Classical Music | Soprano

Recorded on 08/16/2009, uploaded on 11/10/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

First published in 1810, Sir Walter Scott’s poem The Lady of the Lake was an immensely popular work throughout the 19^th century. Indeed, one of its plots, namely the uprising of the highland clans against the lowland Scots, helped inspire some years later a renewed interest in Scottish culture known as the Highland Revival. The poem’s influence even reached as far as Austria, where in 1825 Franz Schubert composed settings of seven songs, one of which was his immensely popular and beloved Ave Maria (Ellens dritter Gesang), from the work based on a loose German translation made by Adam Storck. The cycle, however, was not intended for one performer. The first, second and sixth songs are the songs of Ellen Douglas and written for female voice; the fifth and seventh for male voice, specifically the baritone Johann Michael Vogl; and the third and fourth for male quartet and female choir, respectively.  Published the following year as his opus 52, the cycle was dedicated to Countess Sophie Weissenwolff, for which she herself became known as the “the lady of the lake,” and it is believed the songs were also first performed at her castle in the Austrian town of Steyregg.

In Scott’s narrative, leading up to the first of Ellen’s songs, “Raste Kreiger! Krieg ist aus” (“ Soldier rest! thy warfare o’er”), Ellen beguiles King James V, who in disguise has stumbled upon the hiding place of the Douglas clan. Schubert treats Storck’s eight-stanza translation of Scott’s original poem to a finely crafted rondo form. The first, fourth and last stanzas are used as the rondo’s refrain, set to a gentle and soothing triple meter with the slightest hint of a militant rhythm. The vocal melody, however, is coaxing and lyrical in the key of D-flat major. The second and third stanzas form the first episode. Modulating to the key of the subdominant minor, albeit colored with the harmonies of A major, the music takes on an entrancing quality with arpeggios in the right hand and an intervening melody in the left. The remaining stanzas (five, six and seven) make up the second episode. Essentially a variation of the first, it is altered to accommodate the additional stanza and possesses a heightened sense of drama as well as intriguing text painting. After a final statement of the refrain, the song concludes with a tender and coaxing repetition of the song’s first line.     Joseph DuBose

courtesy of the Steans Music Institute

The Steans Music Institute is the Ravinia Festival's professional studies program for young musicians.