D 545

3 Lieder

Litanei auf das Fest aller Seelen D343 (1816)

Der Jüngling and der Tod D545 (1817)

Der Tod und das Mädchen D531 (1817)

(version for voice and strings devised by the Brodsky Quartet)

Before the youth of Der Jüngling and der Tod and the maiden of Der Tod und das Mädchen meet their death, each in his or her own way, Litanei auf das Fest aller Seelen offers pre-emptive consolation. One of the most serene of all Schubert’s Lieder, Litanei sustains the vocal line over a piano part of rhythmically regular arpeggios in the one hand and, in the other, a chromatically inflected bass line that, far from unsettling its sublime poise, positively enhances it. Not that the youth is in need of consolation. Clearly with the intention of inspiring a companion song to Der Tod und das Mädchen, the composer’s friend Josef von Spaun offered him verses in which, unlike the maiden, the youth does not so much fear death as plead for it. Curiously enough, Schubert seems to have missed the point at first and it is only in this second version that Death makes his entry to the dread dactylic rhythm and the D minor harmonies familiar from the earlier song. In the opening bars, incidentally, the pianist’s left hand makes a chromatic descent through the baroque lamento bass line Schubert was to use two years later in the introduction to Nachtstück.

Since, seven years after he wrote Der Tod und das Mädchen, Schubert chose material from it as a theme for variations in his Quartet in D minor, it is possible to work out how he might have scored the whole song for voice and string quartet. While the fact remains that he did no such thing, the string-quartet associations of the song give the Brodsky Quartet’s arrangement at least an illusion of authenticity.