5 Lieder

Im Frühling D882 (1826)

Fischerweise D881 (1826)

Der Einsame D800 (1825)

Nachtstück D672 (1819)

An Silvia D891 (1826)

The most interesting songs are rarely inspired by sheer, unadulterated happiness. Schubert’s Im Frühing, for example, is all the greater for its searing reminder of past adversity: it is so relaxed in its expression of the joys of spring that it would otherwise seem almost indolent. In fact, memories of lost love intrude so painfully in the fifth stanza that the harmonies are chilled into the minor and the blissful piano melody is displaced by stabbing syncopations. The not quite reconciled closing stanza restores both the major mood and the piano melody but retains the syncopations until the very last line. The one hint of adversity in Fischerweise is the appearance of the shepherdess who, however, is not so much a threat to the fisherman’s carefree way of life as to cause a serious harmonic diversion. The interest here, apart from the buoyant folk-like melody, is the witty commentary in the left hand of the piano part.

Irresistible though the cheeriness of Fischerweise is, it is an even greater achievement to make smugness attractive. Smug, in his solitary fireside contentment, the protagonist of Der Einsame certainly is. And yet, as he sings his modestly tuneful vocal line over a rhythmically unambitious succession of quavers in the pianist’s right hand, his complacency seems positively enviable. Perhaps it is the voice of the cricket, whose charming little motif rises from low in the left hand in the introduction to a higher profile in the last stanza, that does the trick. But all good things, however smugly experienced, must come to an end – with any luck as satisfactorily and as punctually as in the next song in this group. The harmonies in the opening bars of Nachtstück, where the tonality is obscured by chromatic aberrations in much the same way as the moon is veiled by wandering mists and clouds, are extraordinarily unsettling. But tonality is clarified for the old man’s parting song in the minor, with its harp-like arpeggio accompaniment, and as he achieves peace it moves towards a transfigured major-key ending.

Schubert adopts much the same approach to personal perfection in An Silvia as he does to unalloyed happiness in Fischerweise. He puts his trust in melody, presenting it in a simple strophic construction animated by repeated quavers in the pianist’s right hand over an engaging left-hand commentary. In this case, however, the song is set not in folk style but, as is appropriate to its situation in Two Gentlemen of Verona, in the manner of a serenade, the piano’s echoes of the vocal line anticipating a prominent feature of the similarly famous Ständchen in Schwanengesang. Once again Schubert’s faith in his melodic genius is not misplaced.