The Unfinished Piano Sonatas of Franz Schubert Javier ... - Ethesis

IV Of Changes and Operatic Hopes
78
Schubert had not only to deal with his usual financial difficulties at this time;
the costs of his medical treatment were an additional burden. This is probably why, in
part, he continued striving for success as an opera composer.
The stage works of 1823 include Die Verschworenen or Der häusliche Krieg
(The Conspirators or The Domestic War, D787), a one-act Singspiel of surprisingly
luminous, witty and graceful music; and Fierabras (D796), Schubert’s second attempt
at a grand opera. But the unfavourable circumstances with regard to German opera
persisted, and none of these works would receive a performance during the composer’s
lifetime. Very probably, the failure at the Viennese premiere in October of Weber’s most
recent opera Euryanthe (the greatest hope for German opera after Der Freischütz)
made performance prospects for any composer of German opera, Schubert included,
even bleaker. 31 In the autumn, once again, Schubert wrote music for another stage work:
Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern (Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus, D797, with the
same librettist as Euryanthe, Helmina von Chézy). And this time, he did see it
performed – in December of the same year (using the overture from Alfonso und
Estrella). But after the second performance just a day later, the work was withdrawn. 32
Even though he would embark on yet another such project in the final months of his life,
this was the end of Schubert’s career in the theatre: a genre in which he had invested an
enormous amount of time and effort.
These large-scale operatic projects were, beyond doubt, remarkable and
significant in Schubert’s career, yet perhaps the most important work (of that year and
one of the most significant of all Schubert’s works) was the song cycle Die schöne
Müllerin (The Maid of the Mill, D795, on poems by Wilhelm Müller). 33 Schubert worked
on these songs during 1823, but their actual chronology is uncertain. He probably began
composition of the cycle in the spring and returned to it in the autumn. After a summer
respite in the countryside, during which his health apparently fluctuated between better
and worse, Schubert returned to Vienna and it seems that, by late September, he
needed to be hospitalized. Most probably it was in the hospital that he wrote some parts
of Die schöne Müllerin.
This 20-song cycle is a crucial work in the development of Schubert’s own
music and, as Graham Johnson has pointed out, for its enormous psychological
significance. Musically, Die schöne Müllerin lies at the peak of the strophic song
tradition, not only for its individual songs but also in terms of the narrative unfolding of
the cycle. Its music is powerfully direct and of a striking simplicity, yet sophisticated as
ever before. Then, intrinsically connected, is the story with its psychological
connotations.
In brief, Müller’s cycle of poems tells the story of a young mill worker’s love for
the miller’s daughter. Unfortunately his heart is broken when she chooses someone else
(a hunter). The consequence of this unrequited love is the young boy’s suicide. At the
end of the cycle, he throws himself into the brook which has been his faithful