Five Lieder

Der Schiffer D536b (1817)

Der Kreuzzug D932 (1827)

Prometheus D674 (1819)

Abendstern D806 (1824)

Der Musensohn D764 (1822)

The greatest songs are not always stimulated by the greatest poetry. As Schubert’s friend Johann Mayrhofer acknowledged in an obituary of the composer, “I wrote poetry, he composed what I had written, much of which owes its existence, its development and its popularity to his melodies.” Der Schiffer is a good example of what he meant: Schubert’s setting adds a new dimension to Mayrhofer’s words which, defiant though they are, scarcely hint at the intense physical energy invested in them by the music.

Karl Gottlieb von Leitner was not a great poet either but his Der Kreuzzug produced a song which, in its philosophical resignation to inactivity, finds an ideal place between two such potent studies in truculence as Der Schiffer and Prometheus. One of the greatest of all German poems, Goethe’s Prometheus inspired not a song but a dramatic monologue which changes in mood and material with every stanza, its extraordinarily liberated harmonies eventually settling on C major for the proud march of humanity at the end. There is a similar contrast between the settings of Mayrhofer’s Abendstern, pathetic in its inactivity and its isolation, and Goethe’s Der Musensohn, ecstatic in its vitality and its conviviality.

An die Entfernte D765 (1822)

Nacht und Träume D827 (1823)

Versunken D715 (1821)

Ständchen from Schwanengesang D957 No 4 (1828)

Die junge Nonne D828 (1825)------------------------

The range of the Schubert group is almost as wide as that of song itself, from the near-recitative of An die Entfernte to the near-cantata of Die junge Nonne. Not the most sensational of them, An die Entfernte is perhaps the most sensitive in that is so flexible in its response to Goethe’s words and imposes no musical pattern on them. It is true that the song has a clearly ternary shape, completed by the piano’s opening and closing allusions to the first notes of the vocal line. But the liberated harmonies, the painfully probing modulations of the second stanza and the tempo changes associated with them seem to be entirely spontaneous reactions to the poet’s bereft emotions. Nacht und Träume, which is to be sung pianissimo throughout, is as serene as An die Entfernte is distressed. It is so slow in tempo, so sustained in line, so even in the rhythms of the piano part that sense of movement is confined largely to the changes in harmony which, far from disturbing the moonlit atmosphere, heighten the magic inspired by Collin’s verse.

    One of the earliest settings of poems from Goethe’s West-Östlicher Divan - which was to become a favourite source of inspiration for Schumann and Wolf - Schubert’s Versunken is an uncommonly vivid expression of erotic arousal. The semiquaver movement in the accompaniment is as even as that of Nacht und Träume but here, at a very much quicker tempo and urged on by rhythmic syncopations in the left hand, it gives an entirely different impression, this time of breathlessly impatient excitement. Ständchen, a Rellstab setting from Schwanengesang, represents a more conventional kind of love song. It is Schubert’s last word on the serenade, its melodiously plaintive vocal line accompanied by an imaginary guitar in the pianist’s left hand, its cadences echoed in the right, its eloquence in the closing stanza rewarded by a hesitant but gratifying change to the major.

    The name of Jacob Nikolaus von Craigher de Jachelutta is not prominent in the annals of German literature. But for Schubert’s settings of three of his poems, all of them composed in 1825, he would probably be entirely forgotten. On the other hand, but for his ballad Die junge Nonne we would not have one of the most dramatic of all Schubert’s Lieder. Extended in construction and operatic in style, Die junge Nonne is carried on the tremolando figuration in the accompaniment which, while it varies in colour and harmonic meaning, is sustained in the pianist’s right hand from the first bar to the last. In the first two stanzas it is continually crossed by the left hand, the storm rumbling in the bass and the cloister bell tossed by the wind in the treble. But as the young nun’s thoughts turn inwards, from the storm raging in the night to her inner serenity, the minor harmonies turn to the major, the piano imagery gradually adapts itself to the new situation, and the vocal line finally expands into a repeated “Hallelujah!”         

Der Schiffer D536b (1817)

Der Kreuzzug D932 (1827)

Prometheus D674 (1819)

Abendstern D806 (1824)

Der Musensohn D764 (1822)

The greatest songs are not always stimulated by the greatest poetry. As Schubert’s friend Johann Mayrhofer acknowledged in an obituary of the composer, “I wrote poetry, he composed what I had written, much of which owes its existence, its development and its popularity to his melodies.” Der Schiffer is a good example of what he meant: Schubert’s setting adds a new dimension to Mayrhofer’s words which, proudly defiant though they are, scarcely hint at the intense physical energy invested in them by the music. Karl Gottlieb von Leitner was not a great poet either but his Der Kreuzzug produced a song which, in its philosophical resignation to inactivity, finds an ideal place between two such studies in truculence as Der Schiffer and Prometheus. One of the greatest of all German poems, Goethe’s Prometheus inspired not a song but a dramatic monologue

Der Schiffer D536b (?1817) - Mayrhofer (two versions), not to be confused with Schlegel setting (1820) of the same name D694

BN 66 S stakes all on the boatman’s resolute challenging of wild nature with a rollicking figuration that pounds through a subtly modified strophic form

DFD 98 The stormy accompaniment figure… song expresses an unparalleled defiant vitality. S does not retain the still p;icture quality of the poem, instead he seems to be letting a film run on. This strophic song for bass voice was dedicated to Mayrhofer when it was published at the end of 1823 as op21 with Auf der Donau and Wil Ulfru fischt.

Johann Mayrhofer (1787-1836) met S in 1814, closest friend, fellow lodger and suppier of texts, more than 40 JM texts set by S

Grillparzer: “M’s poems always resemble a text to a melody, either the anticipated melody of a composer who wanted to set the poem to music, or the melody of a poem that he has read shimmer through it and he reproduces it to a new text and a new emotion.”

This is underlined by the testimony of friends, who wrote that M had often admitted that his poems seemed really intelligible and readable after S had set them to music.

Der Kreuzzug D932 (1827) - Karl Gottlieb von Leitner- 8 texts one after the other after Die Winterreise, First one in 1827. Reminder of Gute Nacht in Winterreise?

Tired - as inactive as Der Schiffer is vigorous

Prometheus D674 (1819) - Goethe

un monologue essentiellement dramatique

fil de modulations inseemsées échappant à toute logique tonale.

Dfd models are the recitativie accompagnati of Mozart or Beethoven

The varied tempi, tonalities, and dynamics match the diferent moods of the individual stanzas. Not until Wagner’s Tristan do we met another composition with such daring harmonies and fascintating progressions.

More than seventy Goethe poems, many in several versions, beginning with Gretchen am Spinnrade in 1814.

Abendstern D806 (1824) - Mayrhofer

a succinct modified-strophic setting of a two-stanza text in which the evening star symbolizes the poet’s solitude. There is a subtle touch when, after the first couplet, the piano introduces quicker rhythms in an inner part, and the voice takes that idea up in its next line. Of the infinitesimal - and so all the more telling - modifications in the second strophe, the omission of the piano interlude is the most significant. The stillness of the star is conveyed by a bass line which is more often static - with poignant harmonic consequences than mobile.

One of the last four Mayrhofer settings, following Schöne Müllerin.

See DFD 193 for S’s unhappiness at this time.

Der Musensohn D764 (1822) - Goethe

bn 156 alternates strophes in G and B, again moving directly from one key to the other without connecting modulation.… The concentrated flavour of the key contrast is pure magic, while the song dances blithely on.

Last Goethe setting? [No one of a group of four written in December 1822 (including Willkommen und Abschied with similar accompaniment) to be followed by Wandrers Nachtlied in July 1824? Or is that also Dec/22] Sorte de valse rapide

as convivial as Abendstern is isolated.