Classical Music | Music for Flute

Recorded on 08/19/2008, uploaded on 01/15/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

"Gute Nacht" from Winterreise      Franz Schubert

Winterreise (The Winter Journey), alongside the earlier Die schöne Müllerin, is one of Schubert's great settings of Wilhem Müller's poem cycles. Schubert set the twenty-four poems of Müller's cycle during February and October 1827, a little less than a year before his early death. In this sense, Winterreise forms a poignant parallel to Schubert's own life. Surely, in setting Müller's poems, Schubert was aware that his own life was passing into winter and he was resigning himself to that final journey. In fact, his friends noticed Schubert's deep melancholy during the composition of these songs. Schubert, himself, described them as "terrifying" and Joseph von Spaun remarked that he and the others present "were dumbfounded by [their] sombre mood" when Schubert performed them.

Müller's cycle tells the story of the poet in love. The poet, however, secretly leaves his lover's house at night when he discovers that her love has wandered to someone else. He leaves the town and follows the river to another village. During his journey, he longs for death but ultimately comes to terms with his loneliness as he wonders through the barren winter landscape. The successive poems of the cycle describe the various people and objects the poet encounters during his journey.

In the opening song of Winterreise, "Gute Nacht" ("Good Night"), the poet leaves the house of his beloved as he had once arrived—as a stranger. The poem recalls a growing love between the poet and the maiden with the encouragement of her mother. Yet, her love has now wandered to someone new. The poet resigns himself to leave quietly by night, leaving nothing but a simple "Gute Nacht" on his beloved's door.

Schubert's setting is simple, yet intensely emotional. The accompaniment of repeated chords that permeates the song, quite remarkably, captures the fatalism of the poem that underlies the sorrowful vocal melody. A shift is made to the tonic major at the beginning of the penultimate stanza when the poet finally speaks of his departure. However, on the reiteration of the last line, "an dich hab' ich gedacht" ("that I thought of you"), the music returns to the minor key and a short coda concludes the song.        Joseph DuBose

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.