The last year of Schubert's life was rich in creative events - evidence of his growing recognition. On January 14, 1828, the first part (10 songs) of the just completed vocal cycle “Winter Retreat” was published. On March 26, also in Vienna, Schubert's first author's concert took place, and his music was enthusiastically received by the public. At the same time (according to some sources in January-February, according to others - in August-October), the composer wrote 6 songs based on Heine’s poems. Probably, in August, 7 songs appeared on the verses of Relshtab, and in October, a month before his death, “Pigeon Mail” on the verses of Seidl. Schubert did not intend to combine them into a cycle similar to “The Beautiful Miller's Wife” or “Winter Reise”. What is known is that he intended to publish Heine’s songs together.
After his death at the end of the same 1828, the Viennese publisher Tobias Haslinger bought from his brother Schubert the manuscript of his songs on the poems of Relstab, combined them with Heine’s, added a song to the poems of Seidl and gave this collection the name “Swan Song” - in accordance with the legend that that the swan sings its song before death.
The 3 authors of the poetic texts in this collection are incomparable in terms of the level and scale of their talent. Johann Gabriel Seidl (1804-1875), a third-rate Austrian poet and archaeologist, attracted Schubert more than once: the composer wrote 11 songs and 4 vocal quartets based on his texts. Ludwig Relstab (1799-1860), German poet and music critic, was popular in his time. Schubert has 10 songs based on his poems, and, according to the poet’s recollections, he gave his manuscript to Beethoven, and he, in turn, gave the poems he liked best to Schubert. The 7 poems included in “Swan Song” are very different in content and are in no way connected with each other. They alternate according to the principle of contrast, with the first (“Messenger of Love”) and the last (“Farewell”) being light and carefree. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) is the largest of the German romantic poets, whose fame was just beginning during Schubert's lifetime. Since 1821, he began systematic literary activity, the fruit of which was the “Book of Songs,” which was created over the course of 10 years. It consists of 5 collections, including “Again in the Motherland” (1823-1824), which includes 88 poems that do not have titles. Schubert took 6, gave them names and arranged them in his own way. In the center is placed the only thing unclouded, naive and ingenuous - “The Fisherwoman” (Heine No. 8). All the rest are united by a tragic worldview, more condensed even in comparison with “Winterreise”: at the beginning - “Atlas” (Heine No. 24) and “Her Portrait” (No. 23), at the end - “The City” (No. 16), “By the Sea” (No. 14) and “Double” (No. 20).
The last of the songs written by Schubert, “Pigeon Mail” to poems by Seidl, as well as “Shelter” to poems by Relshtab, were the first to become known from “Swan Song.” They were performed just over two months after the composer’s death, on January 30, 1829, at the Society of Music Lovers in Vienna. It was a charity concert, half of the proceeds from which were intended for the construction of a monument on Schubert's grave. Erected a year and a half later, “the tombstone is simple - as simple as his songs,” wrote a Viennese newspaper.
Music
The 14 numbers that make up “Swan Song” are completely different in style. The songs based on poems by Relshtab and Seidl in their means of expression are reminiscent of “The Beautiful Miller's Wife,” especially those framing the collection - light, carefree, with a simple vocal melody and sonorous piano accompaniment. The songs inspired by Heine's poetry are very different from all those created by Schubert. They open not only a new stage in his work, but also new paths in the development of romantic song in general. It would be more accurate to call them monologues: instead of a broad chanting melody, there is a musical recitation that sensitively conveys all the nuances of the verse. The meager piano accompaniment is devoid of imagery, the repeated measured chords evoke associations with a funeral march or passacaglia, and dissonant frozen harmonies enhance the tragic flavor.
“Serenade” to the verses of Relshtab is Schubert’s most popular composition, a kind of emblem of his work. A beautiful, melodious, immediately memorable melody, guitar accompaniment, a simple form with an abundance of repetitions have everyday origins, but are marked by subtle spirituality. The most dramatic of the songs based on Relshtab’s poems is the gloomy “Shelter”; the change of images gives rise to an original large-scale form. Heine’s songs are tragic: “Atlas” is an image of fettered strength, immeasurable, but devoid of violent manifestations of suffering; “The city,” as if frozen in its hopelessness, without a ray of hope; "The Double" begins as a dour narrative and ends in an explosion of unbridled despair.
A. Koenigsberg
After Schubert's death, wonderful songs created in the last year and a half of the composer's life were found among his manuscripts. Publishers arbitrarily combined them into one collection called “Swan Song.” This included 7 songs with lyrics by L. Relshtab, 6 songs with lyrics by G. Heine and “Pigeon Mail” with lyrics by I.G. Seidl (the very last song composed by Schubert).
Among the songs based on poems by Relshtab, “Shelter” and “Serenade” stand out.
In the song “Shelter”, through the image of a storm, the conflict of a rebellious personality with the surrounding reality is conveyed. The ostinate rhythmic pulsation of the accompaniment makes us recall the ballad “The Forest King”. The climactic exclamation in the final stanza of the song is highlighted by the “Schubertian subdominant” ( minor triad of the VI degree in minor, having a gloomy and severe coloring).
Songs to Heine's texts
Songs based on Heine's texts constituted a qualitatively new stage in Schubert's songwriting, a “new word” aimed at the future, towards the songs of Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf. Schubert drew attention, first of all, to those poems by Heine in which the conflict with reality is most acutely expressed (“Atlas”, “City”, “Double”). In addition, Heine's poems are rich in subtext. For example, in the song “Atlas,” using the mythological image of a giant doomed to forever carry the load of the earth, Heine allegorically describes the fate of the leading man of his time.
From the musical language point of view, Heine's songs display a number of unique features:
- The genre of dramatic monologue is widely used;
- a new type of melody appears - melodized recitative (it is found in all songs based on Heine’s texts, except for “Fisherman”);
- in most songs there are no repetitions in the text - every measure is full of meaning;
- very economical use of sound imagery. There is not a single pictorial detail that does not have expressive meaning;
- the harmony, in general, is even bolder than in the songs of “Winter Retreat”, which lead closely to the songs on the next line. Heine. All kinds of incomplete, “empty” consonances are widely used. Empty quarto-fifth sounds, without thirds, acquire a special - sharp and indefinite coloring (the “leit theme” of the piano part in “Double”);
- intonation (V) - bVI - V is widely used (also found in Winterreise).
A remarkable example of Schubert’s refraction of Heine’s lyricism is “ Double". This song is the culmination and outcome of the development of the tragic theme in Schubert's work. “The Double” is like a dramatic monologue, permeated with the melancholy of loneliness. Its melody is based on declamatory speech patterns - muffled, often interrupted by pauses. In the first stanza she is constrained by a narrow range, persistent singing of the fifth of the mode - the sound “fis”. In the second stanza, the melodic range expands to the decima with the inclusion of the upper “g” at the culmination, and the intonations acquire a heightened expressive character. The third stanza returns the melody to the channel of constrained recitation, but only at the beginning: the modulation in dis-moll is accompanied by the appearance of aspiring excited intonations, followed by a chanted conclusion. The very bold intrusion into an alien tonal sphere reveals the entire disharmony of a person’s mental state.
A short, constrained, gloomy piano motif runs through the entire song, repeating on the principle of basso ostinato (hence the resemblance to passacaglia), creating an image of fatal inevitability. In the upper voice of the measured chords, the symbol of the “cross” is clearly “readable”, evoking associations with mournful images of Bach (they are enhanced by the tonal coloring - h-moll). The apparent staticity and immobility of the chord texture is compensated by harmonic richness, dynamic explosions, and intratonal shifts. Thus, an unusual and complex harmonic revolution for Schubert’s time appears at the moment of climax (« after all, the same torments are within me!”). The piano conclusion uses the “Neapolitan” triad, as well as a plagal cadence with resolution in T of the eponymous major.
Franz Schubert's legacy includes more than six hundred solo songs.
Schubert entered the history of vocal lyricism with the songs of Goethe, and ended his short life with songs based on the words of Heine.
The most perfect thing that Franz Schubert created in his early adulthood was inspired by the poetry of Goethe. According to Spaun, addressed to the poet, Goethe's “He (Schubert) owes his (Schubert) beautiful creations not only the appearance of most of his works, but to a large extent also the fact that he became a singer of German songs”.
In 1815 alone, Schubert wrote 144 songs, 4 more operas, 2 symphonies, 2 masses, 2 piano sonatas, and a string quartet. Songs “Rosochka”, “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”, “King of the Forest”illuminated by the undying flame of genius.
"Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel" (German Var. Margaret)- monodrama, confession of the soul. One of Schubert’s masterpieces, already his mature work, despite the fact that Schubert wrote it when he was only 17 years old, and most importantly, he finds a range of images and development techniques that will be characteristic of all his subsequent work. The very image of hopeless melancholy, despair, the inability to escape from thought is one of Schubert’s main techniques.
“The Forest King” is a drama with several characters. They have their own characters, sharply different from each other, their own actions, completely dissimilar, their own aspirations, opposing and hostile, their own feelings, incompatible and polar.
The story behind the creation of this masterpiece is amazing. It arose in a fit of inspiration. "One day, - recalls Shpaun, a friend of the composer, — we went to see Schubert, who was then living with his father. We found him in the greatest excitement. With a book in his hand, Franz, walking back and forth around the room, read aloud “The King of the Forest.” Suddenly he sat down at the table and began to write. When he stood up, the magnificent ballad was ready.".
The ballad begins with a large piano introduction, the material of which then continues to develop in the accompaniment part.
In addition to the piano introduction, there is also a vocal frame, that is, a vocal introduction and afterword; it is told on behalf of the narrator-narrator:
Who gallops, who rushes under the cold darkness?
The rider is late, his young son is with him.
The story ends with the words of the narrator:
The rider urges on, the rider gallops...
In his hands lay a dead baby.
(translation by V. Zhukovsky)
The rest of the text is direct speech, distributed between the father, his son and the forest king.Real persons - the narrator, the father, the child - are united by the closeness of the intonation structure. But in accordance with the text, new touches are always introduced into the music of the ballad, which highlight the individual traits and state of each character.
Franz Schubert - Lieder (Fischer-Dieskau and S.Richter)
00:23- Am Fester, D.878
04:45- An der Donau, D.553
07:50- Liebeslauchen, D.698
12:26- Auf der Bruck, D.853
16:00- Fischerweise, D.881b
19:12- Der Wanderer, D.649
22:38- Die Sterne, D.939
26:00- Im Frühling, D.882
Nachtgesang im Walde
The last collection of Schubert's songs was compiled and published by the composer's friends after his death. Believing that the songs found in Schubert's legacy were written by him shortly before his death, friends called this collection “Swan Song.” It included seven songs with lyrics by Relshtab, of which “Evening Serenade” and “Shelter” gained the widest popularity; six songs with words by Heine: “Atlas”, “Her Portrait”, “Fisherman”, “City”, “By the Sea”, “Double” and one song with words by Seidl - “Pigeon Mail”.
Each of Hein's six songs is an incomparable work of art, vividly individual and interesting in many details. But “The Double,” one of Schubert’s last vocal compositions, summarizes his search for new vocal genres.
Double / G. Heine / F. Schubert / translation by M. Svobodin /
Songs to the words of Heinrich Heine are the pinnacle of the evolution of Schubert's vocal lyrics and in many ways the starting point for the subsequent development of the song-romance genre.
belcanto.ru ›schubert_songs.html
Horowitz Schubert Moment musical in F minor n°3 op. 94 D780
In the last year and a half of his life, Schubert wrote wonderful songs, which were later found in the composer's manuscripts. They were arbitrarily combined by publishers into a collection called "Swan Song". The collection includes: 6 songs to the words of Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), the greatest of German poets; 7 songs with lyrics by Ludwig Relstab (1799-1860), poet and music critic; and "Pigeon Mail" based on the text by Johann Gabriel Seidl (1804-1875), a little-known Austrian poet and archaeologist.
Relshtab's poems included in "Swan Song" are completely different and even opposite in content and are not connected by a common plot: "Messenger of Love" and "Farewell" are light and carefree, "Shelter" is dark and dramatic. The composer took Heine's poems from the "Book of Songs", which combines 88 poems. Schubert chose 6 and titled them. Of these, only “The Fisherwoman” is an unclouded work, naive and ingenuous. All the rest are tragic: “Atlas”, “Her Portrait”, “City”, “By the Sea” and “Double”.
The songs “Shelter” by Relshtab and “Pigeon Mail” based on Seidl’s poems received public recognition before the others. They were performed on January 30, 1829, two months after the composer’s death, at the Society of Music Lovers in Vienna, at a charity concert. In preparation for the concert, a monument was erected on Schubert's grave.
The 14 songs that make up the “Swan Song” cycle are absolutely not similar in style. Compositions based on poems by Relshtab and Seidl are light and carefree. The vocal melody and piano accompaniment are simple. Schubert's most popular composition, the symbol of his work, was “Serenade” based on the verses of Relshtab. The melody is beautiful, melodious, immediately memorable, guitar accompaniment, simple form with multiple repetitions.
The compositions based on Heine's poems are very gloomy. They can even be called monologues. There is not a broad chanting melody here, but a musical recitation that sensitively conveys all the nuances of the verse. The meager piano accompaniment is devoid of creativity. The chords are repeated rhythmically, reminiscent of a funeral march or passacaglia. The tragic flavor is enhanced by dissonant frozen harmonies.
Heine’s songs are filled with tragedy: “Atlas” is a reflection of shackled strength, boundless, but without violent outbursts of suffering; The “city” seemed frozen in its hopelessness, without a ray of hope; "The Double" begins as a bleak tale and ends in an explosion of uncontrollable despair.
