Five Lieder

Im Frühling D882 (1826)

Die junge Nonne D828 (1825)

Ständchen from Schwanengesang D957 No 4 (1828)

Versunken D715 (1821)

Die Forelle D550 (1816-21)

It would be difficult to find in the whole of the Schubert repertoire a more extreme contrast than that between the first two songs in this group - one an intimate confession, the other a histrionic spectacular. Im Frühling has its moment of anguish in the fifth stanza, where the harmonies turn to the minor and the piano rhythms are anxiously syncopated, but for the most part its emotions are concealed beneath an easy-going surface. The disappointed lover’s final resignation to his loss is discreetly registered by the restoration of the major harmonies but with the syncopations persisting in the left hand of the piano part.

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 swinging in 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!”

Ständchen,a Rellstab settings from Schwanengesang, 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 fancifully echoed in the right, its eloquence in the closing stanza rewarded by a hesitant but gratifying change to the major. Versunken - 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 - is an uncommonly vivid expression of erotic arousal. Urged on by eager syncopations in the left hand, the rapid semiquaver movement in the accompaniment is an explicit demonstration of breathlessly impatient excitement.

Although it is one of the most popular of all Schubert Lieder, Die Forelle is not without its critics - those who feel that, having cut the moralising ending of Schubart’s poem, Schubert didn’t know how to end the song. But what could be more poignant than the graceful movements of the trout continuing in the sympathetic observer’s memory even after the fish has met its cruel end?