Classical Music | Bass

Recorded on 05/06/2008, uploaded on 01/21/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

The songs of Schwanengesang, published in two books by Tobias Haslinger after Schubert's death, contain his final Lieder. Unlike Schubert's other song cycles, the songs of Schwanengesang are not all by the same poet, but instead Schubert draws upon the works of Ludwig Rellstab, Heinrich Heine and Johann Gabriel Seidl. Since Schubert left no indication of his intentions for these songs, it is unclear whether he intended the songs to be collected as a cycle at all, even though in the autograph manuscript the first thirteen songs were copied at a single sitting on consecutive manuscript pages. The origin of the songs as a cycle originated with the publisher, Tobias Haslinger, who gave the collection its title. Today, Haslinger's ordering of the songs of Schwanengesang is regarded as the definitive version of the work.

In Rellstab's poem "Aufenthalt" ("Dwelling"), the poet compares his suffering to the landscape around him—his tears to the waves in the river, the beating of his heart to the wind, and the depth of his pain to the mountain ore. In E minor, Schubert's setting is predominated by repeated chords on a triplet rhythm in the right hand of the piano. Against this is set the duple rhythms of the bass and voice. The bass takes a fairly active role through the course of the song, at times rising almost to the point of a countermelody to the voice and at others actually doubling it. A return to the opening bars brings the song to a quite and poignant close.         Joseph DuBose

Rushing stream, raging forest, rigid rock, my abode.
As wave follows wave, so my tears are flowing, eternally replenished.
High above, the treetops wave and stir, thus my heart beats unceasingly.
And like the rock's primeval ore, my pain remains eternally unchanged.

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.