Die Forelle

In his short life, Franz Schubert (1797-1828) composed hundreds of beloved lieder, the genre of voice-piano song that he brought to its finest development. There seems to have been something in his personality that gravitated in a unique way to the trite, melancholic poetry of his contemporaries, for he used music in a way that makes the words far more potent than they appear on the page. Consider “Auf dem Wasser zu singen,” written in [year]. Schubert evokes running—better still, falling—water in the slightly ominous cascades of notes that run all through the song. He lengthens the vocal part for one pivotal word in each of the three stanzas (for instance, atmet/breathing or selber/[I] alone). That sustained note works like a distraction, allowing the piano accompaniment underneath to make the all-important expressive turn from minor to major without our noticing. This detail allows the song to project a mostly darker mood, yet end with a small ray of hope for a better future.
At the end of tonight’s concert we will hear Schubert’s most popular chamber work, the “Trout” Quintet. Its nickname derives from Schubert’s use of his own song, “Die Forelle” (The Trout), as the basis for variations in the fourth movement. The song was written in 1817 to a text by C. F. D. Schubart. It abounds in sunny images of the fish’s carefree existence, which Schubert depicts in effervescent rising gestures in the piano. But you must know that the fish’s days are numbered:


In einem Bächlein helle,
Da schoß in froher Eil
Die launige Forelle
Vorüber wie ein Pfeil.
Ich stand an dem Gestade
Und sah in süßer Ruh
Des muntern Fisches Bade
Im klaren Bächlein zu.
Across a clear brook gentle,
There shot in eager haste
The trout, so temp’ramental;
Quite arrow-like it raced.
I on the shore was gazing
And watched the brook disclose
The merry fish’s bathing
To me in sweet repose.

(c) Jason Stell