Classical Music | Soprano

Recorded on 11/05/2008, uploaded on 05/02/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes
Among Schubert's many songs about springtime, Im Frühling ("In Spring") stands above the rest in its brilliantly conceived formal structure. The poem, by Ernst Schulze, recounts the bittersweet memory of a blissful springtime love. Schubert's setting is largely strophic, though with an added twist. The melody of each strophe, which encompasses two stanzas of the text, remains essentially the same yet the accompaniment in each case is varied. Thus, the result is a fusion of strophic song with a simple variation form—a melding quite appropriate to the springtime setting of the song. The first and second stanzas are heard with a rather simple accompaniment of a steadily moving bass with offbeat chords above it. During the next two stanzas, the chords move to the left hand while the right delicately embellishes the harmony with sixteenth note arpeggios. Leading into the fourth stanza, when the poet's bittersweet memory turns to sorrow, a modulation is made to the tonic minor. The sixteenth note figuration is retained, though shifted to the left hand, while the right adds syncopated chords. The final stanza returns to the key of the tonic major with the sixteenth note accompaniment of the second and third stanzas set against the syncopated chords of the fourth. Schubert then introduces a slight modification of the final line of the poem to close the song.      Joseph DuBose