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Track(s) taken from CDJ33034

Die Einsiedelei, D563

First line:
Es rieselt, klar und wehend
composer
May 1817; first published in 1885 in Peters Vol 7 (Friedländer)
author of text

Philip Langridge (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)
Recording details: January 1999
Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, Hampstead, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell & Julian Millard
Release date: January 2000
Total duration: 1 minutes 41 seconds
 

Reviews

‘A feast of finely wrought, intelligent interpretations … the readings make an indelible impression’ (Gramophone)

‘This disc is a must for any serious Schubert collector, its pleasures enhanced by Graham Johnson's observant accompaniments and his copious notes, dazzling as ever in their erudition, wit and range of illusion’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Excellent’ (International Record Review)

‘Exciting—some great songs and some wonderful singing’ (Classic CD)

‘Treasures indeed’ (Hi-Fi News)

‘A delightful recital’ (BBC CD Review)
This is a gentle little song dating from the same period as the setting of Das Grab. It was during this period in 1817 that Schubert revisited some of the Salis-Seewis texts which had been set, not always to his satisfaction, the year before. It is not certain when the first solo setting of Die Einsiedelei (D393, sung in Volume 17 of the Schubert Edition by Lucia Popp) was composed; it probably dates from the first phase of Schubert’s engagement with the poetry of Salis-Seewis, thus March 1816, or a few months before. That work, with its merry and extrovert cascading introduction in descending triplets, is a charming water-song, but the drawback is that water only features in the poem’s opening lines. A year later Schubert probably realised that this setting was rather too bubbly for the mood of the poem as a whole.

The setting recorded here is also simple (actually, rather simpler than D393). It is also more serious in tone, though far from earnest. It is clear that the poet rejoices in his solitary life and is happy to remain on his own; but the overall feeling is rather more contemplative and subdued than a chipper declaration of independence might suggest. The first setting is in a clear and sparkling A major, but here there is an ambivalence of tonality: the opening bar of music (‘Es rieselt, klar und’) is in A minor and we reach the home key of C major only at the second full bar, on ‘wehend’. The whole song is written for a string quartet texture where the first violin takes the vocal line, the second the piano’s right hand, and the cello the left-hand bass. At the heart of the music, buried within the crotchets and quavers of melody and harmony, there is a line, in gentle and sinuous semiquavers, which might have been written for a viola. This is the gentle stream which signifies more than water music; here we have the purling flow of the inner life, and the happy contentment which results from an existence given over to nature. If this song is a distant relative of Das Wandern, the opening of Die schöne Müllerin (the same 2/4 key signature, the same strophic simplicity, the same idealisation of beauties of the countryside) it is one where the vigour of youth has given way to a more mature taste for homespun philosophy, far from the stress of the big city and urban life.

A fetching and unusual feature of the oscillating vocal line is to be heard at ‘Mir dienet zur Kapelle’ where two flattened sixths (D flats within the key of F major, the subdominant of the home key of C) replace the Ds which would have been the unexceptional notes expected in this context. This touch of flattened harmony is heard again at ‘Zu meiner Klausnerzelle’. The peace of the wide, open countryside is depicted in a much later work in similar terms, this time complicated by irony, bitterness and anger, but still stemming from the same perception of rural peace as a type of lassitude: in Einsamkeit, the twelfth song of Winterreise, we hear these eloquent flattened sixths again, this time on ‘Ach, dass die Luft so ruhig’. These blue notes, like a disabling sirocco, sap purpose and energy in Winterreise, to the distress of the traveller; but the hermit of Die Einsiedelei enjoys their calming, and slightly soporific, nature. The postlude with a right-hand upper melody which is rather more marked than the rest of the song, is also delightful, although the tessitura, the muted middle of the keyboard, is hardly one which encourages celebration. Here we find the same low-key cheerfulness, the result of a soul at peace with itself, which characterises the rest of the song. Like a number of the songs of 1816/17, and like so much else in Schubert’s life and music, the unspoken theme seems to be ‘moderation in all things’.

It is curious that the first setting of this text (D337 for unaccompanied male-voice quartet) should have a connection with Atys. Indeed the choral work begins with two-and-a-half bars of music which are identical to the introduction to Atys. Whether Schubert meant to quote Die Einsiedelei in beginning Atys is open to question. It may have been that the mood of longing for peace and a retreat from life’s pain in both poems prompted a similar musical response with some unintentional borrowing.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2000

Other albums featuring this work

Schubert: The Complete Songs
CDS44201/4040CDs Boxed set + book (at a special price) — Download only
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