IV.

Songs

The song, as shaped by Schubert, was so original a contribution to 19th-century music that it constituted a new art form known by its German name of Lied. Schubert’s songs almost invariably employ a piano accompaniment, and they consist primarily of settings of romantic poetry, including the work of such writers as Goethe and Sir Walter Scott. The songs use an enormous variety of melodic techniques, from simple melodies derived from folk tunes, which repeat in most or all verses, to highly expressive melodies that vary in each verse and help convey the meaning and mood of each line of text. “Heidenröslein” is an example of the former; “Die junge Nonne” of the latter.

Using the piano, Schubert was able to compose accompaniments that served as meaningful backgrounds to his songs. This background may be pictorial—the sound of rippling water in Die schöne Müllerin and the spinning wheel of “Gretchen am Spinnrad.” Or the background may be emotional—the chords that suggest the evening piety of “Im Abendrot” or the midnight terror of “Der Doppelgänger.” It may provide a magical blending of the scene and the emotion of the poem: The piano’s drone and tinkle in “Der Leiermann” (The Organ Grinder) imitate the hand organ while they also convey the wintry landscape and the wanderer’s despair.

Schubert’s greatest songs are settings of the poets he loved, among them the greatest poets of German literature: Goethe, Friedrich von Schiller, and Heinrich Heine. But Schubert also made musical poetry of works by minor writers such as Wilhelm Müller, whose poems he used for the song cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise.