Performed by Michael Kupfer (baritone)
Piano: Eric Schneider
“I am writing now not a novel, but a novel in verse – the devil of a difference.”
Alexander Pushkin
In the works of Franz Schubert the lied genre is particularly important. This genre was the composer’s favourite, and he turned to it more frequently than any other. Schubert composed a total of more than six hundred songs. He was the first of the great maestri of the past to “give equal equality” to song alongside other, more “respectable” genres, and he also imbued his instrumental works with a songful quality – symphonies, ensembles and piano sonatas.
Schubert came to the composition of his vocal cycles at the height of his powers, having already written such masterpieces as Gretchen am Spinnrade, Erlkönig, An die Muzik, the Wanderer-Fantasie and Die Forelle...
The poetic basis for the cycle Die Schöne Müllerin came from verse by the poet Wilhelm Müller, a contemporary of Schubert in whose poetry the composer found an ideal echo to his own precious sentiments and romantic images of unrequited and spurned love.
Müller’s verse is a series of novellas in verse that tells the tale of young love – its conception, flourishing and disappointments. Schubert seized on the poet’s idea, writing the first novel in songs in the history of music.
Müller had been inspired by the famed anthology of folk songs Des Knaben Wunderhorn (contemporary audiences will be familiar with this anthology thanks to Gustav Mahler’s symphonies and song cycles). Schubert backed up the poet, turning in most of the songs in his cycle to the most “folk-like” element using strophic couplet form. With Schubert – also hardly the first such case for a romantic composer – the piano is not limited to the function of accompaniment; its role abounds in vivid inventive sound elements and the piano enters a dialogue with the human voice.
... The youth, an apprentice miller, has set out on a journey. He is sensitive to the nature that surrounds him and entrusts his destiny to a stream that beckons him to follow far away and leads him on a journey of discovery. He is filled with gratitude – as well he might be, as the stream even leads him to his beloved – a miller’s daughter! This love that flares up and the spring-like mood that accompanies it is expressed in fervent effusions. The lyrical line is shaded by merry folk and genre brief scenes.
The sadder, therefore, his awakening with the sudden appearance of his rival, and the stronger the despair that seizes the youth. The final pages are filled with quiet sadness: the traveller seeks comfort in nature, but nature is unable to offer comfort for his sufferings. It is only in the final song of the cycle that the protagonist attains conciliation through sufferance.
Iosif Raiskin
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