Schubert's Winterreise
Winterreise (Winter Journey), Opus 89 and D911, is a song-cycle for voice and piano composed by Franz Schubert and published in 1828. The work is a set of twenty-four songs based on a set of poems by Wilhelm Müller. It was originally written for tenor voice but is sometimes transposed for other vocal ranges. Winterreise and another Schubert song cycle, Die Schöne Müllerin, are generally considered the best of all song-cycles.
The Winterreisse songs form a narrative drama. The narrator/singer, whose beloved now fancies someone else, leaves her house secretly at night and follows a river and steep trail to a village. Having longed for death, he is at last reconciled to his loneliness. The cold darkness and barren winter landscape mirror the feelings in his heart, and he encounters various people and things along the way that form the subjects of the successive songs during his lonely journey. It is in fact an allegorical journey of the heart.
Wilhelm Müller (1794 - 1827) was a German lyric poet. Some of his works attracted great composers and influenced the poet Heinrich Heine. Schubert's song-cycles Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin are both based on collections by Wilhelm Müller.
Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828) was a great Austrian composer. He wrote over six hundred lieder (songs), nine symphonies, liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, numerous pieces of chamber music, and a large body of solo piano music. Renowned for his magnificent melodies, Franz Schubert was perhaps even more proficient at creating music of extraordinary depth and emotional power. And despite his tragically short life, he is widely considered to be one of the greatest of all composers.
