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.
"Wehmut" (Melancholy) D.772 Op. 22 No. 2, is described
as an expression of grief containing the whole
greatness and unaffected simplicity of Schubert in a
nutshell. The work is only a page long but it has the
stature and grandeur of a much longer song, so much is
packed into its tiny span. The key to it all is the
ambiguity between 'wohl' and 'weh', between major and
minor, the transient joy which brings tears. Spring was
always a poignant season for Schubert (one has only to
think of his Im Frühling and Frühlingsglaube for
illustrations of the happiness tinged with
melancholy—never self-pity—which is so
characteristic of him). The drama and poignancy of the
world's re-birth (and to what purpose?—it will all
soon die again) is amply foreshadowed by the piano's
two bars of weighty introduction; the voice enters over
a repeat of these same harmonies. The tug of the
unquiet heart, both happy and sad, pervades the song
until the ravishing modulation into F sharp major on
the word `Sch”nheit' floods the picture with the glow
of the irresistible beauties of the here-and-now. The
spread chords played by the open hand suggest to me
both the impulse of wanting to embrace physically these
meadows, and the inability to do so. The music then
begins to shiver in muted tremolando, inspired
obviously enough by the wind in the poem, but on
another level, deeper than tremor or earthquake: what
is really happening is a sea-change of perception. As
ever, Schubert is the master of unleashing a
tempestuous middle section (time after time in slow
movements of sonatas we find this technique used to
devastating effect) which leaves the reprise subtly yet
irrevocably altered by what has been learned in the
storm. What starts out as a repeat of the opening
musical idea is suddenly different at the second time
the word 'entschwindet' appears (the fall of the bass
line is but part of the magic musical formula which
somehow conveys acceptance and humility before the
forces of nature). This is followed by the wide-open
spaces of the inexorable concluding semibreves. The
hushed void of Meeres Stille (Volume 1) comes to mind,
and the same feeling of mankind adrift within a
boundless destiny beyond his control. The change from
major to minor underneath the first appearance of the
word 'vergeht' takes all the colour from life, and
drains the memory of nature's beauty. The second
'vergeht', and the bleak jump of a downward fifth,
returns mankind to the arms of nescience.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehmut_(Schubert))
Although originally composed for Voice and Piano, I
created this Interpretation of the "Wehmut" (Melancholy
D.772 Op. 22 No. 2) for Flute & Strings (2 Violins,
Viola & Cello).