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).
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).