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...(+)
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). Schubert also composed a considerable
number of secular works for two or more voices, namely
part songs, choruses and cantatas. He completed eight
orchestral overtures and seven complete symphonies, in
addition to fragments of six others. While he composed
no concertos, he did write three concertante works for
violin and orchestra. Schubert wrote a large body of
music for solo piano, including eleven incontrovertibly
completed sonatas and at least eleven more in varying
states of completion, numerous miscellaneous works and
many short dances, in addition to producing a large set
of works for piano four hands. He also wrote over fifty
chamber works, including some fragmentary works.
Schubert's sacred output includes seven masses, one
oratorio and one requiem, among other mass movements
and numerous smaller compositions. He completed only
eleven of his twenty stage works.
"Der Zwerg" (The Dwarf) D.771 Op. 22 No.1, is a lied
(or ballad) for voice and piano by Franz Schubert,
written in 1823 on a text by Matthäus von Collin. The
poem is in terza rima. In Otto Erich Deutsch's
catalogue of Schubert's works. The singer sings in
three different voices: the Dwarf, his mistress the
Queen (whom the Dwarf strangles with a red silk scarf
in the song), and the narrator.
Surely all the work that Schubert did on gruesome
Gothic ballads in his youth finds its final and most
refined expression in this song, a subtle and
understated apotheosis of the horror genre, which
manages to be more chilling in its insistence on the
colours of the half-light. The key is A minor, but the
rhythmic impetus is that of two of Schubert's
celebrated B minor works, the 'Unfinished' Symphony and
the first Suleika song. The spirit of Beethoven,
brandishing the rhythm of the fate motif from the C
minor Symphony, animates the pianist's left hand. The
atmosphere of Verse 1 is heavy and oppressively hushed.
The narrator places the two protagonists, the queen and
her dwarf, on the open sea at twilight. The interlude
immediately after the word 'Zwerge' requires the
pianist's right hand to sidle awkwardly across the
keyboard, the left hand supplying misshapen accents.
The description of the queen (2) is as pure as the
heavens, her address to the stars (3) turns the musical
tension's screw up to C minor; she is passively
fatalistic, transfixed by astrological predictions of
her doom. The dwarf's three verses (4 - 6) slump back
into B minor and are governed by a grotesquely hobbling
motif—obsequious, shifty, merciless—in the
pianist's left hand. This is eerily prophetic of Wagner
and this dwarf is surely the grandfather of Alberich.
Schubert's favourite change from A minor to A major is
used to very special effect at the beginning of 7. All
the romantic longing of its familiar usage is turned on
its head as surely as the roles of master and servant
have been reversed in the scenario. Although the queen
weeps and pleads, the composer looks deeper into her
deranged mind: a kind of masochistic joy, sickly sweet
in the major key, seeps into the music's fabric. Her
plight is self-inflicted; she is a lost soul caught up
with the dwarf in a perverted game, with fatal
consequences. The murder is accomplished in the middle
of her last speech (8); there is a sudden high leap of
strangled terror in the voice part on the words 'sie
sagt's', and the silk chord is pulled tight. Everything
stops save a tremolando on a single note; life drains
out of the music. The dwarf looks balefully at the
body, and the fate motif of diminished fourths in the
bass shows the stars' prophesies to have been
fulfilled. A terrifying restatement of the dwarf's
grotesque motif, this time in strident octaves, the
loudest music in the piece, shows him still in the grip
of a violent, festering passion. Is he villain or
victim? Was Peter Grimes a murderer? The two misfits
share a fate which brings both their eponymous works
full circle: they sink their own boats, leaving behind
the same empty seascapes with which their respective
dramas have begun. Der Zwerg compresses operatic form
into a few concentrated pages; it is a distillation of
genius.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Zwerg_(Schubert))
Although originally composed for Voice and Piano, I
created this Interpretation of the "Der Zwerg" (The
Dwarf D.771 Op. 22 No.1) for Flute & Strings (2
Violins, Viola & Cello).
PARTITION