Recording: Ian Bostridge & Julius Drake (with animation)
Score: From IMSLP
Text: Available on Wikisource
Lecture points
Review sheet for Schubert and Erlkönig
Romanticism
- a reaction to the Industrial revolution, French revolution
- discomfort with European power, ideals, restlessness
- bad: everything rational, orderly
- good: nature, intuition, emotion
- led to nationalism, liberalism, extremism, individualism
- role in music: spontaneity (impromptu), affect (program music, new textures/timbres)
Schubert
- self-employed as a teacher with income from publishing songs
- part of attempt to create German opera to compete with dominant Italian opera
- did not achieve much fame or wealth
- brief life, likely died of syphilis (similar to Chopin)
- left a number of unfinished works
Lieder
- Schiller, Goethe, and the rise of German literature (nationalism)
- lied – “song” in German, referring to a genre called art song (plural lieder)
- influence from folk song, reaction to the artifice of Italian opera
- domestic music for middle class: publishing, piano, and homes
Erlkönig
- Schubert’s “opus 1”
- durchkomponiert (through-composed) versus strophic, modified strophic
- contrast with Johann Friedrich Reichardt’s setting (strophic)
- father = low tessitura, son = high tessitura, erlking = ppp and different accompaniment, horse = piano