Franz Peter Schubert (1797 – 1828) was an Austrian
composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras.
Despite his short life, Schubert left behind a vast
oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works
(mainly lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred
music, operas, incidental music, and a large body of
piano and chamber music. His major works include the
art song "Erlkönig", the Piano Trout Quintet in A
major, the unfinished Symphony No. 8 in B minor, the
"Great" Symphony No. 9 in ...(+)
Franz Peter Schubert (1797 – 1828) was an Austrian
composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras.
Despite his short life, Schubert left behind a vast
oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works
(mainly lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred
music, operas, incidental music, and a large body of
piano and chamber music. His major works include the
art song "Erlkönig", the Piano Trout Quintet in A
major, the unfinished Symphony No. 8 in B minor, the
"Great" Symphony No. 9 in C major, a String Quintet,
the three last piano sonatas, the opera Fierrabras, the
incidental music to the play Rosamunde, and the song
cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. He was
remarkably prolific, writing over 1,500 works in his
short career. His compositional style progressed
rapidly throughout his short life. The largest number
of his compositions are songs for solo voice and piano
(roughly 630). Schubert also composed a considerable
number of secular works for two or more voices, namely
part songs, choruses and cantatas. He completed eight
orchestral overtures and seven complete symphonies, in
addition to fragments of six others. While he composed
no concertos, he did write three concertante works for
violin and orchestra. Schubert wrote a large body of
music for solo piano, including eleven incontrovertibly
completed sonatas and at least eleven more in varying
states of completion, numerous miscellaneous works and
many short dances, in addition to producing a large set
of works for piano four hands. He also wrote over fifty
chamber works, including some fragmentary works.
Schubert's sacred output includes seven masses, one
oratorio and one requiem, among other mass movements
and numerous smaller compositions. He completed only
eleven of his twenty stage works.
The strophic song "Die Nacht" (The Night D.983C Op. 17
No. 4) can claim to be the most recently discovered
Schubert Lied; Die Nacht was re-discovered as part of a
forgotten collection of music which had been gathered
together in two volumes by the composer’s
schoolfriend Baron von Schlechta between 1840 and 1846.
This comprised some 39 Schubert songs in partly
unpublished versions for voice and guitar, not in the
composer’s hand. In the absence of an original
autograph, dating this song is made more difficult by
the bland simplicity of the piano – or rather, guitar
– writing; it is just possible that this setting of
Karoline Pichler’s poem (from the novel Olivier oder
Die Rache der Elfe) once existed in a piano-accompanied
form, now lost. The lack of a fully developed
accompaniment throws more attention on the vocal line
which has many Schubertian fingerprints in terms of the
rise and fall, as well as the persuasive flexibility,
of the melody.
There is little about this strophic song that would
rule out an early date (such as 1813 or 1814): the
Italianate melody is typical of the music Schubert was
writing during, and soon after, his training with
Salieri. But it might be argued that the chain of
modulations within the melody sounds too sophisticated
for this apprentice period. The fact that the famous
version of the song, Der Unglückliche D713 was
composed only in 1821 is also a factor in postulating a
date later than 1813-1816. But the two settings of
Pichler’s poem could not be more different. Der
Unglückliche is an elaborate song-cantata made up of
various sections in different tempi – it could not be
further from a strophic song in terms of its
conception. And there are other instances when more
than a decade separates two settings of the same text.
An example of this is L’incanto degli occhi: the
first version dates from 1817 at the latest (it is
probably much earlier than this) and the second version
was composed only in 1827. The whole question of a date
remains tantalisingly open.
On first hearing one is reminded of the opening of the
famous Walter Scott Ave Maria (Ellens dritter Gesang),
but this is also something to do with the stately flow
and shape of the accompaniment’s rolling mezzo
staccato figurations. (This also serves to remind us
how very Italian in style is that supposedly
Scottish-inspired prayer; perhaps Schubert responded to
intense Roman Catholicism with a Roman, or Italian,
style.) Aiming at hypnotising repetition rather than
individual detail, the composer allows the general flow
of the cantilena to govern the song’s shape. Apart
from appropriate moments of vocal melisama (airy
triplets for ‘mit leisen Lüften sinket’, legato
syncopation for ‘den müden Sterblichen’) he does
not allow himself to be diverted into the illustrative,
word-inspired, commentary which is usually the magical
factor in his response to poetry in his own language.
Indeed, the song is so plain and simple in its marriage
of musical and verbal means that one might be tempted
to doubt its authenticity; that is, if one did not know
how hard it is to write a Schubertian pastiche even
half as good as this.
Die Nacht is cast in four broad and identical musical
strophes of thirty bars each. The eight strophes of
Pichler’s original poem are thus paired off for
musical purposes: the first, third, fifth and seventh
strophes begin in the opening melody in G major, and
the second, fourth, sixth and eighth strophes (the
‘B’ section) change to a more stormy mood in E
minor. For this performance we perform six of the eight
strophes. It is worth noting that D713 uses only
six-and-a-half strophes of Pichler’s poem, finishing,
in superbly dramatic fashion, in the middle of the
seventh. In the version recorded here the composer
respects the poem more perhaps, but is infinitely less
musically adventurous..
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_by_Franz_S
chubert)
Although originally composed for Voice (SATB), I
created this Interpretation of "Die Nacht" (The Night
D.983C Op. 17 No. 4) for String Quartet (2 Violins,
Viola & Cello).
PARTITION