Der Strom

We begin this evening with a selection of Schubert’s lieder; he composed nearly 600. The subject of “Der Strom” (The River), an anonymous text which Schubert himself may have written, is a recurrent one in his song settings. He employs a continuous 16th-note accompaniment pattern to suggest the agitation and inexorability of the river’s motion. Apart from the expected text painting at “up” and “down,” Schubert uses more deeper tonal means to capture the emotion of the text. He modulates from the tonic D minor to F major for the central stanza dealing with things “rühig” (restful, calm) and then returns to the minor, spiced with chromaticism, as the critical “doch” (but…) leads back to the protagonist’s frustrated search for contentment (read, requited love).

(c) Jason Stell