Auf der Bruck D 853 (1825)

Der Sieg D 805 (1824)

Geheimes D 719 (1821)

Heidenröslein D 257 (1815)

Der König in Thule D 367 (1816)

An den Mond D 259 (1816)

Frühlingsglaube D 686 (1820)

Im Frühling D 882 (1826)

Du bist die Ruh D 776 (1823)

Lebensmelodien D 395 (1816)

Die Vögel D 691 (1820)

Die drei Sänger D 329 (1815)

Der Gott und die Bajadere D 254 (1815)

Auf der Bruck – or Auf der Brücke as it also but less authentically known – is one of Schubert’s hurtling horseback inspirations. If it is less successful than Goethe settings like Erlkönig and Willkommen und Abschied it is not because the galloping motion is any less vivid here – animated as it is by an unremitting quaver ostinato in the pianist’s right hand and urgently expressive octaves in the left – but because the nature of Schulze’s romantic quest is not as clearly defined. We know, however, that it was doomed to failure, an outcome which, given the poet’s mental instability, might well have led to suicide if tuberculosis had not killed him first. Schubert’s friend Mayrhofer, whom he favoured as a source of Lieder above all other poets except Goethe, did in fact kill himself and, as Der Sieg reveals, he had been thinking about it for years. The victorious sentiment signalled from the first by Mayrhofer’s title is reflected in Schubert’s major-key hymnic setting of the first and last stanzas. The act of achieving victory over “the ancient curse” by the poet’s own hand is not, as the near dissolution of the harmonies at the end of the middle stanza indicates, so easy to contemplate.

One of several settings of poems from Goethe’s Westöstlicher Divan composed in the early 1820s, Geheimes is a capricious little song offering a delightfully witty series of variations on a two-note rhythmic motif in the piano part together with unpredictable shifts in harmony and a vocal line likely to expand or contract its phrases at any point. Heidenröslein is nowhere near as sophisticated but, paradoxically, it is only by application of the highest artistry that a folk-song imitation achieves the distinction of being scarcely distinguishable from the real thing. Der König in Thule, set to words written for an apprehensive Gretchen to sing to herself in Faust, is another supreme example of the same art. It could be argued that An den Mond, the last song in this short Goethe group is actually too simple in its strophic regularity. Certainly, Schubert must have thought so since, in order to take the detail of the poetic content into account, he wrote a new, non-strophic setting (D296) four years later. The second version cannot compete with the first, however, in terms of sheer melodic beauty.

The first of a group of three songs devoted to the concept of serenity, Frühlingsglaube is an essentially relaxed observation of spring renewal. Secure in its major harmonies, it twice admits an anxious modulation as thoughts turn inwards but without shaking faith in the restorative powers of nature, which is sustained by the consistent presence of the initial rhythmic pattern in the piano part. Even Schulze came close to finding tranquillity in spring. Schubert’s setting of his Im Frühling, one of the most beautiful of all spring songs, is so relaxed that it is almost indolent – or it is until memories of lost love intrude so painfully 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. Sadly, for all his Don-Juanism, Schulze did not experience the kind of relationship which inspired Rückert’s Du bist die Ruh and which is reflected in a magical setting remarkable above all for the quietly sustained economy of a vocal line designed to offset the rapturous expression of the final stanza.

Of the two Schlegel brothers, Friedrich and August, both of whom were highly influential in developing the theory of German romanticism, the former was the better poet and the more appealing to Schubert. He set nine of August’s poems but 16 of Friedrich’s, ten of them from the Abendröte cycle. Even so, in those cases where August shared his brother’s pantheism and his faith in the relationship between man and nature, the composer found much to interest him, as in Lebensmelodien, on the favourite Schlegel theme of bird life. Three kinds of birds are characterised here, each one in its own tempo and its own key, which means that a song beginning (in the original version) in G major for the swan, diverts to C minor for the eagle, and ends with the doves in E flat major. Though far from being the most ambitious of the Abendröte settings, Die Vögel rejoices in the most tuneful birds of them all. Like the birds in Lebensmelodien, each of the three contestants in Die drei Sänger has his own tempo and his own key, which is an even riskier procedure in a ballad of such length and diversity of content. Although it is believed that the song was completed by the composer, the last page of the manuscript is missing and is replaced on this occasion by a very plausible reconstruction by the Belgian priest and indefatigable Schubert scholar Reinhard van Hoorrickx.

When it comes to lovers of who do not share the same status – a romantic theme already represented in this programme by the king and his mistress in    Der König in Thule – the most extreme example must be the “Lord of the Earth” and the dancing girl in Goethe’s ballad Der Gott und die Bajadere. What attracted Schubert to the poem and why he chose to set its nine stanzas of widely differing content in strophic form have long been matters for speculation. But if one tune has to fit all eventualities, a quasi-hymn is not the least appropriate material here – particularly if, as a note in the manuscript seems to recommend, the performers introduce their own nuances.

Gerald Larner © 2009