Melancholy

What it means

Schwermütig is a German performance marking and calls for a weighing-down, sad expression. The music is to seem as if a weight lay upon it: slow, muted, without upswing.

Among the words for sorrow, the differences lie in the colouring. Wehmütig means a gentle, backward-looking sorrow, schmerzlich present pain, beklemmt narrowness and oppression. Schwermütig designates the lasting, weighing-down sadness — not a single pain but a mood.

Italian words of similar meaning are malinconico (melancholic) and mesto (sad); doloroso, by contrast, stresses the pain more strongly.

In the notation

The word stands above the staff at the beginning of a movement or section and applies until a new marking.

Musical use

The marking suits slow music of a depressed mood, for instance songs with a corresponding text. It belongs to the German-language performance markings that, from the nineteenth century onwards, appear increasingly alongside the Italian ones.

Performance practice

Keep the tempo calm and steady; the heaviness arises from the even gait, not from stretching. Choose a dark tone colour and pull back the vibrato. Avoid intensifications unless they are notated, and let the phrases rather fall than rise. And keep the tone sustaining despite the restraint — melancholy is not powerlessness.