6 Lieder

Im Walde (Waldesnacht) D708 (1820)

An den Mond D193 (1815)

Nachtstück D672 (1819)

Der Zwerg D771 (1822)

Nacht und Träume D827 (1822-3)

Erlkönig D328 (1815)

Many Schubert Lieder are set at night. Few, however, are as extensive in construction or as fervent in expression as Im Walde - a Friedrich Schlegel setting published four years after the composer’s death as Waldesnacht (presumably to distinguish it from the already published Im Walde to words by Ernst Schulze). Perhaps the longest of Schubert’s through-composed songs, it is above all a paean to creativity, the exhilarating sensation of which is experienced with breathtaking intensity in the darkness of the forest at night. It is driven throughout - except, briefly, towards the end of the vividly illuminated second stanza - by the rapid semiquaver figuration first heard on the piano in the opening bars. While it is astonishingly diverse in harmony and melodic material, after the lyrical third stanza and the climactic fourth it secures a kind of recapitulation in the last.

In the argument as to whether Schubert consciously or unconsciously echoed Beethoven’s Sonata in C sharp minor Op.27 No.2 in the piano part of An den Mond, it tends to be forgotten that the “Moonlight” nickname wasn’t invented until 1832 - which makes the resemblance between the opening bars of the two works all the more remarkable and all the more mystifying. In An den Mond night is an occasion, except in the contrasting central stanzas, for a lover’s grief. In Nachtstück night effects a gradual transformation from a gloomy beginning through a valedictory middle section to a transfigured ending.

There is another Beethoven echo, the “fate motif” from the Fifth Symphony, in the Collin setting Der Zwerg, which, appropriately for a horror story, is set at night although, one feels, the dwarf could have taken his revenge at any time of the day. A setting of lines by the same poet, Nacht und Träume could scarcely be more different. It is a miracle of tranquillity, which is achieved not so much by stillness - the undulating motion in the piano part never fails - as by strict harmonic economy: the modulation, when it comes, is nothing other than dreamlike in effect. Erlkönig, the other ballad in the group along with Der Zwerg, is even more eventful than its companion and, with its narrator and three protagonists, even more dramatic. It is also an essentially nocturnal inspiration.