(…In his arms, the child was …\… dead.) Die schöne Müllerin All sound has ceased and then the final phrase: …In seinen Armen das Kind war… tot. In the accompaniment we hear that the horse has arrived at its destination. It is through the drama of this setting that the last words come. As you listen to the song, you can hear that the 3 actors are sung in different ranges: the child high, the father low, and the Erlkönig middle and in a major key, and. The piano is the ceaselessly running horse while the singer takes on four different voices: the dry narrator, the calming father, the increasingly hysterical child, and the wheedling Erlkönig. We hear this as a sublime combination of voice and piano. 328 (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone Gerald Moore, piano) He makes the piano the other character in the drama: it becomes the horse the father is riding, moving desperately towards help.įranz Schubert: Erlkonig, Op. Schubert used the piano as more than just simple accompaniment to the poem. A narrator supplies the opening and closing scenarios. The whole poem is a conversation between the child and his father, and the Erlking and the child. It is a dramatic tale of a desperate father, sick child clutched in his arms, riding towards succor. One of the most dramatic of Schubert’s vocal work settings was of Goethe’s poem, The Erlking, Der Erlkönig. Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein: Goethe in the Roman Campagna A recent reviewer of a new biography of Goethe noted wryly that if Goethe had lived during the age of Shakespeare, we’d be wondering if there were one Goethe or if there were many, now confused under one name. More than 10,000 of his letters are still extant as are nearly 3,000 drawings. He was a writer and a statesman, a poet in a wide variety of styles from lyric to epic, a dramatist who wrote both prose and verse dramas, a writer in every genre from autobiography to botany to novels. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was involved in all fields of arts, sciences, and politics. The greatest poet of Schubert’s age was Goethe. It is a testimony to the skill with which Schubert was able to create a new world for the lied that makes this range of poetic sources interesting. The poets he set varied from the greatest poets of his time, or of history, to contemporary minor poets who were his friends. In just a few years, 11 to be exact, Schubert (1797-1828) wrote over 600 songs. I never tire of the Schubert lieder-they are an incredible artistic achievement and powerful form of expression.When we look at Franz Schubert’s song output, it is a truly amazing number. Feel free to listen to Schubert lieder before, but arrive with an open mind and fresh ears, leaving preconceived notions, opinions and musical tastes behind. I will provide context, concepts and background, but then open up to comments and discussion from all. A modified Shared Inquiry method will be in place. Because each person will come to our seminar with a different level of musical knowledge and experience, part of my job will be to create a level playing field to allow everyone to participate freely. Our goal will be to observe how Schubert creates. In this seminar, we will be listening to recordings of a variety of Schubert songs and song cycles while following the texts, and then discussing. And he provided further development by way of his song cycles-collections of songs linked together by a common theme or narrative thread. It is not so much how Schubert set a text to music, but rather how he translated the text into the language of music. His skill and talent in being able to capture in music the spirit of the text, mood and emotional transformations, and imagery and detail are almost beyond compare. Of course, Schubert was helped by the flowering of late 18th- and early 19th-century lyric poetry as well as by the quickly developing range and possibilities of the piano, but it was his genius that was really responsible. Text, music, singer and pianist combined with equal importance to create miniature, un-staged musical dramas. But Schubert went much further, developing an original approach that opened up fresh artistic possibilities, thus establishing the lied as a whole new art form. Most of us would believe that a song composer begins by selecting a suitable text, creating a melodic vocal line to match, and composing a piano part to accompany. Although it can be traced back to medieval times, its greatest period begins with Schubert. The lied is the German art song of the 19th century. I can’t imagine a summer without Toronto Pursuits-it is always a stimulating experience.įor July 2015, I’ll be leading the seminar Follow the Lieder: The Songs of Franz Schubert on German lieder and, in particular, the songs and song cycles of Franz Schubert. I’m Rick Phillips and I’ve been leading music seminars at Toronto Pursuits for ten years.
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