The Shepherd on the rock
_Facsimile_W._Dahms,_1913.jpg)
The Shepherd on the Rock ( D 965), for voice, clarinet and piano, is the penultimate composition by Franz Schubert , composed in October / November 1828, based on two poems by Wilhelm Müller and a poem by Karl August Varnhagen von Ense .
History of origin
Via the mediation of her colleague Johann Michael Vogl , the Viennese soprano Anna Pauline Milder-Hauptmann , who is now working in Berlin, contacted Schubert around 1824, and in 1825 then performed several of his songs - Die Forelle , Suleika II and Erlkönig - in Berlin and asked him to do both to compose an opera as well as songs suitable for them. She let him know through intermediaries that she was particularly concerned by a large multi-part vocal scene, with her as a model of greeting to the Switzerland of Carl Blum served, which in turn was referring directly to one of her most popular roles that Emmeline in Joseph Weigl Swiss family , a Singspiel that Schubert had got to know as a child, on one of his first ever visit to the opera. Anna Milder-Hauptmann suggested various poetry texts to Schubert for her commissioned composition, some of which her sister Jeanette Bürde had already set to music.
Only after several inquiries from the singer, for example in the fall of 1828 from Ignaz Franz von Mosel , did Schubert decide to take up the idea of the scene. The result was a composition lasting about 12 minutes for voice (soprano, also boy soprano or tenor), obbligato clarinet (in the first edition alternatively cello) and piano. Schubert seems to have chosen the title himself, and he took the text from those editions of poems by Wilhelm Müller ( poems from the papers left behind by a traveling French horn player , Vols. 1 & 2, Dessau 1826), to which he also owed the texts on the beautiful Müllerin and Winterreise , as well as the mixed poems by Karl August Varnhagen von Ense (Heidelberg 1816).
Performance history
The first performance by the client Milder, who received a copy of the setting from Schubert's brother Ferdinand in 1829, took place on February 10, 1830 in the House of the Blackheads in Riga . This was followed by premieres on March 21st in Vienna (by Caroline Acht) and on December 14th in Berlin (by Milder-Hauptmann).
Recordings are made by Arleen Augér , Elly Ameling , Isobel Baillie , Kathleen Battle , Erna Berger , Barbara Bonney , Helen Donath , Helena Dearing, Wilma Driessen, Gabriele Fontana , Agnes Giebel , Ria Ginster , Edita Gruberová , Barbara Hendricks , Gundula Janowitz , Aline Kutan, Dame Felicity Lott , Christa Ludwig , Ann Mackay, Edith Mathis , Akiko Nakajima , Sandrine Piau , Dame Margaret Price , Lan Rao, Anna Lucia Richter, Margaret Ritchie , Sibylla Rubens , Lynda Russell, Lotte Schöne , Elisabeth Schumann , Maria Stader , Rita Streich , Ailish Tynan, Benita Valente , Maria Venuti and Edith Wiens as well as the boy sopranos Max Emanuel Cenčić and Bejun Mehta .
Text templates and form
The song is divided into three longer sections. First, in B flat major, after a detailed prelude to the instruments, elegiac sounds are played as a piano-accompanied duet between the shepherd and his shawm - text from Wilhelm Müller's poem Der Berghirt :
When I stand on the highest rock,
look down into the deep valley,
And sing.
Far from the deep, dark valley
, the echo of
The cleft swings up .
The further my voice penetrates,
the brighter it sounds to me again
From below.
My love lives so far from me, that's
why I long for her so hot
.
This is followed by a contrasting, resigned middle section in G minor, modulating via A flat major, A minor to G major - text from Varnhagen's poem Romance or Nocturnal Sound :
I consume myself in deep sorrow, I have lost my
joy,
On earth my hope has given way,
I am so lonely here.
The song sounded so longing in the forest,
So longing it sounded through the night,
The hearts are drawn to heaven
With wonderful power.
Finally, this penultimate composition by Schubert ends with an atypical virtuoso cabaletta again in B flat major - text from Wilhelm Müller's poem Love Thoughts :
Spring wants to come,
spring, my friends,
now I'm
getting ready to go hiking.
Audio sample
- "The Shepherd on the rock". Montserrat Alavedra i Comas (soprano), William McColl (clarinet: Mollenhauer, Fulda, 1820–1830) and Joseph Levine (piano)
literature
- Andreas Mayer : "Gluck's moaning" and "Welsches Larifari" Anna Milder, Franz Schubert and the German-Italian opera war. In: Archives for Musicology . 52, 1995, pp. 171-204.
- Hans Joachim Kreutzer : Singing Scenes. Unpredictable remarks on Schubert's interpretation of the song. In: Society for the Promotion of the Munich Opera Festival (Hrsg.): Oper aktuell. The Bavarian State Opera 2003/2004. Munich 2003, p. 114 ff.
- Christian Ahrens: Schubert's “The Shepherd on the Rock” D 965 - song, aria or 'duet'? In: Schubert: Perspectives. 5, 2005, pp. 162-182.
- Till Gerrit Waidelich: "The last breath in the song escapes, in the song the heart escapes!" - Varnhagen's nocturnal sound as the last building block to the shepherd on the rock . In: Schubert: Perspectives. 8, issue 2, 2008, pp. 237-243.
Web link
Individual evidence
- ↑ The fact that Helmina von Chézy is repeatedly mistakenly named as the author of these verses goes back to Gustav Nottebohm's Schubert catalog raisonné (1874), in which he ascribed the entire text to her. However, when Müller became known as the author of the text and only eight verses were not proven in his case, the thesis was held without further evidence that Chézy had been involved in the drafting of the text. See M. u. L. Schochow: Franz Schubert. The texts of his unanimously composed songs and their poets , Hildesheim 1974, vol. 2, p. 410ff. Schubert himself was also considered as the author of the eight verses: Friedrich Dieckmann's thesis was roughly: "Schubert himself writes the verses and inserts them [...] into Wilhelm Müller's stanzas: [...]". See his essay "Nachthelle. Figures of consent in Schubert's work", in: F. Dieckmann, Die Freiheit a moment. Texts from four decades. Theater der Zeit (= literature forum in the Brecht-Haus. Research 10) , Berlin 2002, p. 71.
- ↑ Later she performed both works in the same concert, cf. Till Gerrit Waidelich: Franz Schubert. Documents 1817–1830 (Tutzing 1993) or the commentary volume by Ernst Hilmar (Tutzing 2003), Doc. 777a.
- ↑ Till Gerrit Waidelich: On the reception history of Joseph Weigl's “Swiss Family” in Biedermeier and Vormärz . In: Schubert: Perspektiven , 2, 2002, ibid on A. Milder and the "Hirt" pp. 208–232.
- ↑ Franz Schubert. Documents 1817-1830 (Tutzing 1993) and commentary volume (Tutzing 2003), Doc. 777, 783, 784a, 785.
- ↑ As a romance . In: LA v. Chamisso , KA Varnhagen (Ed.): Musenalmanach for the year 1804 . Leipzig 1804, p. 60 f. As nocturnal sound . In: Mixed poems by KA Varnhagen von Ense . Volume 1, Frankfurt a. M. 1816, p. 15 f.
- ↑ Till Gerrit Waidelich: Anna Milder-Hauptmann and The Shepherd on the Rock . In: Schubert 200. Catalog of the exhibition at Achberg Castle […] , Heidelberg 1997, pp. 165–167 (with facsimile).
- ↑ Franz Schubert. Documents 1817-1830 (Tutzing 1993), Doc. 768, 769, 787, 789, 790, 791.
- ↑ books.google.de
- ↑ books.google.de
- ↑ books.google.de