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.

Theodor Körner has often been called the Rupert Brooke of his generation. He was only six years older than Schubert; young enough still to appear something of a contemporary, precocious and daredevil enough to inspire the teenage composer to a type of hero worship. Körner came from a literary family in Dresden; his father was an intimate friend of Schiller, no less. The young hothead was sent down from Leipzig University in 1811 for fighting in a duel. He moved to Vienna where one of his tragedies was put on at the Theater an der Wien and he became at nineteen the house dramatist of the Burgtheater. At this time, Josef von Spaun took Schubert (very much his protégé in those early years) to the opera to see Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride: "As we left the theatre we met the poet Körner with whom I was on very friendly terms. I presented the little composer to him, of whom he had already heard a certain amount from me. He was glad to make his acquaintance and encouraged Schubert to live for art, which would make him happy."

Later that evening in a restaurant Körner and Schubert almost got involved in a brawl in defence of the singers Milder and Vogl who were being insultingly discussed at the next table. Like the young Schumann's one encounter with Heine, this evening together was sufficient to make the composer fall under the spell of the poet. On that night in Spaun's and Körner's company, Schubert must have felt very much an artist, part of a community with shared ideals. His determination to resist parental pressure to stay in schoolteaching was strengthened by the youg poet's advice. Körner was killed in action at Gadebusch, a skirmish in the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon, in August 1813. He left five tragedies, five comedies, short stories and much poetry including the patriotic poems Leyer und Schwert, the impact and popularity of which were much enhanced by the manner of his death.

Goethe's play Egmont (completed in 1787) is a stirring tale set in Brussels in the time of the Counter-Reformation. It concerns the eponymous hero's attempts to secure for his beleaguered people a measure of religious toleration from the Spanish, at that time masters of Flanders. Klärchen, a girl of tough and independent spirit, and something of a tomboy, is Egmont's beloved; when he is sentenced to die at the end of the play, she poisons herself, but not before putting up a fight and attempting to stir the people to rebel on Egmont's behalf. This poem has fascinated a number of composers: Reichardt and Beethoven before Schubert, and Franz Liszt (in three settings) after him. The Beethoven version, which goes with Klärchen's other song in Egmont, Die Trommel gerühret, is a more dramatic affair and was obviously meant to be used on the stage. Unlike the Beethoven and Liszt settings, this little song disdains to repeat words to elongate the musical structure; it is thus over in a flash. But it is nevertheless full of weighty feeling, attempting to depict and paint each of the emotive adjectives by means of diminished sevenths and German sixths. In the second half of the song, Schubert reminds us that he has not forgotten the play's military background. On the word's 'glücklich allein' we hear, in strident triplet fanfare, Klärchen's strength and determination. The postlude seems to be the composer's own more gentle and rueful meditation on the import of the words. There is also just a hint of a muffled drum in the pianist's left hand, a ghostly suggestion of a setting of Die Trommel gerühret which was never to be.

Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schubert)

Although originally composed for Voice and Piano, I created this Interpretation of "Die Liebe" (Love D.210) for Flute & Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).