Lieder – Schubert: Some background.
For all the many lovely songs composed by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, it remains true to say that the great age of Lieder composition was ushered in with the work of Franz Schubert, whose first great songs were written when he was a teenager. Schubert lived in a period of remarkable social and artistic change in central Europe, especially notable for an emerging middle class which increasingly replaced the church and aristocracy as the dominant factors in the world of music. Concert societies began to be organized, and public concert halls became a source of pride in prosperous 19th century city life. But there was music in the domestic sphere as well, seen in the growth of “Hausmusik”: music played and sung by family members, or heard as part of entertainment in the social occasions typical of the day. A key factor was the presence in the parlour of that most impressive article of furniture, a lovingly-polished PIANO, indispensable for music making, and a status symbol rather akin to a color television in homes in our century. Composers (and publishers) were not slow in responding to a promising market, resulting in a flood of music for piano (with piano duets especially popular), songs and chamber music appropriate for amateur performers. It is quite significant Franz Schubert, who only ONCE would hear a professional concert of his works in his short life, focused much of his activities upon the private gatherings of friends and admirers (the so-called “Schubertiads”) where his chamber music, piano music and songs were performed and received with enthusiasm. Around the same time the great burst of Romantic literature found an international audience for the works of Byron and Sir Walter Scott, while on the heels of Goethe and Schiller the German-speaking world embraced the works of figures such as Heine, Eichendorff and Grillparzer. In a way unique to the early Romantic age, these trends in music and literature came together in the work of Schubert, who composed some 600 songs, sometimes setting the words of poets such as Goethe and Heine, in other cases transmuting the serviceable (if second-rate) work of lesser poets into the greatest lyrical expression ever known. There are every sort of song: simple folk like ditties such as “Heiden Röslein, ” expansive songs lasting a quarter hour, songs in Italian, French, even songs in which other instruments take part, as in his very last composition, “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, ” [“The Shepherd on the Rock”] written for voice, clarinet and piano. The significance of the songs can be seen in the composer’s use of several of them in some of his greatest works: “Trout” Quintet, “Death and Maiden” Quartet, “Wanderer” Fantasy for piano. Probably the most miraculous aspect of Schubert’s career is that “mere songs, ” music ostensibly inspired by casual social entertainment, should lead to the astonishing accomplishment of his song cycles, Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. But even the least of the 600 Lieder have much to offer----Brahms, as is well-remembered, said that something could be learned from studying each and every one of them.
