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.

"Im Frühling" (In the Spring D.882) is one of the best-loved of the Schubert songs. If Ernst Schulze had penned nothing else, his posthumous reputation would be ensured (at least as far as musicians are concerned) as the poet of Im Frühling. The poem was written 'On 31 March 1815', two years after Schulze had begun to set his sights on Adelheid Tychsen. In 1813 the two had gone for a walk by a mountainside lake in which many of the song's background conditions prevailed—'deep in the dark rocky stream the sky … and her reflection in that sky.' When he wrote this poem in 1815 Schulze was going through a phase when he believed that he still had some hope of winning Adelheid. He does not claim here that she reciprocated his passion; strictly speaking it is only he who is 'so tender, so close' in the second verse. We do not notice this detail at first; we assume the two to be lovers, and we are meant to. As far as the reader is concerned, Schulze is not beyond being economical with the truth. It was ambiguities of this kind which enabled Bouterwek to construct a completely fictitious scenario for the Poetisches Tagebuch in which the poet's Muse was a dead 'fiancée' (Cäcilie Tychsen) and in which mention of Adelheid (who was still alive at the time) was more or less suppressed.

Memory and nostalgia for past moments of happiness ('alte unnennbare Tage', 'old unnameable days' Mörike called them in his 'Im Frühling') is one of the trickiest of ideas to turn into art. To revisit a place where one has been happy with someone else stirs mixed emotion: 'Halb ist es Lust, halb ist es Klage' ('half pleasure, half lament') as Mörike also wrote. There is much that has changed, but there are certain constants that have not. One can never step into the same stream twice, but the river banks look the same even if much water has gone under the bridge. The vocal line of Im Frühling is subtly modified strophe by strophe, but this is nothing new in Schubert's output. The accompaniment however here has a life of its own, and it was a stroke of genius on the composer's part to call on a form he used only once in his songs, that of theme and variations. What could be more perfect to express the concept of 'the same, yet not the same'?.

Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im_Fr%C3%BChling)

Although originally composed for Voice & Piano, I created this Interpretation of the "Im Frühling" (In the Spring D.882) for Flute & Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).