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.
"Heidenröslein" or "Heideröslein" ("Rose on the
Heath" or "Little Rose of the Field") is one of those
Schubertian miracles for which there is no real
explanation beyond the genius of its creator. As
Einstein wrote, ‘Schubert does not imitate the
folksong tradition. He creates it or provides an
occasion for it’. According to the Deutsch catalogue
this is the composer’s 24th Goethe setting, so the
simplicity and innocence of the music is not born of
inexperience, but rather of an ever deepening
familiarity with Goethean ways and means. It was
proudly included in the collection of songs sent to the
poet in April 1816, and if Goethe had bothered to have
it played through to him he might have realized that it
represented the summit of his own ideal of what a song
with keyboard accompaniment should be – simple,
uncluttered, allowing the words to be heard with the
most transparent clarity.
The poem, itself a parody of the folk style, was
written in 1771. At this time Goethe was a law student
at the University of Strasburg; there he came under the
powerful influence of J G Herder (only five years his
senior) who encouraged him to study the simple beauties
of folksong texts in pursuit of freshness and
spontaneity in his writing. This was also the period of
the poet’s love affair with Friederike von Brion, and
the poem Wilkommen und Abschied set by Schubert in
1822. Both Herder and Goethe made versions of an old
German folksong about a wild rose, but it was
Goethe’s poem with its sexual overtones which has
survived Herder’s version with its moralising tone
more suited to the schoolroom than the open fields.
Reichardt had set the poem simply (to the point of
anonymity) in G major and with four quavers to the bar,
and one cannot forget that the other celebrated flower
song with a Goethe text, Mozart’s Das Veilchen, is
also in G major and 2/4. As so often in 1815, Schubert
begins his ground-breaking work by bowing to the past
and acknowledging his forbears, but after fixing his
own song in G major and in 2/4, similarities and
obeisances are at an end. Schubert’s tune is
unforgettable whereas the tune of the Reichardt song is
frankly unmemorable; Schubert takes us outdoors (‘the
bucolic air might be thought to have been born of one
mind with the poem’, writes Capell) whereas
Mozart’s mini-opera on two pages is peopled by
shepherds and shepherdesses clothed in the silk
costumes of a court bergerette.
In the Schubert song, the alternation between the hands
of light quaver chords (it might be called a ‘vamp’
in the language of popular music) suggests the
lighthearted cheeky gait of a young man with eyes and
heart a-roving. At the same time these very chords, in
their very proper economy, suggest the demure innocence
of the rose, and in the various strophes the pianist
can slightly vary the articulation and dynamics to
throw the emphasis on one or other of the song’s
protagonists. The semiquavers which flower on the vocal
line are an absolutely integral part of the tune rather
than extraneous ornament or decoration; at the same
time the curvaceous melody suggests luxurious and
alluring beauty, as if the visual simplicity of the
rose is complemented by its fragrance – a scent
carried into the air on these wind-borne semiquavers
and which plays no little part in the boy’s delight.
Behind the deceptive charm of the two-and-a-half bars
of interlude between the verses (a sequence of two
groups of quavers – ascending thirds separated by a
falling fifth and ornamented by cheeky acciacaturas)
lies an illustration of the selfish and callous
attitude of the flower-picker, cocky in his male
chauvinism, as well as the dangerous power of revenge
in the flower’s prickly thorn – thus the piano’s
staccato. Schubert marks the refrain (‘Röslein,
Röslein, Röslein rot’) ‘nachgebend’, which
means giving way or yielding; thus the request for a
small ritardando required for the beautiful ascending
phrase of eight notes could also describe the yielding
quality of womankind for which the prickly rose is a
metaphor, although it is soon to prove its capacity to
fight back. The effect of this refrain is of the utmost
wistfulness, as if kissing a childhood dream of
innocence goodbye as it floats past up into the aether.
This musing is cancelled by a return to tempo (Schubert
marks it ‘wie oben’, ‘as above’) which nicely
negates any suggestion of sentimentality and returns
the setting to the earthy folksong domain. It takes no
great leap of imagination to see in this poem a
scenario for the contraction of a wounding disease,
sexually transmitted between the sexes. Like all the
best folk material, however, the poem works
simultaneously on a number of levels, from the
lighthearted to the sinister. The merriment of
Schubert’s astonishing setting is underscored by a
mood utterly typical of the composer in some of his
seemingly happy works: a streak of gentle melancholy in
the major key suggests deeper layers of meaning,
unspoken and heartbreaking.
The work did not take Schubert a great deal of time to
compose; no less than four other songs were composed on
the same day. For those who might like to imagine the
heat of creativity in the Schubertian workshop on 19
August 1815, the companion settings (all of Goethe
poems) were Der Rattenfänger, Der Schatzgräber,
Bundeslied, and the first version of An den Mond.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schubert)
Although originally composed for Voice and Piano, I
created this Interpretation of "Heidenröslein" (Rose
on the Heath D.257 Op. 3 No. 3) for Flute & Strings (2
Violins, Viola & Cello).