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.
"Lob der Tränen" (Praise of Tears) D.711 is a lilting,
waltz-like lied with a delightful melody that was once
a great favourite with audiences. This much is proved
by the fact that Max Friedländer selected it to be in
the first volume of the Peters Edition, a series which
more or less published Schubert's output in the order
of its popularity, the songs becoming more recherché
with each successive volume. It is interesting that of
all the songs in this volume, Lob der Tränen is now
perhaps the least performed, its Italianate prettiness
less tempting to the performer of today who prefers the
composer in a less generalised word-setting mood. The
song as a whole is rather a mis-match between the
weight of the poetic content and the ingratiating tune,
the shape of which was suggested by the poet's double
rhymes. The fact that it is also an unmodified strophic
song shows that the composer has no wish to take on
board that the poem's message deepens with each
strophe. By the time we hear of Prometheus's painful
creation of mankind in these lilting tones we can only
smile at the incongruity. Perhaps this conflict of
tears and smiles in poetic and musical imagery was
intentional, in which case the composer was showing a
most sophisticated irony in deliberately going against,
rather than with, the poet's drift. It is more likely
that Schubert had not yet got the measure of the
achievement of the brothers Schlegel. He was soon to do
so in his settings of August's translations of Petrarch
at the end of the year, and in the settings from
Friedrich's Abendröthe in 1819 and 1820. This
encounter with the Schlegel circle was to lead his
musical language away from the carefree aria style into
bold new realms of formal and harmonic exploration.
Despite the fact that the song teeters on the edge of
sentimentality, it has numerous touches of mastery: the
ambivalence between G minor and D major of the
introduction; the eruption into dancing triplets at
'Reihetanz'; the glorious way in which the final
(repeated) line of each strophe takes rapturous flight.
We adore melodic writing as natural and graceful as
this, despite the fact that the music seems ideally
fashioned only for the first two strophes.
For the dating of this song we rely on something
written in haste by Schubert at the bottom of the
manuscript: 'Spaun! Don't forget Gahy and Rondo'. This
refers to a piano duet written in January 1818. As the
composer was away in Zseliz for the summer months, it
is likely that this song was composed sometime early in
the year. It is sometimes ascribed to 1821 because that
is when Schubert made a fair copy for the publisher.
When the song was published in 1822 it was dedicated to
Spaun who it seems had liked the piece so much that the
composer let him keep the manuscript.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lob_der_Tranen)
Although originally composed for Voice and Piano, I
created this Interpretation of the "Lob der Tränen"
(Praise of Tears D.711) for Flute & Strings (2 Violins,
Viola & Cello).
SHEET MUSIC