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for their artistic impulses. This
amateur form of music making,
away from the formal courts and
concert societies, was reaching
new levels of sophistication.
In his all too brief life, Schubert
composed some 600 songs. The
first to be published, “Erlkönig”
and “Gretchen am Spinnrade”
(“Gretchen at the spinning wheel”),
composed when Schubert was just
17, remain among his most popular.
Set to texts by Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe, they offered a new sort
of song: both are “through-composed”
(without strictly repeated verses)
and present powerful miniature
dramas moving inexorably toward
their climaxes.
“Erlkönig” features a narrating
voice as well as the voices of a
father, his son, and the titular
Erlking—a malevolent goblinlike
creature who inhabits the dark
forest of the Romantic imagination.
Gretchen, meanwhile, is the tragic
heroine of Goethe’s masterpiece,
Faust. In 1816, Schubert composed
“Der Wanderer,” one of many songs
focusing on another quintessential
figure of German Romanticism,whose dilemma is summed up
in the song’s final line: “There,
where you are not, is happiness!”
Schubert would also compose
songs that espoused folkish
simplicity, and throughout his
short but intensely creative life, he
would alternate between complex
and more straightforward forms.
His output for voice is remarkable
for the variety and richness of his
melodic inspiration, but the role
of the piano accompaniment also
developed greatly in Schubert’s
hands. It grew from offering
straightforward support to include
sophisticated reflections of, and
reactions to, the content of the
poem he was setting.Song cycles
The complete array of Schubert’s
art is evident in his first song cycle,
Die schöne Müllerin (“The beautiful
miller’s maid”), published in 1824.
For the cycle’s 20 songs, Schubert
selected poems from a collection
by Wilhelm Müller, a contemporary
poet whose verses Schubert also
used for Winterreise (“Winter
journey”), his second song cycle,
three years later. Die schöne
Müllerin loosely follows the story
of a young miller boy’s infatuation
with the beautiful daughter of
a mill owner, from his early
obsession, through jealousy
and resignation to, listeners
are left to assume, suicide.
The narrative is presented
largely through suggestion, with
the poems giving snapshots in
time, presented primarily in the
voice of the miller boy himself.
Together the songs encapsulate
many of the quintessential themes
of Romantic poetry, not least the
solitude of the outsider and the ❯❯See also: Symphonie fantastique 162–163 ■ Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 166–169 ■
Faust Symphony 176 –17 7 ■ Also sprach Zarathustra 192–193ROMANTIC 1810 –1920
Franz Schubert
Born in a poor district of
Vienna in 1797, Schubert
was the son of a well-known
schoolmaster and music
teacher who taught him to
play the piano and violin. He
composed from an early age
and soon found favor with
prominent figures in Vienna,
such as Antonio Salieri.
Despite this, success in
large-scale “public”
composition eluded him.
Schubert managed to
make a respectable living with
works aimed at the amateur
market, such as compositions
and songs for piano. Although
a few of his chamber pieces
were performed in public,
many of his best works—piano
sonatas and symphonies
among them—were only
rediscovered years after his
death in 1828, at 31. This led
to a reappraisal that cemented
his reputation as a master
composer of instrumental
music as well as song.Other key works1822 Symphony in B minor
(“Unfinished”), D759
1822 Mass No. 2 in G major,
D167
1828 String Quintet in C, D956My compositions spring
from my sorrows. Those
that give the world
the greatest delight were
born of my deepest griefs.
Franz SchubertUS_150-155_Schubert_1.indd 153 26/03/18 1:00 PM