Alison Armstrong
Music Humanities
May 1, 2000
Die Forelle
Franz Schubert is best known today for his Romantic lieder, of which he wrote over 600. However, he also wrote eight symphonies, a number of piano sonatas, and several quartets. A few of his instrumental works are based upon or include melodies taken from his own lieder. One of the most popular examples of this is the quintet “Die Forelle” (“The Trout”) for piano, violin, viola, cello, and double-bass, which is based on his lied of the same name. (Kerman 233)
Like all lieder, the song “Die Forelle” is intended for a very intimate setting. The singer and accompanying pianist work together to enhance the mood and emotional power of the Romantic poem by giving it a musical interpretation. The melody of both the singer and accompanist tries to illustrate the text of the poem and evoke a sense of the imagery inherent in it.
The poem itself is by 18th-century German poet Christian Friedrich Schubart. It is a narrative poem in three stanzas each with eight lines of six-seven syllables. (Actually, Schubart’s poem has a fourth stanza which Schubert did not include in his lied.) The first two stanzas are strophic and have a light-hearted, joyful mood to both the music and the text. In the first stanza, the poet/singer describes her feeling of “sweet contentment” as she watches “a playful trout” swiftly dart past in a clear brook. In the second stanza, she sees a fisherman “cold-bloodedly” eyeing the fish he cannot catch because the water is so clear. Because the music is identical to the first stanza and still upbeat and light, we feel that she is not worried because she knows the fish cannot be caught. The repeated piano lines have a playful rising and falling pattern that is evocative of little waves in a stream or of fish swimming. (Schubert uses a similar evocative device in his lied “Erlkönig” in which the pianist plays triplets with his left hand to simulate a horse running.) The vocal line also noticeably rises for emphasis at the end of the sixth lines in each stanza: “süsser Ruh” (“sweet rest/contentment”) and “nicht gebricht” (“not cloudy”). The most apparent musical effect which reinforces the upbeat mood is the repetition of the last two lines of both stanzas: “the little fish swimming / in the clear brook” and “he will not catch the trout / with his hook.”
In the third stanza, however, the mood and the music change. She calls the fishermen a “thief” who “treacherously muddied the water” to catch “the betrayed creature.” He is guilty not only of catching the poor fish who “thrashed about,” but also of ruining the beautiful clear stream. To illustrate this, the music becomes darker and more agitated. The piano and vocal line move to a lower register and switch to minor mode. The rhythmic patterns in the voice and piano are similar to early stanzas, but now the piano plays twice as fast, which contributes to the uneasy feeling. The third line of the stanza makes a startling departure from the rest of the song because it has a new rhythmic pattern and is sung completely in monotone. This is appropriate because this is the line where the actual betrayal takes place: “Treacherously he muddied the water.” Another difference is in the sixth line, which is longer than the others because she repeats the first two words “das Fischlein” (“the little fish”) to emphasize a sense of pity and indignation for the innocent little fish thrashing about. The final lines of this stanza are repeated as well, and the music ironically returns to the music of the first two stanzas, but the closing lines are now: “and with my blood boiling / I looked on the betrayed creature.”
Schubert’s popular quintet “Die Forelle” shares much in common with the eponymous lied that it is based upon. The quintet is in five movements, three of which are in A Major. Just as a quintet is much less common than a quartet, it is also somewhat unusual to have a fifth movement. Like the chamber music developed by Haydn and Beethoven, this quintet follows a traditional progression of movements: the first is allegro, the second andante, and the third is a scherzo, which is a form Beethoven created as an alternative to a minuet and trio form. As with the traditional symphony and string quartet, the last movement is a rapid allegro, in this case allegro giusto. What is unusual about this quintet is that Schubert inserts a fourth movement in theme-and-variation form. It is in D Major and is andantino, which means it is lighter and more mellow than the earlier three movements. Variation form was used occasionally as the second or third movement in a Baroque or Classical concerto, but it is not as common in the less formally strict Romantic pieces of the 19th century. Variation form “entails the successive, uninterrupted repetition of a clearly defined melodic unit, the theme, with various changes at each repetition… The point of variations is to create many contrasting moods with the same theme, which is transformed but always somehow discernible under the transformation” (Kerman 188). These contrasting moods are ideal for imitating or evoking the sudden tone change that occurs in the lied.
Appropriately, this fourth movement is the one that bears the most striking resemblance to the lied. At eight minutes long, it is almost four times longer than the song it is based on. The melody from the first two stanzas of the lied is incorporated all the way through the variation movement because it is the theme. The theme is initially played as a straightforward string quartet in which the violin plays the melody of the lied’s vocal line, though drawn out and with some ornaments and rhythmic variation, while the three other strings harmonize this melody. The piano does not enter until the beginning of the first variation, when it carries the melody and the strings harmonize with it. As in the lied, the movement has a light and playful feeling in the beginning of the piece. However, starting with the third movement, there is a gradual increase in tension corresponding to the appearance of the fisherman in the lied. The volume increases and the piano plays long scalar runs up and down. Then, in the fourth variation (two-thirds into the movement as in the lied), the mood becomes much heavier and more agitated. The piano plays lots of sharply accented chords very loudly which contrasts with the softer, more legato string passages. This juxtaposition feeds into a call-and-answer section between the piano and the strings which is evocative of the fish thrashing about on the fisherman’s hook. Finally, the fish is caught and the tension dies down. The sixth and last variation is a recapitulation of the original theme with the light-hearted and joyful mood of the original theme. As in the lied, the return to the original music after the struggle now has an ironic quality.
Schubert spent his entire short life in Vienna composing under the shadow of the awesome and bombastic music of Beethoven. While he was certainly influenced by the raw emotional intensity of Beethoven’s work, I think he very purposely differentiated himself musically. While Beethoven is best known for his grand symphonies, Schubert is primarily remembered for his very intimate musical genres such as his chamber pieces and over 600 lieder. Whereas symphonies are performed by hundreds of musicians in gigantic venues, most of Schubert’s work is written for two to five musicians to be enjoyed by a handful of people in a salon or sitting-room. Because a lied can be performed by a single person, assuming the singer can also play piano, or at most two people, it is in many respects the most intimate genre of music.
Yet the quintet is actually more subdued and lulling than the lied. Because it is much longer, has multiple movements, and is more contrapuntally complex, one might think it is less intimate than a lied and more similar to a symphonic work. However, I think the quintet is actually more intimate because it is meant mostly for the enjoyment of the five musicians and maybe a handful of others. The quintet, like other 19th-century chamber music, was “intended primarily for the performers, with small, informal audiences—or none at all” (Kerman 192). It “compensates for this [lack of volume and tone color] by its own special qualities: nuance, delicacy, and subtlety” (193). In contrast, the lied is full of the agitation and drama that is characteristic of this more programmatic genre. The lied has the powerful words of a known Romantic poem as well as music that is designed to enhance the action and feeling inherent in the text. This makes the lied feel slightly less intimate and more as though it is meant to be performed for a small audience, perhaps of twenty or thirty people. In both compositions, however, the audience is supposed to connect directly with the soft but firm emotional power of the music. This emotional connection is at the heart of the Romantic movement in music that Schubert helped pioneer. The two “Die Forelle” pieces are thus prime examples of the genres that best characterize the music of the early Romantics.