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).
This is one of the most famous songs in the world, and
also one of the most difficult to sing. The playing of
it, whilst not requiring a virtuoso technique, calls
for great control of colour and touch, as well as
evenness of rhythm. As with Lachen und Weinen, composed
at the same time, the song has become such a classic
that it is easy to forget the oriental inspiration
behind the poem, something written into the music by a
composer supremely sensitive to literary background. Du
bist die Ruh has such inner poise that it suggests a
transcendental religious experience unfolding in the
solemn, meditative time-scale that one associates with
the rituals of the east. The setting is extremely
moving, but it sometimes seems not to move at all: this
tempo (a slow 3/8) makes something deliberately
repetitive, even monotonous, of the music—a chant or
mantra, a litany of patience and humility which hymns
long-lasting love and the steady-breathed span of an
enduring relationship. Thus the text combines two of
the poet’s preoccupations, for Rückert was not only
an expert on eastern literature, he was an ardent
spokesman for marriage and family life. This is what
appealed in Rückert’s work to Schumann as he dreamed
of his bride: Du meine Seele, du mein Herz became the
dedicatory song of Myrthen, and both the
Liebesfrühling and Minnespiel cycles burnished the
image of Robert and Clara as an ideal couple.
The poem is in five strophes and the song grows like an
exotic plant, reproducing first its smallest cells
which then become incorporated into an ever larger
organism—a musical version of Goethe’s Die
Metamorphose des Pflanzen. Thus the music for the first
two lines of the poem is almost identical (a single
note is changed) to that of the third and fourth, and
the same applies to the different music of the next
verse. But it is these two strophes, taken together,
which make the first complete musical verse of the
song. This larger structure is in turn repeated, with
its smaller internal repetitions, to make a second
musical verse. It is this organic architecture which
makes everything in this music sound inevitable and
pre-ordained. Four strophes are used to make two
more-or-less identical musical verses, and the fifth is
repeated to give the impression of a text of
even-numbered strophes. This ensures a perfectly
balanced shape, a symmetry based on a masterly use of
repetition which marks out Du bist die Ruh as a
companion piece to Lachen und Weinen, an impression
strengthened by their shared use of the ‘oriental’
flattened sixth. The melodic shapes of both songs are
extremely simple, yet instantly memorable: in Du bist
die Ruh an ascent of a tone, a stretch of a third up to
E flat, a dip to the leading note and a beatific return
to the tonic.
Source: Hyperion
(https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dw.asp?dc=W1745_GBA
JY0003508)
Although originally composed for Voice & Piano, I
created this Interpretation of "Du bist die Ruh" (You
are the calm, the mild peace D.776 Op. 59 No. 3) for
Flute & Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).