''Schwanengesang (

Swan Song The swan song ( grc, κύκνειον ᾆσμα; la, carmen cygni) is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement. The phrase refers to an ancient belief that swans sing a beautiful so ...

)'', 957, is a collection of 14 songs written by

Franz Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...

at the end of his life and published posthumously: # Liebesbotschaft (text:

Ludwig Rellstab Heinrich Friedrich Ludwig Rellstab (13 April 179927 November 1860) was a German poet and music critic. He was born and died in Berlin. He was the son of the music publisher and composer Johann Carl Friedrich Rellstab. An able pianist, he publi ...

) # Kriegers Ahnung (Rellstab) # Frühlingssehnsucht (Rellstab) # Ständchen (Rellstab) # Aufenthalt (Rellstab) # In der Ferne (Rellstab) # Abschied (Rellstab) # Der Atlas (

Heinrich Heine Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of '' Lied ...

) # Ihr Bild (Heine) # Das Fischermädchen (Heine) # Die Stadt (Heine) # Am Meer (Heine) # Der Doppelgänger (Heine) # Die Taubenpost (alternative: D 965a) (

Johann Gabriel Seidl Johann Gabriel Seidl (21 June 1804 – 18 July 1875) was an Austrian archeologist, poet, storyteller and dramatist. He wrote the lyrics to "Gott erhalte, Gott beschütze unsern Kaiser, unser Land!" This was the 1854 version of the Austrian ...

)

Background

Named by its first publisher,

Tobias Haslinger Tobias Haslinger (1 March 1787 - 18 June 1842) was an Austrian composer and music publisher. He published works by composers including, among others, Beethoven, Bendel, Mozart, Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1 ...

, who presumably wished to present it as Schubert's last testament, ''Schwanengesang'' differs from the earlier ''

Die schöne Müllerin ' (,"The Fair Maid of the Mill", Op. 25, D. 795), is a song cycle by Franz Schubert from 1823 based on 20 poems by Wilhelm Müller. It is the first of Schubert's two seminal cycles (preceding ''Winterreise'')'','' and a pinnacle of ''Lied'' re ...

'' and ''

Winterreise ''Winterreise'' (, ''Winter Journey'') is a song cycle for voice and piano by Franz Schubert ( D. 911, published as Op. 89 in 1828), a setting of 24 poems by German poet Wilhelm Müller. It is the second of Schubert's two song cycles on Müller' ...

'' song-cycles by including settings of more than one poet. Seven texts by

(1799–1860) are followed by six by

(1797–1856); inclusion of the last song, to words by

(1804–1875), may or may not reflect Schubert's wishes. In any case, all 14 songs were composed in 1828 and the collection was published in 1829, a few months after the composer's death.

Composition and publication

The Rellstab and Heine settings were copied in a single sitting on consecutive pages of the manuscript in Schubert's hand, and Seidl's ''Die Taubenpost'' is considered to be Schubert's last

Lied In Western classical music tradition, (, plural ; , plural , ) is a term for setting poetry to classical music to create a piece of polyphonic music. The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German, but among English and French s ...

— thus the basis for Haslinger's sequence, one accepted by posterity together with his conceit that a cycle exists at all. (The true cycles ''Die schöne Müllerin'' and ''Die Winterreise'' had sold well, motivating the publisher.) The title ''Schwanengesang'' is not of course the composer's but all the song titles are; Heine, for one, did not name his poems.

An uncertain cycle

On 2 October 1828, after the manuscript had been written, Schubert offered the Heine set of six songs to a Leipzig publisher by the name of Probst. We can assume, then, that Schubert, at least in the beginning, intended two separate single-poet collections. Furthermore the order of Nos. 8–13, as they appear in the manuscript, differs from that of the poems as Heine published them: 10, 12, 11, 13, 9, 8, which in any case were not consecutive, as the table below shows.Heine, Heinrich Buch Der LiederReed, John. ''The Schubert Song Companion''. Mandolin: Manchester, 1997, . pages 259–260 It was customary for Schubert to respect the poet's sequence; the manuscript may not represent Schubert's desired order. The Seidl song, "Die Taubenpost", has no connection to the rest of the cycle and was appended by Haslinger at the end to round up all of Schubert's last compositions.

The songs

The songs of ''Schwanengesang'' as found in Schubert's manuscript:

Another ''Schwanengesang''

Schubert had earlier in his career set to music a single poem titled ''Schwanengesang'', his D 744, by

Johann Senn Johann Chrysostomus Senn (1 April 1795, Pfunds – 30 September 1857, Innsbruck; pseudonym: ''Bombastus Bebederwa'') was a political lyric poet of the Vormärz. Life Johann Senn was the son of the freedom fighter, Franz Michael Senn. He live ...

Liszt transcriptions

Franz Liszt Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...

later transcribed the entire set for solo piano. While staying faithful to Schubert's original, he often changes the piano texture as a way of providing a personal commentary on the text and music. Liszt reordered the songs in the following way: 11, 10, 5, 12, 7, 6, 4, 9, 3, 1, 8, 13, 14 and 2.

References

External links

Comprehensive research website
Iain C. Phillips

*
Performance of ''Schwanengesang''
by Randall Scarlata (baritone) and Benjamin Hochman (piano) from the

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, which houses significant examples of European, Asian, and American art. Its collection includes paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts. It was founded ...

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

format {{Authority control Lieder composed by Franz Schubert Compositions by Franz Schubert published posthumously Musical settings of poems by Heinrich Heine Song cycles by Franz Schubert Classical song cycles in German