Classical Music | Music for Flute

Recorded on 08/19/2008, uploaded on 01/11/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

"Der Lindenbaum" from Winterreise     Franz Schubert

Winterreise (The Winter Journey), alongside the earlier Die schöne Müllerin, is one of Schubert's great settings of Wilhem Müller's poem cycles. Schubert set the twenty-four poems of Müller's cycle during February and October 1827, a little less than a year before his early death. In this sense, Winterreise forms a poignant parallel to Schubert's own life. Surely, in setting Müller's poems, Schubert was aware that his own life was passing into winter and he was resigning himself to that final journey. In fact, his friends noticed Schubert's deep melancholy during the composition of these songs. Schubert, himself, described them as "terrifying" and Joseph von Spaun remarked that he and the others present "were dumbfounded by [their] sombre mood" when Schubert performed them.

Müller's cycle tells the story of the poet in love. The poet, however, secretly leaves his lover's house at night when he discovers that her love has wandered to someone else. He leaves the town and follows the river to another village. During his journey, he longs for death but ultimately comes to terms with his loneliness as he wonders through the barren winter landscape. The successive poems of the cycle describe the various people and objects the poet encounters during his journey.

In the fifth song of the cycle, "Der Lindenbaum" ("The Linden Tree"), the poet passes by a linden tree under which he had spent many a happy hour in wonderful dreams and had carved words of love into its bark. To the poet now, the tree is only a painful memory. The poet attempts to pass the tree with his eyes shut, though it is in the middle of the night. Yet, he imagines the tree calling to him, "Come, companion, your rest I shall be." He passes on, facing the icy wind, but hours later still hears the distant tree's invitation, "You'll find your peace with me."

Schubert's setting begins with rapid broken chords in the piano depicting the rustling of the linden tree in the wind. In a bright E major, the poet recollects the pleasant memories of the tree. However, the music soon turns to E minor as he encounters the tree in the dark of night. The tree's sinister invitations are heard in E major, as if to mock the earlier blitheness of the first two stanzas. The "icy winds" pierce the heart of the poet with a sudden return to E minor as he struggles to continue his journey. Once again, the music returns to E major and the tree's callings still haunt the poet. After the voice's finale words, four measures, similar to the opening of the song, depict the linden tree somewhere in the distance.      Joseph DuBose

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.