SchubertFranz Peter Schubert (January 31, 1797 – November 19, 1828) was an Austrian composer.
Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous "Unfinished Symphony"), liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. Appreciation of his music during his lifetime was limited, but interest in Schubert's work increased dramatically in the decades following his death at the age of 31. Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn, among others, discovered and championed his works in the 19th Century. Today, Schubert is admired as one of the leading exponents of the early Romantic era in music and he remains one of the most frequently performed composers.
1823 and 1824 were hard years for Schubert. For much of 1823 he was sick with an outburst of tertiary stage syphillis, and in May had to be hospitalized. He was broke: he had entered into a disastrous deal with Diabelli to publish a batch of works, and received almost no payment; and his latest attempt at opera, Fierabras, was a flop. In a letter to a friend, he wrote,
"Think of a man whose health can never be restored, and who from sheer despair makes matters worse instead of better. Think, I say, of a man whose brightest hopes have come to nothing, to whom love and friendship are but torture, and whose enthusiasm for the beautiful is fast vanishing; and ask yourself if such a man is not truly unhappy."
Danse Macabre
Dance of Death is an artistic genre of late-medieval allegory on the universality of death: no matter one's station in life, the Dance of Death unites all. The Danse Macabre consists of the dead or personified Death summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave, typically with a pope, emperor, king, child, and labourer. They were produced to remind people of the fragility of their lives and how vain were the glories of earthly life. Its origins are postulated from illustrated sermon texts; the earliest recorded visual scheme was a now lost mural in the Saints Innocents Cemetery in Paris dating from 1424-25.
Das Lied
Der Tod und das Mädchen (February 1817, published by Cappi und Diabelli in Vienna in November 1821 as Op 7 No 3), Death and the Maiden in English, is a lied composed by Franz Schubert. The text is derived from a poem written by German poet Matthias Claudius. The song is set for voice and piano.
The piece begins with an introduction in D minor; the first eight bars in the time signature 2/2. Both hands play chords. The section is quiet (pianissimo) and slow (mäßig), and presents the musical theme of Death.
The Maiden enters in the ninth bar on an anacrusis. This section is more agitated than the first; it is marked piano and "somewhat faster" (etwas geschwinder). The melody gradually increases in pitch, chromatically at points. The piano accompaniment is syncopated, playing chords of quavers alternating in the left and right hand. A diminished chord in the first bar of the third line (ich bin noch jung) creates an eerie mood. In the eighth bar of the maiden's song, on the word rühre ("touch"), the quavers stop and the rhythm of the opening section returns. Then an imperfect cadence leads to a rest with fermata. This brings the second section to a total of 13 bars in length.
The third and final section is Death's song. The music returns to the tempo and dynamics of the introduction. Death's melody has a narrow pitch range (save for the very last note where the singer has the option of dropping to D below the melody line). The key modulates to F major, the relative major of D minor. With the last syllable of Death's song, the key changes into D-major. The coda is almost a repeat of the introduction, except it is shortened by one bar and is now in the major key.
The Maiden:
Pass me by! Oh, pass me by!
Go, fierce man of bones!
I am still young! Go, rather,
And do not touch me.
And do not touch me.
Death:
Give me your hand, you beautiful and tender form!
I am a friend, and come not to punish.
Be of good cheer! I am not fierce,
Softly shall you sleep in my arms!
Quartet No.14
The String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, known as Death and the Maiden, by Franz Schubert, is one of the pillars of the chamber music repertoire. Composed in 1824, after the composer suffered through a serious illness and realized that he was dying, it is Schubert's testament to death. The quartet is named for the theme of the second movement, which Schubert took from a song he wrote in 1817 of the same title; but the theme of death is palpable in all four movements of the quartet.
So strong is the association of death with the quartet that some analysts consider it to be programatic, rather than absolute music. "The first movement of Schubert's Death and the Maiden String Quartet can be interpreted in a quasi-programmatic fashion, even though it is usually viewed as an abstract work," writes Deborah Kessler.
The quartet has four movements:
1. Allegro, in D minor and common time
2. Andante con moto, in G minor and divided common (2/2) time
3. Scherzo: Allegro molto, in D minor and 3/4 time
4. Presto, in D minor and 6/8 time
First movement: Allegro
In the 14-measure introduction, Schubert establishes the elements that will carry through the entire quartet. The quartet begins with a unison D, played fortissimo, and a triplet figure, that establishes the triplet motif. Three and a half measures of fortissimo break off into a sudden, pianissimo chorale, the first of the many violent shifts of mood that occur throughout.
Second movement: Andante con moto
The second movement is a theme and five variations, based on the theme from the Schubert Lied. The theme is like a death march in G minor, ending on a G major chord. Throughout the movement, Schubert does not deviate from the basic harmonic and sentence structure of the 24-measure theme. But each variation expresses a profoundly different emotion.
Third movement: Scherzo Allegro molto
Cobbett describes the third movement as the "dance of the demon fiddler". There is indeed something demonic in this fast-paced scherzo, full of syncopations and, like the other movements, dramatic leaps from fortissimo to pianissimo.
Fourth movement: Presto
The finale of the quartet is a tarantella in rondo-sonata form, in D minor. The tarantella is a breakneck Italian dance in 6/8 time, that, according to tradition, was a treatment for madness and convulsions brought on by the bite of a tarantula spider. Appropriately, Cobbett calls this movement "a dance of death."
Analysis of Second Movement: Andante Con Moto
In the first variation, a lilting violin descant floats above the theme, played in pulsing triplets in the second violin and viola that recall the triplets of the first movement.
In the second variation, the cello carries the theme, with the first violin playing the pulsating role - this time in sixteenth notes. After two relaxed variations, the third variation returns to the sturm und drang character of the overall piece: a galloping fortissimo figure breaks off suddenly into piano; the violin plays a variant of the theme in a high register, while the inner voices continue the gallop.
The fourth variation is again lyrical, with the viola carrying the melody under a long violin line in triplets. This is the only variation in a major key - G major.
In the fifth variation, the second violin takes up the theme, while the first violin plays a sixteenth-note arpegiated motif, with the cello playing the triplets in the bass. The variation grows from pianissimo to fortissimo, then again fades and slows in pace, finally returning to a restatement of the theme - this time in G major.
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