the reader directly into his thoughts with no narrator or intermediary. According to Susan Youens, the reader appears as an eavesdropper, listening to things never meant to be overheard. In this sense, Winterreise is a monodrama and a precursor to Expressionist interior monologues.* A monodrama is a theatrical or musical work performed by a single actor or singer. It typically involves intense psychological depth and focuses on the inner world of the protagonist. Examples of monodramas are the works Erwartung (1909) by Marie Pappenheim and Arnold Schoenberg, and Schoenberg’s Die Glückliche Hand (1913). Furthermore, Müller deliberately adopts the style of German folk poetry* Wilhelm Muller was a German poet and writer who is known for his contributions to the development of the German Volkslied, or folk song. See for example Philip S. Allen, "Wilhelm Muller and the German Volkslied," Journal of Germanic Philology, 3 (1900). in Winterreise to create a monodramatic effect. By avoiding complex poetic structures and the presence of multiple voices –such as a narrator or the poet himself– the poetry feels more direct and emotionally immediate.

Susan Youens proposes that Müller was fond of antitheses, and this is reflected in the poetic style of Winterreise: as the wanderer walks, he shifts between self-reflection and outward observations of nature and mankind, while his psyche oscillates like a pendulum between euphoria and a longing for death, reality and imagination, and past and present. An example of this is the antithetical phrase “A stranger I arrived, / A stranger I depart” at the beginning of the first poem, “Gute Nacht,” which characterizes much of the cycle’s lyricism. These antithetic states and sensations appear throughout the entire cycle.

The wanderer experiences deep feelings throughout the cycle, yet Youens suggests he is also a realist with an analytical and philosophical mind. He sees his misery clearly and finds no comfort in dreams or fantasies because he doesn’t believe they have any connection to real life. To him, the divide between them is absolute. Returning to solitude and isolation after a brief escape into dreams is a recurring theme throughout the twenty-four songs. Youens provides an example of this in the poem “Frühlingstraum,” where the fleeting dream of green meadows and reciprocated love is followed by a sudden and acute awareness of cold and loneliness upon awakening.

A recurring theme throughout the cycle, as discussed by Youens, is the difficulty of dying when one longs for it, or the persistence of life, even when unwanted. Yet the wanderer considers something like suicide only once, and even then, not by his own hand but as a passive surrender to nature. This moment, in the fifth song, “Der Lindembaum” (German, Linden tree in English),* In German literature, the linden tree often symbolizes home, comfort, and memory. It appears frequently in folk songs and poetry as a place of shelter, love, or longing. See for example Uwe Hentschel, "Der Lindenbaum in der deutschen Literatur des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts," Orbis litterarum 60, no. 5 (2005), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0730.2005.00843.x. is a key turning point. Until now, he has remained in the town of his beloved, and when he finally begins his journey, he is nearly stopped by the temptation to stay, lost in memory, and let the winter storm take him. Even though he doesn’t know why, he still holds to a trace of hope and chooses to keep moving.

Even as the linden tree’s voice, whispering of rest and peace in death, continues to haunt him, the poetry of Winterreise remains strikingly realistic. There are no fairy-tale or supernatural elements in the text. Instead, any seemingly “magical” moments –like the voices calling “Come here to me, fellow” in “Der Lindembaum”– originate from the wanderer’s own mind, and he is fully aware of it.

In the final song, “Der Leiermann,” the wanderer encounters a solitary beggar playing a hurdy-gurdy. Youens interprets this old man as the wanderer’s doppelgänger,* In German literature, the Doppelgänger represents a double or shadow self, often symbolizing inner conflict, fate, or an inescapable aspect of one’s identity. It appears in works by authors like E.T.A. Hoffmann and Heinrich Heine, frequently as a augury of doom or existential crisis. See for exampleAndrew J. Webber, Andrew J. Webber, The Doppelgänger: Double Visions in German Literature (Oxford University Press, 03 Oct 2011, 1996). https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159049.001.0001. a reflection of what he is becoming, embodying his deepest fears of the future. In the end of his trip, reality forces him to accept that his beloved is lost, and to survive, he must sever his ties to the past.

According to Youens, Winterreise is usually interpreted as culminating in death or madness. However, despite the bleak emotional progression, the language of the wanderer remains consistent throughout the cycle. The landscape at the end –an unnamed town, a pack of dogs, snow, and ice, appears to return to the beginning of the journey, suggesting that the Winterreise has come full circle.

Ekphrasis and Misreading

The work Oscillations proposes a re-imagination and re-composition of some songs of Winterreise through a personal vision and compositional approach. The work investigates several artistic inquiries. Some of them, as I see it, are at the intersection between human and artificial creative cognition: On the one hand, some musical and literary content of the cycle becomes prompt for a neural generative system. On the other hand, evocations and recollections are re-imagined as a new narrative for the poetry, a process that I view in analogy to prompt, but using a human mind as a latent space. Additionally, some musical references and poetic symbols from Winterreise are reimagined and incorporated as sources for re-composing them into a new musical work.

My main personal and artistic motivation for composing this piece is strongly related to the current relevance of the topics that Müller and Schubert immortalized in their Winterreise. In addition to that, the deeply poetic and musical treatment of these issues in the cyclic has always strongly resonated with me. But how do I say what Schubert and Müller said in the past, with my own words? Somehow, I feel a need to misread it, not only in a literary sense but also musically.*The idea of 'misreading' as a creative practice in 20th-century music comes originally from J. Straus, who also took it from Harold Bloom. See Joseph N. Straus, "The 'Anxiety of Influence' in Twentieth-Century Music," The Journal of Musicology 9, no. 4 (1991), https://doi.org/10.2307/763870.

There is a relatively common trend among some composers that write pieces that are responses to preexisting compositions, in particular Schubert’s works. For instance, Dániel Péter Biró’s To Remember and Forget (1999-2000),* A detailed analysis of To Remember and to Forget can be found in D. Biró, "Remembering and Forgetting: Lizkor VeLishkoach for String Quartet, after Schubert." a response piece to Schubert’s Quartet in G major (D887). Similarly, Hans Zender’s Winterreise (1993) is a reinterpretation of Schubert-Müller’s Winterreise, and Henrik Hellstenius’s Dichterliebe (2015), a re-composition of the Schumann-Heine cycle, among many others. Some theorists have described this approach as ekphrastic. In this way, there is something ekphrastic in Oscillations, as each piece is an original work inspired by and connected to the cycle Winterreise.

Ekphrasis, in its classical form, is primarily a discoursive technique that aims to vividly represent absent objects or scenes for an audience, making the listener feel like an eyewitness.* Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, imagination and persuasion in ancient rhetorical theory and practice (Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis Group, 2013), 1. However, in modern interpretations, the use of ekphrasis has shifted towards a focus on the explicit representation of visual artworks.* James A. W. Heffernan, "Ekphrasis and Representation", New Literary History 22, no. 2 (1991), https://doi.org/10.2307/469040 Furthermore, contemporary ekphrasis extends beyond just visual art, touching on other art forms like music. This idea shifts ekphrasis from a mere descriptive practice to a dynamic interplay between multiple artistic mediums. These can either reflect direct influences from other artistic works or re-imagine them in a practice that potentially brings new dimensions and interpretations: a form of creative re-presentation.* Lydia Goehr, "How to Do More with Words. Two Views of (Musical) Ekphrasis," British Journal of Aesthetics 50, no. 4 (2010), https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayq036

The composer Luciano Berio, for example, wrote a piece named Ekphrasis (Continuo II) in 1996. As its name indicates, the work functions as a commentary on an earlier composition of his: the 1990 orchestral piece called Continuo. There is another piece by Luciano Berio, however, that interests me more, as it also takes as a departure point the music of Franz Schubert: The piece Rendering (1990) for symphonic orchestra. According to his own words, Berio composed this piece in the form of a restoration of Schubert’s Tenth Symphony in D major (D936A):

“Seduced by those sketches, I therefore decided to restore them: restore and not complete nor reconstruct. […] I proposed to follow, in spirit, those modern criteria of restoration that address the problem of rekindling the old colors without hiding the damage of time and the inevitable gaps created in the composition (as is the case with Giotto in Assisi).”

Schubert’s symphony sketches were left in pianistic form, with occasional instrumental suggestions. Berio’s restoration focused on completing the internal voices and bass lines, along with orchestrating the piece, aiming to preserve Schubert’s characteristic color, though not exclusively, as Berio refers to using orchestration techniques resembling Mendelsohn and Mahler in Rendering.

To bridge the gaps between sketches, Berio gradually introduces new musical material that slowly emerges, first coexisting with Schubert and later taking over the orchestral texture. This connecting tissue –as he defines it– is constantly different and changing, always pianissimo and lontano. Even though the new material feels entirely distinct from Schubert’s, Berio manages to knit them in an undeniably beautiful and masterfully conceived form.

Some of these interjections of the connecting tissue intertwine fragments of late Schubert works, such as the Piano Sonata in B flat major (D960), the Piano Trio in B flat major (D898), as well as some songs of Winterreise.* A lengthy analysis of Renderings including a longer description around Schubert’s original material and its transformation can be found in Thomas Gartmann, ""... dass nichts an sich jemals vollendet ist" : Untersuchungen zum Instrumentalschaffen von Luciano Berio," Publikationen der Schweizerischen Musikforschenden Gesellschaft. Serie 2 37 (1995), https://doi.org/10.5169/seals-858818 For example, the fragment below shows some abbreviated quotations of the main theme from the Piano Sonata in B-flat major. The first oboe, trumpet and clarinet play the first three notes before diverging. Soon after, the first oboe diminishes the rhythm. The violins play the motive as repeated sixteen-notes. Finally, the celesta presents the first phrase of the theme in its literal melodic form, without harmony, doubled by the second violins.

In Rendering, some references to Winterreise can be observed. For instance, the beginning of “Wasserflut” (the sixth song of the cycle), characterized by its intervals (ascending perfect fifth, ascending and descending perfect fourth), is rhythmically condensed here into a succession of three appoggiaturas followed by a long note, as it can be seen in the score above, in the first trumpet and first clarinet (here the quotation to “Wasserflut” overlaps with a quotation to the Piano Sonata in B flat major). Later, the first oboe and first trumpet play an rhythmically augmented version of the same motive. Additionally, there is a reference to “Die Post” (the thirteenth song) in the first flute at rehearsal mark 9, featuring its characteristic broken chord and triplet rhythmic feel, as shown below:

In this piece, Berio seems to invert the concept of historical material as exemplified earlier in Bernd Zimmermann’s work. Rather than allowing historical elements to emerge organically within a contemporary framework, Rendering introduces the contemporary only sparingly, serving as a subtle connective tissue that binds together Schubert’s fragmented sketches. The collision of the historical material with the new, the dreamy texture and their intertwining shocked me greatly at first listening and every time after.

Creative Process

The cycle Oscillations is inspired by, and both musically and poetically rooted in the music and poetry of Winterreise. In particular, Müller’s poetic concept of antithesis, discussed above, is reinterpreted as a central creative idea for the piece: the notion of oscillating musical states, in relation to themes of deviation, drifting, and return.

The nature of these oscillations and how it is creatively explored varies across the three pieces. Oscillations (i) essentially draws material from the poems “Gute Nacht,” “Gefrorene Tränen,” and “Erstarrung.” Oscillations (ii) uses “Der Lindembaum” as its starting point –also incorporating a covered quotation of the piano part from “Gute Nacht.” Oscillations (iii) takes inspiration and material from “Der Leiermann” and includes a covered quotation of the poetry of “Mut!” After exploring more abstract constructive processes in Oscillations (i), the work gradually evolves into a form of melodrama,* The difference between monodrama and melodrama is that a melodrama usually consists of narrated voice instead of a sung part. imaginatively connected to a strongly emotional personal history through the use of sonic memories, literary narratives, and staging.

An example of the opposite process is Oscillations (ii). There, quotations from the original drive the narrative, and these materials become characters that interact with other new elements, perhaps clashing or establishing a co-existence but essentially fading into each other or emerging. Somehow, connected to Berio’s idea in Rendering. Finally, in Oscillations (iii), the historical materials shift away from their original form and then return to it, a process that repeats back and forth throughout the sections. Additionally, the narrated part mirrors this transformation through a mental drifting, using the original verses of the poem –translated into English– as its point of departure.

Neural generation and drifting

What is intuition? Intuition is the formation of connections: relationships built in the mind. Events that co-occur in space or time become connected, as P. Gärdenfor proposed; experiences that share meaning or similarity are mentally associated. Memories connect with objects: photos evoke sounds, sounds bring voices, voices recall faces, faces stir emotions, emotions summon words, and words awaken memories.

Part of the creative investigation in this piece explores intuition –both human and artificial– and the intuitive connections that can shape narrative and larger musical forms. One example of this is how I use the notion of prompt:* Prompt here is understood in the same sense as in LLMs, which refers to an initial input that guides the model’s response. In this context, this word is relevant because I am generating musical continuations; however, the terminology varies in machine learning, where we would typically refer to it as an input that determines a predictive model’s output. on the one hand, as an initializer of a generative musical process; on the other hand, as a catalyzer for a narrated part based on personal recollections, mixed with an imagined present reality. I use these two ideas metaphorically and analogously, equating them to the exploration of a latent space within a human mind –my own.

For the first idea, in this work, I experimented using the tool NeuralConstraints, which allows the generation of musical sequences guided by neural network predictions while constrained by additional rules defined by the composer. For example, the neural network can be trained on the music of the cycle Winterreise, and its outcome will be shaped by this learned data, while other rules such as allowed notes, intervals, or rhythmic repetitions shape these predictions into desired musical structures.

NeuralConstraints mainly works based on predictions for some input sequences. To generate a musical continuation, it usually starts from a musical prompt. For example, it receives four, or five, or whatever number of consecutive pitches, and it will try to predict the continuation. This is done sequentially step by step: the predicted outcome becomes the input for a new prediction. Therefore, these continuations can go for as long as desired. Naturally, these predictions are not always precise, and some deviations occur. Eventually, these errors start to accumulate and slowly drift away from the expected result.

This gradual deviation became a strong compositional heuristic throughout the whole work. In particular, when it takes as a departure point some literal elements of the cycle, such as some vocal melodies or piano parts. It is possible, for example, to steer the neural generation and deviation by embedding certain rules for the network to follow, or one can establish a set of rules that allow predictions to wander off while eventually returning to a targeted outcome, such as a melodic progression leading to a cadence. In the examples below, this is done through neural generation using NeuralConstraints. Later, I will discuss other examples where the “deviation” heuristic was implemented outside the computational system:

Conversely, it is possible to reverse this process, starting from random notes and slowly transforming into the original melody as a point of destination.

Prompting semantic connections

The narrated part of Oscillations (iii) was conceived to reflect the melodramatic essence found in Müller’s poetic style throughout Winterreise. Here, the narrator speaks to himself, in a manner not meant to be overheard. As in the original cycle, the audience is positioned as a silent observer within the narrator’s mind. The language is overtly colloquial and politically incorrect.

At the same time, this narrated part reframes the idea of prompting –somewhat connected to its musical use explained above, but this time as a metaphor for a mental drift triggered by the verses of the poem “Der Leiermann.” In this sense, this type of oscillating mental state –which is commonplace along the full cycle– here has been used not just as a compositional resource, but also as a literary mode: the original verses appear at the beginning and at the end of the narration, pronounced with a poetic narrative voice. Subsequently and over the three sections of the piece, a slow process of drifting takes place. Initially, the tone becomes totally intimate and personal, and the narrative shifts in time and space through memory evocations, yet some of the verses still evoke the original verses of the original poem. In the image below can be observed the narrated part and how it relates to “Der Leiermann.” The bold italics are indications of character for the narrator.