Finding the Bright Side of Schubert's Winterreise, Where Love Can Bloom (Schubert, Beethoven, Strauss, Ray Brown, Thelonious Monk)

Photos by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, February 8, 10, and 15, 2025

So, last week, I never made it to lunch, because although Schubert was never played, I found out: one character in Winterreise is "winter-resting," and I've been that character, all along.

Frau Mathews, you tickle me -- you still do not know who your character would be in Winterreise? You are the well-protected daughter, whose unseen Father will not allow an unfit person to remain in your life, but has called you to peace.

I was trying to do a rescue with the concept of "Wintereissed" last winter, because that was my regular mode -- a survivor of a wrecked community, driven by compassion and also survivor's guilt and also a three-generation deep background of community service to run rescues. You give me anybody messed up like this:

... and my first instinct is to run a rescue plan.

Discovering the journey of the character in Winterreise, and all the ways in which he cannot be saved, was a heartbreaking revelation to me about why I had been called away from people of the same mind in my own life ... but just like how in Winterreise most interpreters do not get across just how implacably depraved the character is in refusing all good that could save him, how dangerously bad he is in his delusions of replacing God with himself, it is easy to get lost in the true sadness and need of many people, and not closely inquire into how sometimes -- not always, but sometimes -- people are receiving the reward of what I was told to my face:

I love my bad behaviors!

And as long as they love and prioritize their bad behaviors, they cannot be helped. I had to learn the hard way, and then, at last, at the end of 2023, an interpreter of Winterreise came along to show me the cold, hard truth.

Kurt Moll's Winterreise is no holds barred ... he starts quietly in "Gute Nacht" and works his way up in that immense voice until you can imagine him at about six-foot-forever-and-a-half and just as broad, enraged with the family and all the way up to God Himself, until you can understand that if the character so voiced does not leave that house and go out into the snow, that's going to be a situation that hits the six o'clock news in the worst way!

And, it gets no better ... every bad decision ... every inch of that man's responsibility for his own outcome is laid bare. Now, Herr Moll is not without compassion for the character in his deep heartbreak and declining mental and physical condition, but he will not let anyone forget that the defiant, blaspheming bitterness of the character causes him to go past the point of no return, even in the face of opportunities to change course.

In handling Winterreise in this way, Herr Moll left a path for me to see past my own grief and trauma response to those I left behind, and to understand why there was nothing else I could have done before they, in 2024, went on and showed me also. But by then, I was at a safe distance ... grieved, yes, harmed, no.

Which brings us back around to the premise of the day: compassion directed primarily toward protection through truth-telling. Herr Moll's Winterreise is not the most popular, but it tells the truth as revealed in a close reading of the text of the songs. But truth is not protective to those who refuse it and thus set themselves on course to experience the consequences of walking in falsehoods and lies -- so in telling the truth, one also chooses to protect those who will value it. It is not that one rations one's compassion: it is a question of choosing who to support and comfort with it. Those dedicated to evil cannot be given rest, as "Rast" in Winterreise demonstrates: the character will not appreciate the rest ...

... and then finds he can no longer make himself go by any safe path in "Der Wegweiser," but only down one from which no one in mortality can ever return ...

... and thus chooses to remain outside of safety in hopes that the dying hurdy-gurdy man, the hungry wild dogs already growling and snapping in anticipation of eating him, will play his songs. This is a final, insane act of fatal self-centeredness, for if he had any compassion and sense left in him, he would have seen the older man as someone also in desperate need of help, not just someone else to make chattel to his wants while he also going to die of exposure ... but this is not what happens in "Der Leiermann."

This is the man to whom the beloved would have been married ... but the beloved is spared taking that entire journey in a domestic form. She is blessed in that last verse of "Gute Nacht," the first song, as the character walks out the door, and out of her life!

It just never occurred to me before last week's post that, given all that I experienced from childhood until now, to see myself there, instead of always being in ambulance-driving mode. It took all of 2024. I first had to grow enough to accept

There is no bridge, Frau Mathews. There is no bridge.

No way to drive an ambulance, then!

Then I had to get enough reminders of what was going on behind me to understand how completely unsafe it had all been, and how utterly useless my efforts would have been -- and they came, at key points in 2024.

But mainly, I had to get settled into my new reality, and learn what this meant ...

You got to enjoy the halcyon of winter, and spring, and summer, and autumn, and now winter again, while others are ungratefully railing against God and the universe for not letting them have what they want and fighting a fight they cannot win. The seasons, and likewise circumstances, roll over everyone. But where love calls and gratitude answers, the journey will be never be without joy and peace.

On the non-fiction side of the fourth wall, this has taken a week for me to contemplate ... at age 44, even having walked through a peaceful year 43, this was still news to me!

On the fictional side of the fourth wall, I was still standing where I was last week when this at last occurred to me, dazzled in the sunlight and in the light breaking on this realization, with the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past reverently echoing Who he was sent to echo:

Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

"That applies to you, too, Frau Mathews," he continued. "Consider this about Winterreise. The beloved there has a choice. If she had wanted to, she could have left with the man who loves her. She does not know, in song 1, where that journey would have taken her. Nor does she have to. The decision is made, and she trusts whoever has made the decision and has gone to bed and is soundly asleep. That is all that she ever has to know to be safe.

"In early 2024, you presented me with a most 'winteresting' idea ... ."

I cracked up laughing.

"And you know I have waited an entire year to say that to you and make you laugh, after you broke German and English with 'Winterreised,'" he purred. "I was humorous last year about it as well, showing up with my comic Osmin moonlighting as Old Man Winter, but I can now say openly what I had in mind even then: I knew that the whole idea you had about being winterized by your experiences in 2022 and 2023 so you could go forward doing essentially the same thing as before with better vetting skills had already been dismissed on high, but that it was also understood that you simply did not understand because you were still breaking out of the patterns of a lifetime ... and you see the direction our studies went into, instead."

"Yes, indeed -- that must have been the most thorough, complete, utter, and yet gentle NO I have ever experienced, and enjoyed it, too," I said.

"Because it was YES to that which you truly were called," he said. "All doors in your calling are open, and all doors not are shut. You did not know you were looking at a shut door last winter, and you were willing to be led through all open ones without trying to get through the one that was shut. You were not in rebellion, but just not yet understanding ... so then spring came, and then summer, and then autumn, and the understanding came with it."

"It's a lot bigger than I realized," I said.

"And in it, a well-protected daughter is not to be confused with a pampered princess -- that is the knee-jerk thought when someone is considered sheltered or privileged," he said. "But you are in real life a most devoted and dutiful daughter, and you would likewise be such a wife. What you are meant to see from Winterreise this year, is how to consciously operate with respect to your protected position. The beloved daughter there rests, that being granted to her. Within a little while -- before Song 4 -- she will be a wealthy bride ... and if you remember that Schubert and Mueller were raised Catholic, that ought to remind you of something."

I thought about this and was glad to sit down ...

... because we were off in deeper waters than I had guessed at in Winterreise.

"To be a Christian," I said, "is to be part of the bride of Christ."

"And as ever, men who want to rail on and replace God are ever shut out of all that blessing -- the rest of Winterreise is a long exposition of what that decision can do to a man inside common grace, without even regarding the eternal consequences of refusing special grace."

He sighed heavily ... the thousand-yard stare came back ... I knew what he remembered when he had that look...

"Of all interpreters of Winterreise in the second half of the 20th century, I was perhaps among the most interested in keeping people off that path, knowing how deadly it is, but also knowing how beautiful the path of love and gratitude is, and how full of life. To rest from the first is to gain entrance to the second ... to turn away from making one's stand on the first ... ."

He quite deliberately withdrew his gaze from the scenes of the past, and looked upward, the pain in his face being replaced with joyful radiance, and then looked down into the concern and love in my face.

" ... allows one to see and move forward with the blessings of the second."

I thought back to 2022, and 2023, and then contrasted them with 2024 ... when at last I looked away from past patterns, how different my life had become ... how much peace and deep rest I had found ... how grateful I was ... my journals were full of my expressions ... I had even been seriously ill, and never suffered a day before it was discovered and treatment applied.

"You're right," I breathed. "I see it now ... how not only blessed with rest, but protected in that blessing, through all the different circumstances."

"Yes," he said. "Yes!"

His eyes lit up with joy there, and his smile was glorious to see, but after a few moments, he began again, his face and voice slowly moving into their utmost gravity.

"I have said to you before that everything for you is in the way you are walking, and that includes protection. This is not to say that in the path there will not be times of great suffering and struggle -- we are human, and there are common griefs and common struggles, in addition to stands you will be called to take and battles you will be called to join. To stand for righteousness in an evil world is a invitation to suffer -- sometimes to even die, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer whom you are grappling with both said and experienced."

He paused, and then spoke again, moving into the absolute gravity of the bottom of his double-deep range.

"Yet there is a difference in the sorrows you have to endure as a human being, the sorrows of resisting evil as you must when called, and the sorrows you might bring upon yourself for not respecting your true position. The first two you cannot avoid. Let the latter, hereafter, be few, Frau Mathews."

That last sentence ... so awesomely resonant and majestic and deep ... rarely did he utter a flat command, but I knew for certain Who he echoed there, and therefore, why he could say that to me ... and even then, still so gently ... as the Scripture puts it, it was a command without grief, for I sensed the infinite love and desire to protect behind it.

"I hear and I understand," I said, "and as enabled from on high, I will walk accordingly."

"And you will be supported every step of the way, meine Tochter, in so walking."

So saying, he stepped gently to me, and took me into his mighty embrace.

"Now that's some support," I said.

"I am but a small example for the everlasting arms," he said, "but I do the best I can!"

"Well, I'm just a little contralto," I said, "so it is working for me!"

He laughed right up two octaves, out of that gravity, and showed me a face in utter joy ... smiled so big I thought of another German ... my latest love in German music had triggered a memory of my first ... and I like Wilhelm Kempff's take on this, too, because he is having a grand time!

When I think of a relaxed walk on a pleasant day with no particular time to get there, the second movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata comes to mind. The middle section swings in 1798 like Beethoven had heard what my people would be writing in jazz in 1978 ... I was 12 when I first heard it, and it still just makes me smile.

At 44, I understand a little better why I like it ... that composer so capable of immense drama, just relaxing and gliding gently along, probably remembering a sunny day on which he was walking ... and he too was a bass!

The bass next to me laughed as he was listening to all this as we walked now, now back in Golden Gate Park, going ...

... but with no particular place to go!

"So, let me get this straight -- it doesn't start with your grand old soldier after all -- the first bass to allure you into the life of being in communion with nature as an artist is Beethoven, so then when your grand old soldier was ready to walk with you, you were already ready!"

"That is how that happened," I said.

"So then ... you picked a little bass like me to fill the shoes of Germany's greatest composer of the 19th century and a bonafide American hero?"

"I've listened to you talking about me having high standards and just listened ... I've always had high standards. My whole family is high standards. I realize now that where I messed up was trying to hand-walk other adults get to benefits of those standards who were not interested in the discipline it takes to live at those levels. I also realize, as of today, that not only I have been given rest from that unwise behavior, but that in taking that rest I will be protected from all harm that comes from that behavior."

"Oh, such music to my ears, and to my heart -- you do see it, and you understand! -- mein Herz jubelt fuer dich! Ach, mein Herz -- mein Herz -- mein Herz jubelt fuer dich!"

By this time we were in Golden Gate Park, and any path could become a dance floor when certain people got excited ...

... and so he swept me right up in his joy, Beethoven graciously providing a swinging minuet for us ... the second time I sang the high part in the middle section and he sang the bass "Laa -- BOOM -- laa -- BOOM -- laa -- BOOM -- la la la la laa -- BOOM -- laa -- laa- BOOM -- laa -- BOOM -- la la la la!"

I knew this was not helping him calm down ... not at all ... I kept flashing to an image of midnight wheeling across the sky after the embrace of midday at sunset, struck giddy ... add a golden meteor shower, slowly increasing in intensity ... in the back of my mind I knew that we were going to lunch, and he was getting into a state of mind in which his pocket was going to start burning a hole in his money ... yet it had occurred to me what was happening.

There is another off-screen character in Winterreise: the man chosen, who will marry the beloved one. Because she chooses to remain protected and not go out into the snow with the character of Winterreise, he is her portion. He is a wealthy man ... perhaps a little older ... and if we assume the best of him ... perhaps like King Marke from Tristan and Isolde, who finds in Isolde a wonderful queen whom he does love, with no need for a potion ... or perhaps like Admiral Morosus, who upon meeting his young bride in prospectus in Die Schweigsame Frau actually loves her, and sings to her that he knows he is too old for her, but the thought that she might love him is a miracle that fills him with joy and gratitude ... and instantly, one can see his deep willingness to love and cherish ...

(The timestamp is 13:35 to 17:44)

So, if we assume the best of that man chosen off-stage in Winterreise, and that next day for her might well have been one of being rejoiced over by said man, and if she chose to just respond in kind, perhaps rejoiced with ...

So, in mind of all this discussion of Winterreise, I just leaned in and went with it and stopped worrying about things in this object lesson of having made the right decision. The same interpreter as did one of the most moving portrayals of Marke and Morosus, now in Q-Inspired, was perhaps subconsciously reprising something of both roles, accounting for the actual difference in our ages ... but then again, just personality wise, he was someone who just for the joy of singing could carry thousands away ... add with it delight in someone he cared about finally getting some good sense about herself ... and so one ended up with a big, joyful gentle giant, just being himself.

I had not thought about it consciously with my grand old soldier, but he and I needed a lot of room to be ourselves, and the parks provided us that space to get to know and cherish each other as we actually were. I myself had returned alone to those spaces to give myself room to heal and grow, and when it came to friendships and if any of them were to roll over to romance, I would need to have room made for me and to make room for those others ... it was not unlike a walk together, shoulder to shoulder moving forward, and a dance, face to face, enjoying the space already had.

"I don't actually know how to dance -- but I am enjoying this so much!" I said.

He had forgotten his English, but I understood his laughter even more than his German ... oh, that had blessed him so much!

"Keine Angst, meine liebe Dame -- ich habe dich!"

No fear, my beloved lady -- I've got you!

So then I relaxed and found us some more music ...

"A waltz between your musical world and mine, my good sir, with the great Oscar Peterson on the piano!"

This surprised my dancing partner, but I could see his smile as the big gears in that huge intellect were turning.

"That truly is between, and is further than I would have thought to go ... but I refuse no joys that come to me in love! You will have to lead, Frau Mathews, because you understand jazz far better!"

So I did, and he was soon laughing again, surprised at times but completely unbothered and boldly learning ... that felt so good ... I loved being in environments of mutual learning and enjoyment. My grand old soldier was my great love because he and I had provided that environment to each other, without knowing what we had done ... it was just that match in a culture that could not afford to have its citizens deeply think or feel because it depends so much on making chattel of human beings who are not that.

To think and feel deeply and so to be drawn to live in love and gratitude toward other human beings and Creation and its Creator -- it destroys the entire premise that some people are just here to have chattel made of them, and is a stand by itself against evil. When I thought about the friends who were being added back to me at the end of 2024 and in early 2025 after the losses of 2022 and 2023, all of them are on the spectrum of making that kind of stand, and their work in the world shows it. Those behind me I can bring up because where I am is where they want to go, and those ahead of me are encouraging me along as we go together. There is so much peace and mutual uplift in this ... still plenty of work, and sometimes struggle in it, but nothing like 2022 and 2023 and its futility.

So then I realized ... I was half right last year ... my desire to minister, to help people find their way, even enough to be willing go back into dark places was not wrong -- in the autumn I was granted that, and found that there was nothing but an initial rescue to be done, because no one was willing to climb with me to the light except those who had already decided to do that!

I had to learn the limits of that so I could be content on the bright side of such journeys ... all those called to the light would be enabled to come, and those I could use my great strength to help along the way that they were already moving in. When called, I could turn back to a rescue, but only when called. And sometimes, I would be called simply to rest. This would require a new kind of discipline from me, so I still had much to learn, but the way was as clear as Oscar Peterson's flawless tinkling of the keys.

"Oh, I enjoyed that new experience, Frau Mathews -- I am not unaware of jazz, of course, because I was born in what you would call the 'swing' era of jazz, but a 'gravy waltz'? Danke schoen -- I enjoyed learning what that is!"

"Bitte schoen!"

"I am doubly glad for that, since gravy reminds me I actually need to buy you lunch -- but we are a bit later than I intended."

"I am in no hurry," I said, and then repeated what he had told me the previous week: "Ich bin voll. Mein Herz is erfuellt."

"Frau Mathews, your heart is full, but you have a body still, and you require calories, expeditiously. Wait here, and I will brave the arriving lunch crowd while you rest."

"And hydrate!" I said as I pulled out my water.

"A wise decision," he said with a smile. "After that, perhaps we will go from here to the Fuchsia Dell, where the lunch crowd will be far less."

"I would welcome that," I said.

"Then we shall do that," he said, and left me contentedly drinking my water and beholding spring making an early rhododendron arrival...

... before I was joined there by an inquiring mind...

"Sista -- I just have to know -- he's too old for me but where did you get him and how do you keep him?"

Her name was Nellie, by the way ... drawn from Thelonious Monk's sweet tribute to his wife, "Crepuscule with Nellie." Enjoy Mr. Monk himself, playing ...

Crepuscule, though no longer in common English usage, means "twilight" ... and it is a gentle light, and kind ... a time to release the worries of a long day's journey ... in Brahms, that same light indicates it is time to rest from a long life's labors. But there is always a need to take a rest from some things, and bad ideas about love are a wonderful thing to take a rest from, so I smiled and corrected her very gently.

"I didn't get him. I was graced with him. I saw him in concert more than a decade ago, and I remembered his voice and his majestic, noble manner, but I had no idea we would meet again. But in 2021, in one of the most difficult times of my life, he was moved at that encounter, out of the deep generosity of his heart, to bless me with the gift of his singing about grief, and loss, and love being eternal. That blessed me and gave me the perspective I needed to get through there."

"But then how did you get together?"

"Well, I'm on the Hive blockchain -- Web 3 where social media doesn't steal your data -- and I'm part of a community called Q-Inspired by Music. They put out a musician's initiative, and I thought of him. I had already looked him up, because you know you have to vet the people you let speak and sing into your life. I found out he had been a professor, and then had moved into music full-time, but the main thing was what everyone in every field said about him: humility, love, kindness, and generosity equal to his talent. He also turned out to be a principled man: wouldn't sing just anything, and really preserved his ability for that which will help the people. So, I got bold and invited him to be part of the Q-Inspired initiative, and he came."

"OK, so, God kinda set all that up -- but how do you keep him? I mean ... what does it take to keep him interested and actually paying attention to you?"

"Young lady, a human being is not a bird that you cage up. A man does what he wants to do. He is a good, kindhearted, gentle giant of a man who has chosen to love me, and that is that. Now I am grateful, and seek to let him know how deeply I love and appreciate him with the same level of good kindheartedness. I am welcoming to him, as he has always been to me. And also, since it is established that we are a gift to each other, gifts do not un-gift themselves, although they can be neglected and forgotten ... but as long as any two people keep the main thing the main thing, that neglect and forgetting can be held off."

She looked both ways.

"Do you ever feel like you need to check his phone to make sure ... you know ... a man like that has a lot of options and you know men are only as faithful as their options!"

"Every man has a lot of options, except if he loves the woman he is with. If he doesn't love her, well, of course -- and sometimes, we have to communicate so a man who loves us knows how to do that for us."

"But they don't listen!" she said.

"They don't ... but the right man will. Let me share something else with you ... sometimes we just have to sit still and really sort out how we feel honestly so that we can perceive and receive the blessings chosen for us."

"You sound like my grandmother now!"

"Your grandmother must have known mine," I said with a smile.

"I'm trying to -- I am -- I came out here today on my day off kinda early because I needed to really think and pray about some things and I'm supposed to be meeting him for lunch but I really don't know so I needed to come early."

"Well, I was sitting still and was thinking and praying and sorting things out when the voice you marvel about came back into my life, so, you're on the right track," I said. "In fact ... ."

Coming down the road at that instant...

"But Mr. K.M -- I can't say that last name and I don't want to be disrespectful and mangle it again -- but anyway, I just don't know what to do any more. I work hard. I'm trying to build something so I gotta work long hours, and she doesn't trust me because bad stuff happened before me, and it's killing me, man, it's killing me!"

"Young man, I worked long hours and traveled the world, so I understand that part of your problem. Here is what you still have to learn: you, yourself, are not a slave, exchanging your labor for your life. You cannot receive love and trust by trading your labor for that. That is not how any of that works. If you have love, you have it and you build it by grace."

"But I don't know anything else, and I don't get credit for what I do!"

"But you can learn, young man -- and as for the other part, consider this: could I have bought lunch with deutschmarks?"

"Sir, you couldn't even do that in Germany any more -- you have to use euros there and dollars here."

"All right, so we know we have to use the proper means of exchange. This work and this business you are building -- is it for you or for you and her?"

"It's for me -- but a man has got to have something to be considered a man in the world!"

"This is true. But this is what a man desires for himself and whoever he thinks he needs to impress. That has nothing to do with love of anyone else. That is for love of self."

"But the women leave if you can't provide!"

"This is also true, but we are not speaking of women unless you have more than one. We are speaking of learning how to love one woman, and to be that man who can nourish and fill her heart. Now if you are with someone living to prove she is a woman and has a whole bunch of people she needs to impress about who she is, I am sorry for you -- but if that is the case, you have only attracted the perfect match for who you are, and who you are fit for."

Silence -- they had stopped walking -- and the silence lingered.

"I hadn't thought about all that," the younger man said at last, "and besides, she isn't like that. I mean, she works and is doing well, but she's not living for it or anything. I honestly don't get her half the time."

"I don't think that's the problem, young man. I think you do not 'get' yourself, and that confusion is rolling over."

"It isn't enough to be yourself for this world."

"But you can be in the world, but not of it."

"Hey -- that's what our pastor was preaching Sunday!"

"Perhaps I am just the echo, young man."

There was silence for another long moment.

"OK, so ... what I've been feeling is that maybe I should just call her on my lunch breaks and let her know I'm thinking of her, but the guys will call me a simp, and it doesn't seem like enough anyway."

"And Who you do think has been moving you to do that, young man -- and is He or are all these men around you your god? Living in but not of the world, and therefore doing as love commands, requires you to get very clear on the answer to that question."

He sighed.

"That's probably why she thinks I'm cheating," he said. "I'm not, but ... I gotta do certain things to have the connects I need to get ahead."

"Let me tell you something, young man: men sitting around worried about who other men call on their lunch break are not going anywhere or will ever have control of anything of substance. You get to decide whether you get to go with them to nowhere good, or have and build the love you are graced with."

"Well, I invited her to lunch today because we had an emergency and had to close the whole office, but she was going on like I don't spend any time with her and I gotta let her go through my phone and I don't have anything to hide but I hate this jumping through hoops and feeling like even when I try she might not even show up!"

"If she shows up, are you going to be ready?"

"I don't even know!"

"Let's walk around this side path, and loop back around, young man."

When they looped back ... .

"OK, so you're telling me, just do what the Spirit says to do, and it will work out -- it is that simple?"

"And that hard, because the world is always telling us that we have to dominate, dictate, devour to be considered men -- but by whom? Who tells us this? Those who seek to dominate, dictate to, and devour us. That is the hard truth, young man."

"When you put it like that -- naw, man. I'm not doing that. I'm not living for these people who see me as a work horse and are promising me nothing but to be a man like them -- forget that! I'm not doing that!"

"Then, perhaps you might have time and energy and courage to love your beloved, consistently, since the first thing you wanted to do on this unexpected day off is do that."

"You know what ... if I'm being honest ... yeah. Yeah. She's worth more than all that to me. I just wasn't thinking straight, but, now that you've echoed some things, it all makes sense."

The young woman near me went running down the path...

"Theo! Theo!"

"Nellie!"

She ran into his open arms, and they started pouring out their hearts to each other ... and like all good angels do when their work is done, Mr. K.M. and I disappeared, although, not being angels, we just eased up the road and left love in bloom behind us!