Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock) D965

Der Hirt auf dem Felsen is rare among Schubert’s songs not only because of its obbligato clarinet but also because it was written specifically for an operatic soprano. Anna Milder-Hauptmann had asked him for “a song in a variety of measures, so that several emotions can be represented…with a brilliant ending.” It took him three years to get round to it - Der Hirt auf dem Felsen was one of the last two pieces he wrote - and even then he had to resort to an awkward combination of extracts from two poems by Wilhelm Müller, together with two newly written stanzas of linking material, to create the emotional structure he needed. But the finished work, an ingenious combination of Lied and operatic scena, is just what the singer ordered - with the added dimension of a solo clarinet part that offers not only sympathy but also, when it comes to the “brilliant ending,” virtuoso encouragement.

Der Hirt auf dem Felsen is rare among Schubert’s songs not only because of its obbligato clarinet part but also because it was written specifically for an operatic soprano. Anna Milder-Hauptmann, Beethoven’ first Leonore, had been a supporter of Schubert’s music for some time and had enjoyed particular success with his Suleika songs in Berlin in 1825. While he was disappointed that she had rejected his opera Alfonso und Estrella as unsuitable for her, he was clearly not so offended as to ignore her advice that he should write her “a song in a variety of measures, so that several emotions can be represented…with a brilliant ending.” It took him three years to get round to it but just weeks before his death - Der Hirt auf dem Felsen was one of the last two pieces he wrote - he supplied her with exactly what she wanted.

To secure a text with sufficient variety Schubert turned to two poems by Wilhelm Müller, Der Berghirt for the first four stanzas and Liebesgedanken for the last, and got his librettist Helmine von Chézy to provide the two stanzas that go between them. The disparity between the three sections might be all too clear from the poetic point of view but, musically, the pathos associated with the change to the minor on “In tiefem Gram verzehr’ich mich” and the outburst of joy on “Der Frühling will kommen” at the beginning of the last section are just what the soprano ordered. The piece as a whole is an ingenious combination of Lied, beginning in the manner of a yodelled folk song, and operatic scena. Then there is the added dimension of the obbligato clarinet part that introduces and echoes the voice in the opening section, sympathises with its expression of despair in the middle and, after a brief cadenza, encourages and competes with it in the coloratura figuration of the “brilliant ending.”