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.
"Die Forelle" (German for "The Trout"), Op. 32, D 550.
is a lied, or song, composed in early 1817 for solo
voice and piano with music by the Austrian composer
Franz Schubert (1797–1828). Schubert chose to set the
text of a poem by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart,
first published in the Schwäbischer Musenalmanach in
1783. The full poem tells the story of a trout being
caught by a fisherman, but in its final stanza reveals
its purpose as a moral piece warning young women to
guard against young men. When Schubert set the poem to
music, he removed the last verse, which contained the
moral, changing the song's focus and enabling it to be
sung by male or female singers. Schubert produced six
subsequent copies of the work, all with minor
variations.
Schubert wrote "Die Forelle" in the single key of
D-flat major with a varied (or modified) strophic form.
The first two verses have the same structure but change
for the final verse to give a musical impression of the
trout being caught. In the Deutsch catalogue of
Schubert's works it is number 550, or D. 550. The
musicologist Marjorie Wing Hirsch describes its type in
the Schubert lieder as a "lyrical song with admixtures
of dramatic traits". The song was popular with
contemporary audiences, which led to Schubert being
commissioned to write a piece of chamber music based on
the song. This commission resulted in the Trout Quintet
(D. 667), in which a set of variations of "Die Forelle"
are present in the fourth movement.
The lyrics of the lied are from a poem by Christian
Friedrich Daniel Schubart. Opinion is divided on his
abilities: The Musical Times considers him to be "one
of the feeblest poets" whose work was used by Schubert,
and comments that he "was content with versifying
pretty ideas", while the singer and author Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau considered Schubart to be "a very
talented poet, musician and orator". Schubart wrote
"Die Forelle" in 1782, while imprisoned in the fortress
of Hohenasperg; he was a prisoner there from 1777 to
1787 for insulting the mistress of Charles Eugene, Duke
of Württemberg. The poem was published in the
Schwäbischer Musenalmanach of 1783, consisting of four
stanzas.
The Schubert scholar John Reed thought the poem to be
"sentimental" and "feeble", with the final stanza of
the poem consisting of a "smug moral" that "pointedly
advises young girls to be on their guard against young
men with rods". The academic Thomas Kramer observes
that "Die Forelle" is "somewhat unusual with its
mock-naive pretense of being about a bona fide fish",
whereas he describes it as "a sexual parable".
Fischer-Dieskau saw the poem as "didactic ... with its
Baroque moral". Schubert did not set this final stanza,
however, and instead concentrated on a person's
observation of the trout and the reaction to its being
caught by a fisherman.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Forelle)
Although originally composed for Voice and Piano, I
created this Interpretation of "Die Forelle" (The Trout
D.550 Op. 32) for Flute & Strings (2 Violins, Viola &
Cello).