Classical Music | Soprano

Recorded on 11/05/2008, uploaded on 05/02/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Lachen und Weinen ("Laughter and Tears") is one of only a handful of poems by Friedrich Rückert that Schubert set to music. It describes the emotions of a young girl who laughs in the morning and weeps in the evening, yet knows not why. The innocence of the poem is masterfully portrayed in Schubert's setting. A lighthearted melodic figure opens the song and then later serves as an interlude between its two stanzas, as well as the coda. The song is strophic, though with the necessary changes to represent the dichotomy of laughter and tears. For example, the first stanza moves from A-flat major to its parallel minor when the narrator wonders why she cries in the evening. In the second stanza, the key change is made earlier, since there she calls attention first to her tears. The music then moves back to A-flat major, at exactly the point analogous to the key change in the first stanza, when she questions why she laughs in the morning.     Joseph DuBose