Page 155 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

ROMANTIC 1810–1920 153

See also: Symphonie fantastique 162–163 ■ Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 166–169 ■
Faust Symphony 176–177 ■ Also sprach Zarathustra 192–193

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
My compositions spring simplicity, and throughout his
from my sorrows. Those short but intensely creative life, he
that give the world would alternate between complex
the greatest delight were and more straightforward forms.
born of my deepest griefs. His output for voice is remarkable
Franz Schubert for the variety and richness of his Franz Schubert
melodic inspiration, but the role
of the piano accompaniment also Born in a poor district of
developed greatly in Schubert’s Vienna in 1797, Schubert
hands. It grew from offering was the son of a well-known
straightforward support to include schoolmaster and music
sophisticated reflections of, and teacher who taught him to
for their artistic impulses. This reactions to, the content of the play the piano and violin. He
amateur form of music making, poem he was setting. composed from an early age
away from the formal courts and and soon found favor with
concert societies, was reaching Song cycles prominent figures in Vienna,
new levels of sophistication. The complete array of Schubert’s such as Antonio Salieri.
In his all too brief life, Schubert art is evident in his first song cycle, Despite this, success in
composed some 600 songs. The Die schöne Müllerin (“The beautiful large-scale “public”
composition eluded him.
first to be published, “Erlkönig” miller’s maid”), published in 1824. Schubert managed to
and “Gretchen am Spinnrade” For the cycle’s 20 songs, Schubert make a respectable living with
(“Gretchen at the spinning wheel”), selected poems from a collection works aimed at the amateur
composed when Schubert was just by Wilhelm Müller, a contemporary market, such as compositions
17, remain among his most popular. poet whose verses Schubert also and songs for piano. Although
Set to texts by Johann Wolfgang used for Winterreise (“Winter a few of his chamber pieces
von Goethe, they offered a new sort journey”), his second song cycle, were performed in public,
of song: both are “through-composed” three years later. Die schöne many of his best works—piano
(without strictly repeated verses) Müllerin loosely follows the story sonatas and symphonies
and present powerful miniature of a young miller boy’s infatuation among them—were only
dramas moving inexorably toward with the beautiful daughter of rediscovered years after his
their climaxes. a mill owner, from his early death in 1828, at 31. This led
“Erlkönig” features a narrating obsession, through jealousy to a reappraisal that cemented
voice as well as the voices of a and resignation to, listeners his reputation as a master
composer of instrumental
father, his son, and the titular are left to assume, suicide. music as well as song.
Erlking—a malevolent goblinlike The narrative is presented
creature who inhabits the dark largely through suggestion, with
forest of the Romantic imagination. the poems giving snapshots in Other key works
Gretchen, meanwhile, is the tragic time, presented primarily in the
heroine of Goethe’s masterpiece, voice of the miller boy himself. 1822 Symphony in B minor
(“Unfinished”), D759
Faust. In 1816, Schubert composed Together the songs encapsulate 1822 Mass No. 2 in G major,
“Der Wanderer,” one of many songs many of the quintessential themes D167
focusing on another quintessential of Romantic poetry, not least the 1828 String Quintet in C, D956
figure of German Romanticism, solitude of the outsider and the ❯❯

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