Zumsteeg’s version of this ballad was published in 1800 in the second book of the
Kleine Balladen und Lieder. Of all earlier composers, apart from Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert’s connection with Zumsteeg’s music is the best documented. Schubert’s schoolfriend Anton Holzapfel recounts how Schubert busied himself with Zumsteeg’s
Kleine Balladen und Lieder (seven volumes published between 1791 and 1805, 170 settings in all) and was enthralled with them. The use of recitative, the explorations of mediant key relations and enharmonic modulations, the attempt to find a musical unity for the setting of an extended text, all these things Schubert took to heart. Like a young painter attempting to copy a famous painting he set out to compose a number of ballads with Zumsteeg’s version opened before him as a model. It goes without saying that his achievements quickly outstripped Zumsteeg’s, not so much in matters of declamation and technique (Schubert often followed the older composer’s choice of key and his time signatures) but in the adventurousness of the piano-writing and the creation of dramatic atmosphere. The Schubert songs with a close Zumsteeg connection are
Hagars Klage, D5,
Lied der Liebe, D109,
Nachtgesang, D314,
Ritter Toggenburg, D397,
Die Erwartung, D159, and
Skolie, D507. Zumsteeg’s influence on Schubert was at its strongest between 1811 and the spring of 1816 when Schubert made his second version of
Die Erwartung.
comparative Schubert listening:
Die Erwartung Second version, D159. May 1816
from notes by Graham Johnson © 2006
CDS44201/40
40CDs Boxed set + book (at a special price)
