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.
"Auf dem Wasser zu singen" (To sing on the water D.774
Op.72) is a strophic song but we neither notice nor
complain that we hear the same music three times, so
beguiling are its many felicities of vocal line and
accompaniment. It is a barcarolle with vocal obbligato,
a fascinating synthesis of piano piece and Lied. It
shares its original key of A flat minor with the fourth
Impromptu of Op 90 (D899) which has its own variation
on the idea of a gentle descent of semiquavers, wafting
between minor and major, with a left hand obligato
voice singing like a Loreley amidst the waves. On the
printed page the right hand semiquavers of the
introduction to Auf dem Wasser zu singen are phrased in
twos, and in order to avoid a frozen shoulder and
wrenched wrist the pianist adopts a complicated ruse;
as one finger leaves a note it is replaced, in a split
second, by another on the same note. This happens time
and time again as the fingers sidle, crab-like, down
the keyboard, a sleight of hand that must be
imperceptible, although it is as tricky as attempting
to hold water in a clenched fist. In a liquid
performance where no rigid pattern of bar lines on
tidal flow is imposed, the effect is exactly what
Schubert intended: music to paint the gentle lapping of
waves, the undulating movement of the boat on the
current's swell, the rustling reeds on the shore and,
in the final verse, the ineluctable (but in this case
audible) passing of time. The vocal line starts beneath
the water level but rises to hug the piano fioriture
note-for-note in cascading thirds. The last line of
each verse is repeated and on the long held note the
singer, like an intrepid surfer, braves a minor tidal
wave to emerge into the sunlight of the major key. This
is of course a musical metaphor for the liberation of
the soul from its shackles, and the pianist's right
hand, in the ecstatic interlude, appears to stretch
heavenward to touch the highest note we hear. The power
of this metaphysical message is not often enough
pondered by audiences, diverted as they are by the
song's melody and shape. The composer's involvement
with that message is nonetheless complete. It is one of
those handful of strophic songs where meaning is built
into the repetitions: human beings are the ephemeral
passengers aboard this barge of time, endlessly rocked
by the womb-like waters of life. The song seems to have
always been resonating somewhere, and the composer has
plucked it out of the air, before releasing it once
more into infinity. In putting it down on paper he has
added to it the indefinable ache of personal awareness
and sorrow without self-pity which is his special
watermark. There is also in it the joy of an
understanding won through pain. The song dates from
1823 and is thus contemporary with Schubert's health
crisis, and the composition of Die schöne
Müllerin.
Friedrich Leopold, Graf zu Stolberg-Stolberg was born
in Denmark. He worked on various literary ventures with
his brother Christian; they were thus forerunners of
such fraternal collaborations as the Schlegels, Grimms
and Goncourts. Both Stolberg brothers as admirers of
Klopstock were members of the Göttingen Hainbund. They
travelled to Switzerland in 1775 with Goethe who found
them disturbingly unruly. In 1781 Friedrich married
Agnes von Witzleben, the muse of his poetry. It was on
their honeymoon that he wrote Auf dem Wasser zu singen
and dedicated it to her ('für meine Agnes'). Stolberg
worked for a time as a diplomat, and as far afield as
Russia, but the adventures of his youth yielded to an
ultra-conservative attitude in politics and a
conversion to catholicism. He who had earlier been an
enthusiastic translator of Homer chastised Schiller for
the type of 'pagan' poetry. Schubert made nine Stolberg
settings.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schubert)
Although originally composed for Voice and Piano, I
created this Interpretation of "Auf dem Wasser zu
singen" (To sing on the water D.774 Op.72) for Flute &
Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).