Julius Stockhausen's Early Performances of Franz Schubert's Die schone Mullerin
Franz Schubert9s song cycle Die schone Mullerin makes enormous demands not only on the performers but also on its audience, a factor that shaped the early performance history of the work. In this article, the pioneering complete performances of Die schone Mullerin by the baritone Julius Stockhausen (1826 1906) will be explored, as well as the responses of his audiences, collaborators, and critics. The circumstances surrounding the first complete performance in Vienna9s Musikverein on 4 May 1856, more than three decades after the cycle was composed in 1823, will be traced. A survey of subsequent performances reveal two things: within Stockhausen9s concert career at least, it was no foregone conclusion that the complete cycle should always be performed; and a performance of the "complete cycle" meant many different things in his day. Stockhausen9s artistic idealism jostled against the practical forces that necessarily influenced his approach to recital programming, leading to a multifaceted, untidy performance history for this cycle.