Franz Peter Schubert (1797 – 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short life, Schubert left behind a vast oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works (mainly lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music, and a large body of piano and chamber music. His major works include the art song "Erlkönig", the Piano Trout Quintet in A major, the unfinished Symphony No. 8 in B minor, the "Great" Symphony No. 9 in C major, a String Quintet, the three last piano sonatas, the opera Fierrabras, the incidental music to the play Rosamunde, and the song cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. He was remarkably prolific, writing over 1,500 works in his short career. His compositional style progressed rapidly throughout his short life. The largest number of his compositions are songs for solo voice and piano (roughly 630).

This is another oriental evocation from Rückert’s Östliche Rosen. In reading this text about an old man who is still capable of summoning all his memories of love, it is impossible not to think of the semi-autobiographical character that the ageing Goethe created in his West-Östlicher Divan: Hatem the potentate who, despite the fullness of his years, was the mentor and ardent lover of Suleika. There is something about a white-headed sage which suggests eastern wisdom, and something about his pronouncements on life and love, as Schubert sets them at least, which calls for a certain musical weight. Thus there could be no better voice for this character than the bass with its ripe and rumbling tessitura. (Wolf on the other hand casts Hatem as a tenor). Greisengesang is accordingly written in the bass clef, although the Peters Edition, following the first edition rather than the autographs, prints it in the treble.

The opening vocal melody is determined without being exactly agile. This tune is accompanied in octave unisons in the lower reaches of the piano which expand into unusually low-lying harmonies at the end of the phrase. This unison device is prophetic of another celebrated Schubert song about an old man—Totengräbers Heimwehe from 1825. In the middle of that song there is a similar shape to the vocal line (also accompanied in octaves between the hands in a similar tessitura) with the words ‘Von allen verlassen, dem Tod nur verwandt’ (By all forsaken, kin to death alone). This is near enough to Greisengesang with its imagery of frost and winter, and the final season of a man’s life, for us to see the parallels in the composer’s unique language of tonal analogues. Here it is not the words themselves which summon the similar music, but the situations, as well as the ages of the protagonists at the edge of the grave. Such portentous unisons represent the inexorable workings of fate, loneliness, and perhaps more mundanely, the creaking of old limbs,. We also hear traces of this ominous music in the first movement of the A minor Piano Sonata D845 (also 1825). In the case of Greisengesang such dark doubts are only set up to be knocked down.

Source: Hyperion (https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dw.asp?dc=W1744_GBA JY0003507)

Although originally composed for Voice & Piano, I created this Interpretation of "Greisengesang" (Song of old age D.778 Op. 60 No. 1) for Flute & Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).