Schwanengesang

[haydnguy]

It is important to note that Schwanengesang is not a song cycle like Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin. It is a collection of songs based on poems by Ludwig Rellstab,Heinrich Heine and the last one by Johann Seidl.


Rellstab songs

Seven of the ten poems by Ludwig Rellstab (199-1860) which Schubert set were included in the compilation Schwanengesang published in the Spring of 1829. It is proper to treat them as a group because the evidence suggests that the composer planned to publish them together.

It has been said that Schubert had a different style for every poet he set, and the truth of the observation can be seen in the Schwanengesang collection.

[haydnguy]

The last of Schubert's 'brook songs', and as perfect in its quiet lyricism as any of them, Liebesbotschaft might serve as a model for his mature on-running modified strophic style. The rippling accompaniment figure unifies the song, while the ternary form is based on the tonal structure. The first two verses, grouped together, and the last are set to the same tune, which does not stray far from the the ambience of the tonic; verse 3 begins in A minor and wanders further afield to B major and related keys. The only dynamic markings are p and pp, and the crescendos and diminuendos are to be observed within that range.

Liebesbotschaft

Rauschendes Bächlein,
So silbern und hell,
Eilst zur Geliebten
So munter und schnell?
Ach, trautes Bächlein,
Mein Bote sei du;
Bringe die Grüße
Des Fernen ihr zu.

All ihre Blumen,
Im Garten gepflegt,
Die sie so lieblich
Am Busen trägt,
Und ihre Rosen
In purpurner Glut,
Bächlein, erquicke
Mit kühlender Flut.

Wenn sie am Ufer,
In Träume versenkt,
Meiner gedenkend
Das Köpfchen hängt,
Tröste die Süße
Mit freundlichem Blick,
Denn der Geliebte
Kehrt bald zurück.

Neigt sich die Sonne
Mit rötlichem Schein,
Wiege das Liebchen
In Schlummer ein.
Rausche sie murmelnd
In süße Ruh,
Flüstre ihr Träume
Der Liebe zu.



[ame]http://www.classicalmusicforum.net/music/01-Schwanengesang.mp3[/ame]



Love's Message

Murmuring brooklet,
So silvery bright,
Hurry to my beloved
So fast and light,
Oh friendly brooklet,
Be my messenger fair,
Bring my distant greetings
to her.

All the flowers
She tends in her garden,
Which she sweetly
Bears on her bosom,
And her roses
In a purple glow,
Brooklet, refresh them
With cooling flow.

When on the bank,
Immersed in dreams,
Remembering me,
She hangs her head,
Comfort my sweetheart
With a friendly glance,
For her beloved
Will soon come back.

When the sun sets
With reddening glow,
Rock my loved one
To slumber,
Murmur for her
Sweet sleep,
And whisper dreams
Of Love to her.

[haydnguy]

Kriegers Ahnung is unique among the Rellstab songs - indeed among the songs of Schubert's final years - in adopting a sectional structure. The four short verses are treated individually, the first in C minor (3/4), the next two in A flat major, with excursions to F sharp minor and F minor (4/4 Etwas schneller), and the last verse in C major (6/8 Geschwind unruhig. The soldier's final farewell is repeated at the end to the doom-laden music of the opening bars, to confirm the air of foreboding which informs the whole song. But the song represents a reutnr to Schubert's earlier practice in ballads like Schmidt's Wanderer and Ossian's Kolmas Klage.

For some critics this method puts the principle of unity of mood at risk; the contrast between the tragic weight of the first verse and the lyrical second section is too sharp for comfort. But the momentary dream of happiness, and the rocking figure with which it is associated, seem natural enough; the section builds up to a fateful climax as the insistent C sharp quavers on the piano threaten, and a 'tear of melacholy wells up'. Moreover, Schubert is at pains to keep the piece in touch with the tonal centre of C minor/major. Even the lyrical section in A flat major, it is interesting to note, is annotated in three flats to avoid a change of key signature. As for the double-dotted, heavily accented figure which frames the song, it is perhaps the most eloquent variation on an expressive motif which appears both early (in Leichenfantasie, for instance) and late (in Rast and Gefrome Tränen). The isolated, accented chord-groups strike the imagination like a muffled drum-beat.

Kriegers Ahnung

In tiefer Ruh liegt um mich her
Der Waffenbrüder Kreis;
Mir ist das Herz so bang und schwer,
Von Sehnsucht mir so heiß.

Wie hab ich oft so süß geträumt
An ihrem Busen warm!
Wie freundlich schien des Herdes Glut,
Lag sie in meinem Arm!

Hier, wo der Flammen düstrer Schein
Ach! nur auf Waffen spielt,
Hier fühlt die Brust sich ganz allein,
Der Wehmut Träne quillt.

Herz! Daß der Trost dich nicht verläßt!
Es ruft noch manche Schlacht.
Bald ruh ich wohl und schlafe fest,
Herzliebste - gute Nacht!



[ame]http://www.classicalmusicforum.net/music/02-Schwanengesang.mp3[/ame]



Warrior's Foreboding

In deep sleep my brothers-in-arms
Lie around me in a circle.
My heart is anxious and heavy
So hot from longing.

How often have I sweetly dreamt
On her warm bosom!
How friendly shone the glowing hearth
When she lay in my arm!

Here where the gloomy glows of flames
Ah, only on weapons play,
Here the breast feels all alone,
And melancholy tears well up.

Heart, don't let your comfort desert you!
There are many battles still to come.
Soon I shall rest well and sleep deeply,
Love of my Heart, Goodnight!

[haydnguy]

If the Heine songs seem to begin, emotionally speaking, at the point where Winterreise ends, the tone and texture of the Rellstab songs frequently remind us rather of Die schöne Müllerin. Most of all perhaps this one, where the strophic form is so beautifully matched with the words, where the eager on-running 6/8 movement is so magically held in suspense for the lover's yearning self-questioning at the end of the strophe, and where the move into the minor for the last verse recalls the heartache of Tränenregen.

Frühlingssehnsucht

Säuselnde Lüfte wehend so mild
Blumiger Düfte atmend erfüllt!
Wie haucht ihr mich wonnig begrüßend an!
Wie habt ihr dem pochenden Herzen getan?
Es möchte euch folgen auf luftiger Bahn!
Wohin?

Bächlein, so munter rauschend zumal,
Wollen hinunter silbern ins Tal.
Die schwebende Welle, dort eilt sie dahin!
Tief spiegeln sich Fluren und Himmel darin.
Was ziehst du mich, sehnend verlangender Sinn,
Hinab?

Grüßender Sonne spielendes Gold,
Hoffende Wonne bringest du hold!
Wie labt mich dein selig begrüßendes Bild!
Es lächelt am tiefblauen Himmel so mild
Und hat mir das Auge mit Tränen gefüllt!
Warum?

Grünend umkränzet Wälder und Höh'!
Schimmernd erglänzet Blütenschnee!
So dränget sich alles zum bräutlichen Licht;
Es schwellen die Keime, die Knospe bricht;
Sie haben gefunden, was ihnen gebricht:
Und du?

Rastloses Sehnen! Wünschendes Herz,
Immer nur Tränen, Klage und Schmerz?
Auch ich bin mir schwellender Triebe bewußt!
Wer stillet mir endlich die drängende Lust?
Nur du befreist den Lenz in der Brust,
Nur du!



[ame]http://www.classicalmusicforum.net/music/03-Schwanengesang.mp3[/ame]



Spring Longing

Rustling winds blow so gently,
Their breath overflowing with flowers' perfume!
How lovely is the greeting you breathe to me!
What have you done to my pounding heart?
It wants to follow on the path you blow!
To where?

Little stream, your rushing always so lively,
Eagerly drop, shimmering, into the valley.
The smooth waves, they hurry along!
Meadows and sky are mirrored deeply within.
How do you draw me, longing, desirous spirit,
Away?

Playful gold of the beckoning sun,
You tenderly bring hopeful joy!
How the sight of your sacred greeting refreshes me!
It laughs lightly within the deep blue sky
And fills my eyes with tears,
Why?

The forests and hills are crowned with green!
The glint of snowy white blossoms shimmers!
All strain toward the bridal light;
Sprouts swell, buds open;
They have found what they desire:
And you?

Restless desire, longing heart,
Is it always to be only tears, complaint and pain?
I also know the swelling desire!
Who can finally still this burning longing?
Only you can set free the springtime in my breast,
Only you!

[haydnguy]

This celebrated song is perhaps the best-known serenade in music. With its staccato right-hand chords (the staccato dots appear only in the four-bar introduction, but they are surely meant to apply throughout), its echo phrases, and an irresistible tune shaped to the ebb and flow of the voice, it is a kind of sublimation of the mandoline serenade from Don Giovanni. Its formal perfection does not need analysis, but the way the lover's passion swells up at the end in a phrase which echoes the concluding bars of the strophe, and then declines to a whisper of desire, is as purely sensuous a moment as can be found in all Schubert.

Ständchen

Leise flehen meine Lieder
Durch die Nacht zu dir;
In den stillen Hain hernieder,
Liebchen, komm zu mir!

Flüsternd schlanke Wipfel rauschen
In des Mondes Licht;
Des Verräters feindlich Lauschen
Fürchte, Holde, nicht.

Hörst die Nachtigallen schlagen?
Ach! sie flehen dich,
Mit der Töne süßen Klagen
Flehen sie für mich.

Sie verstehn des Busens Sehnen,
Kennen Liebesschmerz,
Rühren mit den Silbertönen
Jedes weiche Herz.

Laß auch dir die Brust bewegen,
Liebchen, höre mich!
Bebend harr' ich dir entgegen!
Komm, beglücke mich!



[ame]http://www.classicalmusicforum.net/music/04-Schwanengesang.MP3[/ame]



Serenade

My songs beckon softly
through the night to you;
below in the quiet grove,
Come to me, beloved!

The rustle of slender leaf tips whispers
in the moonlight;
Do not fear the evil spying
of the betrayer, my dear.

Do you hear the nightingales call?
Ah, they beckon to you,
With the sweet sound of their singing
they beckon to you for me.

They understand the heart's longing,
know the pain of love,
They calm each tender heart
with their silver tones.

Let them also stir within your breast,
beloved, hear me!
Trembling I wait for you,
Come, please me!

[haydnguy]

Once again the image of the Wanderer, the outcast, inspires in Schubert one of his finest songs. Aufenthalt has the inner compulsion, the restless movement, of the Schulze songs, but with a difference. For there is a certain dignity, a composure even, about the song. The protagonist is still a fugitive from life and society, but he is better able to see his own situation with detachment. The headlong flight has become an orderly retreat, stiffened with the stoic resolve.

Here the dotted rhythms of the voice line are meant to be heard against, not with, the pianist's triplets. In that way they contribute to the inner tension, as well as reflecting the speech rhythm more effectively. The five verses are groupled effectively in a basically ternary form, with a middle section in the relative major.

Aufenthalt

Rauschender Strom,
Brausender Wald,
Starrender Fels
Mein Aufenthalt.

Wie sich die Welle
An Welle reiht,
Fließen die Tränen
Mir ewig erneut.

Hoch in den Kronen
Wogend sich's regt,
So unaufhörlich
Mein Herze schlägt.

Und wie des Felsen
Uraltes Erz,
Ewig derselbe
Bleibet mein Schmerz.



[ame]http://www.classicalmusicforum.net/music/05-Schwanengesang.mp3[/ame]



Dwelling

Rushing torrent,
Howling forest,
Awesome crag,
My dwelling.

Just as each wave
follows upon the last,
My tears flow,
Eternally renewed.

High in the surging
treetops' sway
My heart
beats incessantly;

And, like the ore
within the ancient stone,
My pain remains
unchanged forever.

[haydnguy]

Rellstab's verbal assault, piling phrase on phrase, is far removed from Müller's transparent manner, but the theme might be straight out of Winterreise: the disorientation of the wanderer, the curse that rests on the head of the fugitive from home and homeland. In another mood this theme might have sparked off in Schubert a non-stop piece like Schulze's Im Walde, but here it is the sense of loneliness, of alienation that possesses him, rather than the idea of flight; he turns instinctively to B minor, and to the mood of Einsamkeit.

In der Ferne, is the most deeply felt of the Rellstab songs, as Der Doppelgänger is the most deeply felt of the Heine songs; both are songs of the outcast, songs of alienation akin to madness. And there is something inherently tragic in the solemn alteration of tonic and dominant, and in the obsession with the rise and fall of a semitone which is given such emphasis in the six-bar prelude that it has three quite distinct rhythmic values in that space: the octaves in the pianist's right hand extend over two bars each, the thirds in bars 2 and 4 receive added emphasis from the preceding semiquavers, while the final cadence is extended to two bars. This feature is immediately echoed in the voice line at bar 9.

There is a certain indefinable strangeness about the song which can be felt in the uncomfortable but oddly moving harmonic sequence in bars 17-22. The rhythmic irregularities of the middle section, the persistant juxtaposition of three against four, is sometimes described as an attempt to portray the 'murmuing breezes, curling wavelets, fleeting sunbeams' of the poem. Schubert could do this sort of thing as well as anyone when he wished, but here the effect is rather to produce a sort of rhythmical disorientation analogous perhaps with the wanderer's distraught frame of mind. The emphatic reaffirmation of B minor in the closing bars is like a final slammin gof the door against the fugitive.

In der Ferne

Wehe dem Fliehenden,
Welt hinaus ziehenden! -
Fremde durchmessenden,
Heimat vergessenden,
Mutterhaus hassenden,
Freunde verlassenden
Folget kein Segen, ach!
Auf ihren Wegen nach!

Herze, das sehnende,
Auge, das tränende,
Sehnsucht, nie endende,
Heimwärts sich wendende!
Busen, der wallende,
Klage, verhallende,
Abendstern, blinkender,
Hoffnungslos sinkender!

Lüfte, ihr säuselnden,
Wellen sanft kräuselnden,
Sonnenstrahl, eilender,
Nirgend verweilender:
Die mir mit Schmerze, ach!
Dies treue Herze brach -
Grüßt von dem Fliehenden,
Welt hinaus ziehenden!



[ame]http://www.classicalmusicforum.net/music/06-Schwanengesang.mp3[/ame]



From afar

Woe to the fugitive
who leaves for the world!-
Those who traverse foreign lands,
Forgetting homeland,
Hating the family home,
And abandoning friends,
Have no blessing following
their paths!

The longing heart,
The weeping eye,
And a neverending yearning
Turning towards home!
A heaving bosom,
A moan reverberating,
The flickering evening star,
Sinking hopelessly!

You, sighing breezes,
softly rippling the waves,
rushing sun beam,
never tarrying:
Send to her who, alas, has
Painfully broken this true heart of mine -
Greetings from the fugitive
Torn away from home!

[haydnguy]

Schubert's motor images are analogues, not imitations. The young man who takes his leave in this song is obviously moving off at a brisk trot. But it would be just as difficult to trot in time to this music as to gallop to that of Normans Gesang, or to walk to the steady pacing quavers of Gute Nacht. It is the idea of the trotting horse which is so precisely conveyed byt the insistent staccato quavers and the jog-trot bass, and a very infectious idea it is, like many of Schubert's moto perpetuo rhythms (Auf der Brucke, for instance, another riding song) and likely to keep one awake at night if it stays in the mind.

What is remarkable is that the listener's interest is sustained over nearly 170 bars without rhythmic change or relief. But although the character of the song does not change, the notes do, constantly, and so does the tonality. This 'strophic' setting is not based on a single tune; it is made up like a mosaic of two-bar phrases which are constantly varied and reassembled. Even the refrain - 'Ade!' - is sung in seven different registers in the course of the song. Above all it is the tonal scheme which keeps us constantly on the alert. Every verse begins and ends in E flat major, but the middle verses explore A flat and D flat also, while the last verse quickly moves to E flat minor and C flat (the flattened sixth again) before returning to the tonic.

Abschied

Ade! du muntre, du fröhliche Stadt, ade!
Schon scharret mein Rößlein mit lustigen Fuß;
Jetzt nimm noch den letzten, den scheidenden Gruß.
Du hast mich wohl niemals noch traurig gesehn,
So kann es auch jetzt nicht beim Abschied geschehn.

Ade, ihr Bäume, ihr Gärten so grün, ade!
Nun reit ich am silbernen Strome entlang.
Weit schallend ertönet mein Abschiedsgesang;
Nie habt ihr ein trauriges Lied gehört,
So wird euch auch keines beim Scheiden beschert!

Ade, ihr freundlichen Mägdlein dort, ade!
Was schaut ihr aus blumenumduftetem Haus
Mit schelmischen, lockenden Blicken heraus?
Wie sonst, so grüß ich und schaue mich um,
Doch nimmer wend ich mein Rößlein um.

Ade, liebe Sonne, so gehst du zur Ruh, ade!
Nun schimmert der blinkenden Sterne Gold.
Wie bin ich euch Sternlein am Himmel so hold;
Durchziehn wir die Welt auch weit und breit,
Ihr gebt überall uns das treue Geleit.

Ade! du schimmerndes Fensterlein hell, ade!
Du glänzest so traulich mit dämmerndem Schein
Und ladest so freundlich ins Hüttchen uns ein.
Vorüber, ach, ritt ich so manches Mal,
Und wär es denn heute zum letzten Mal?

Ade, ihr Sterne, verhüllet euch grau! Ade!
Des Fensterlein trübes, verschimmerndes Licht
Ersetzt ihr unzähligen Sterne mir nicht,
Darf ich hier nicht weilen, muß hier vorbei,
Was hilft es, folgt ihr mir noch so treu!



[ame]http://www.classicalmusicforum.net/music/07-Schwanengesang.mp3[/ame]



Farewell

Farewell! You brave, you cheerful city, farewell!
Already my horse trots keen of hoof;
Now make the last, the parting greeting.
You have never seen me sad;
Let it not happen now, on parting.

Farewell! Your trees, your gardens so green, farewell!
Now I ride along the silvery stream
My farewell song echoes far & wide
Never have you heard a sad song,
So I won't give you one on parting.

Farewell! You friendly young maids, farewell!
Why are you looking out of your flower-perfumed house,
with impish, beckoning glances?
How can I but greet them and look around,
But never will I turn my horse round.

Farewell! Dear sun, as you go to bed, farewell!
Now the glittering Star shimmers golden.
How close am I to you, stars in the heavens,
We travel far and wide through this world,
You are always for us a faithful guide.

Farewell! You shimmering window bright, farewell!
You glint so familiar with a dawning light,
And invite us so friendly into the hut,
So many times have I ridden past,
And will today be the last?

Farewell! Stars, envelop yourselves in grey, farewell!
The cloudy, shimmering window light,
Cannot replace, for me, you infinite stars,
I cannot stay here, I must carry on,
What good does it do, you follow me so faithfully.



Note: This is the last of the Rellstab Songs. Next we will begin the Heine Songs.

[micrologus]

Sorry Schubie but I'll add the lyrics tomorrow.

[haydnguy]

No problemo.