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).

There is nothing quite like this song elsewhere in the Schubert repertory, but there are three other songs it brings to mind, all of them based on a similar rhythmical figure (either a dotted crotchet and three quavers in a 3/4 bar, or three quavers as an upbeat to a dotted crotchet, also in 3/4): Suleika I (Vol 19), one of Schubert’s greatest romantic songs, where the two lovers are separated by distance; Abendstern (Vol 6) where the star of love stays apart, alienated from its companions; and Fülle der Liebe (Vol 27) which is love transfigured by suffering into something grandly religious. It seems that this rhythm came to mind, as far as Schubert was concerned, when a text spoke of suffering for love, or of surmounting the obstacles of passion where love, in some guise or other, triumphs despite all. Du liebst mich nicht is the dark side of this triumph, the tortured survival of love despite a lack of reciprocation.

If Schubert displayed a deep understanding of Platen’s nature in Die Liebe hat gelogen, he seems to have grasped the significance of Du liebst mich nicht in an even more astonishing way. As in Die Liebe hat gelogen there is a scrupulous avoidance of any pronoun to fix the sex of the object of affection. The diary entries concerning the poet’s love for his ‘Adrast’ (which Schubert could not have possibly known) display a similar self-lacerating tone of abandonment, loneliness and inner turmoil. Despite the fact that Capell dismisses this poem as written to a formula, and states that the poet is only interested in metrical virtuosity, this is a love poem unlike others, which the composer turns into music unlike any other. The meaningful and lengthened setting of ‘Narzissen’ in the poem’s last line, an unlikely climactic point for an impassioned fortissimo if taken at face value, shows a classicist’s understanding of the background to the flower’s name: ‘A Grecian lad, as I hear tell, One that many loved in vain, Looked into a forest well And never looked away again’, as A E Housman put it and as Butterworth and Ireland set it. In the outburst at the floral display, culminating with the narcissus, the poet dismisses these flowers; the man he has loved is irreplaceable, and a new flowery youth will not do. This emphasis on the narcissus, the flower of male beauty, is even more marked in Schubert’s musical reaction than in Platen’s poem. The nearest relation of this song is Abendstern, which may also be interpreted as the isolated plaint of the homosexual from his fellows, particularly when the object of his passion is unavailable to him. In any case, there is in Du liebst mich nicht a tension, a sense of panic, and a hopelessness which speaks of a secret world, and a dangerous one, of fantasy and misplaced hope. Many people knew how Johann Winckelmann had been murdered in 1768 by an Italian pick-up, and Platen wrote an eloquent sonnet in honour of the great art historian. In setting these two poems the composer has somehow entered the poet’s world with unerring accuracy, leaving us a searing musical portrait of a great German poet.

Source: Hyperion(https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dw.asp?dc=W 1860_GBAJY9602813)

Although originally composed for Voice & Piano, I created this Interpretation of "Du liebst mich nicht" (My heart is torn, you don't love me! D.756 Op. 59 No. 1) for Flute & Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).