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.
"Im Frühling" (In the Spring D.882) is one of the
best-loved of the Schubert songs. If Ernst Schulze had
penned nothing else, his posthumous reputation would be
ensured (at least as far as musicians are concerned) as
the poet of Im Frühling. The poem was written 'On 31
March 1815', two years after Schulze had begun to set
his sights on Adelheid Tychsen. In 1813 the two had
gone for a walk by a mountainside lake in which many of
the song's background conditions prevailed—'deep in
the dark rocky stream the sky … and her reflection in
that sky.' When he wrote this poem in 1815 Schulze was
going through a phase when he believed that he still
had some hope of winning Adelheid. He does not claim
here that she reciprocated his passion; strictly
speaking it is only he who is 'so tender, so close' in
the second verse. We do not notice this detail at
first; we assume the two to be lovers, and we are meant
to. As far as the reader is concerned, Schulze is not
beyond being economical with the truth. It was
ambiguities of this kind which enabled Bouterwek to
construct a completely fictitious scenario for the
Poetisches Tagebuch in which the poet's Muse was a dead
'fiancée' (Cäcilie Tychsen) and in which mention of
Adelheid (who was still alive at the time) was more or
less suppressed.
Memory and nostalgia for past moments of happiness
('alte unnennbare Tage', 'old unnameable days' Mörike
called them in his 'Im Frühling') is one of the
trickiest of ideas to turn into art. To revisit a place
where one has been happy with someone else stirs mixed
emotion: 'Halb ist es Lust, halb ist es Klage' ('half
pleasure, half lament') as Mörike also wrote. There is
much that has changed, but there are certain constants
that have not. One can never step into the same stream
twice, but the river banks look the same even if much
water has gone under the bridge. The vocal line of Im
Frühling is subtly modified strophe by strophe, but
this is nothing new in Schubert's output. The
accompaniment however here has a life of its own, and
it was a stroke of genius on the composer's part to
call on a form he used only once in his songs, that of
theme and variations. What could be more perfect to
express the concept of 'the same, yet not the
same'?.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im_Fr%C3%BChling)
Although originally composed for Voice & Piano, I
created this Interpretation of the "Im Frühling" (In
the Spring D.882) for Flute & Strings (2 Violins, Viola
& Cello).
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