Describe the role of the piano accompaniment in two or more songs by Schubert. Demonstrate with examples the types of relationships to be found between the piano and the poetry

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As Gerald Moore said , the Lied is not only a question of singing. One of the great particularities of Schubert's Lieder is the importance of the accompaniment. In contrast to the popular folksongs of that time, the piano was for Schubert quite more than a weak musical background. It became with him a real partner, speaking and playing with the singer. It is not by chance if some of the greatest pianists of our time recorded Lieder: Benjamin Britten, Edwin Fischer, Arthur Schnabel, Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Daniel Barenboïm etc. During the 19th century, the piano was changing, becoming slowly what it is today. Discovering an instrument with a thicker texture, a broader range and less mechanical nuances – in a word, a real soul –, Beethoven, then Schubert (and a bit later Chopin or Liszt) understood the deep power of either the orchestral quality so the intimate voice of the piano. Schubert composed having in mind these two qualities. Besides, some of his Lieder have been transcript for piano solo (Liszt) or for an orchestra and a singer (Brahms, Berlioz, Britten, Liszt, Webern). It is not a coincidence; it is actually an evidence proving that Schubert had the talent to create an intimate surrounding with the intensity and the richness of a whole orchestra. He designed these beautiful dramatic miniatures in which the two musicians have their own voice helping or fighting each other to bear the drama. The piano has consequently different roles, depending on what each poem is about. Rising mountains, calling for a lover, walking with the poet, embodying a city as well as the whole nature, making a horse gallop or water run, the accompaniment in Schubert's Lieder is the deep echo of poetry.

Extraits

[...] It stresses the passion of the poet who is carving on ice the name of his beloved, remembering the day he met her. Then, a harmonic progression and denser texture accompany his words comparing his heart to the lake: heart, does this remind you of what you well must know? How down beneath your surface, unruly torrents Nature can also be more violent. Some Lieder of Die Winterreise emphasize the violence of the elements that the poet fights to diminish his pain. [...]

[...] Each switching moment occurs on the phrase “Mein Schatz hat's grün so gern” dear likes green so it emphasizes the distance (thirds, then fifths) between the two lovers and the inner obsession of the miller, especially when the vocal melody is sung within piano left-hand chords. The same kind of device is used in Erstarrung (from Die Winterreise): the poet is looking for footprints of his beloved, remembering the good time with her. This souvenir is musically expressed in the doubling voice of the left hand; however the piano's melody often goes in the opposite way to the singer's one and the dark triplets of the right hand embody pain and torment. [...]

[...] Then the ascending line in major key leads us to the top oh the hill, “far-ranging, high and wonderful, we see around lies life, from high peak to high peak Repeated fortissimo chords with a typical Schubertian harmonic progression, and an up and down melody on the left hand make us feel the grandeur and magnificence of the world under us. After the delight and the fresh girl on major key with a softer pizzicato-like accompaniment, the running through life continues and time goes on. We can already see the “Hell's dark portals” Nächtliches on the minor sforzendo chords. Finally, Kronos makes clearly sound his horn, telling to the underworld that they are coming. This is a beautiful and intense through-composed Lied, not as dramatic as the famous Erlkönig, but as varied and powerful. Goethe definitely inspired passion to Schubert. [...]

[...] Der Lindenbaum 4. Die Krähe 5. Aufenthalt 6. Auf dem Wasser zu singen 7. Am Flusse 8. Des Fischers Liebesglück 9. Die Forelle 10. Der Jüngling am Bache D Der Jüngling am Bache D Der Jüngling am Bache D Am Bach im Frühling 14. Auf dem Flusse 15. [...]

[...] Nevertheless, I am not sure that Schubert wanted to describe precisely and systematically elements of nature: as a real romantic and thanks to the beautiful poems he used, he emphasized in fact interactions between the immediate effect of a natural movement and interior life. Inner pain and suffering find an echo in the troubled nature. Moreover nature is often distorted by the mind itself, by its fantasy, transforming the same natural movement into a dream and vice versa. In Erlkönig, the sick mind of the child makes the forest more terrifying and terrible than it is; the dead landscapes of winter in the entire cycle Die Winterreise are described through the poet's tormented mind. [...]