Progetto Martha Argerich

italiano

Works

Franz Schubert

Norman's Gesang op. 52 n. 5 (Walter Scott)

 

Beginning in 1825, Franz Schubert began to use, in his lieder, the poetry of authors to whom he had previously paid no attention. The Austrian composer’s earlier lieder had been dominated by Goethe, Schiller and Mayrhofer, but from 1825 onward, new names began to enter his catalogue, and Sir Walter Scott was the first among them. At the time, Scott was enjoying enormous popularity – for the most part well deserved – all over Europe, and even within Schubert’s circle of friends Scott had such rabid admirers as the baritone Johann Michael Vogl. Thus it should come as no surprise that as early as the beginning of 1825 Schubert’s lieder catalogue included two settings of Scott: the Lied der Anna Lyle, D. 830, and the Gesang der Norna, D. 831, which were followed a few months later by Ellens Gesänge, D. 837-39 (the third of the three pieces is the famous Ave Maria) and Normans Gesang, D. 846, which is on today’s programme. What is evident in these lieder, along with the frequent search for an epic-like tone, is a desire for complete expressive simplicity, which was to be achieved through the almost constant use of a single accompanying figure throughout each piece.

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