Der Miller Und Der Bach Analysis

Beginning around C.E. 1825, the Romantic period was a point of great change in music. As more and more composers found themselves restricted by their patrons, they began to leave from their posts and the patronage system slowly broke down. With this, the music of the time began to change as composers were able to work freely and could support themselves with public concerts for the newly forming middle class. New sounds and techniques developed during this time, such as “Der Muller und der Bach” from Franz Liszt’s Mullerlieder von Franz Schubert, a piano transcription of a Schubert piece of the same name. Liszt’s transposition makes use of chromaticism and embraces more dissonance, being a solid model of a Romantic style work of music. While

“Der Muller und der Bach,” as piece about a miller grieving the death of his daughter’s lover, is an expectedly somber piece considering the subject and this somber feel can be attributed to multiple aspects of the piece including the tonality and the tempo. The piece begins in G minor, the minor tonality being associated with negative or, in this case especially, sadness, which helps set the mood of the piece while the tempo is Moderato, allowing for the rhythm to complement the mood. Even after the modulation to G major in m. 28, there are still moments of modal mixture where chords from the minor scale are used within the major key, such as the flat submedient chord (bVI) that is used in m. 103 to keep the whole piece rooted in the minor tonality. The piece is also performed using a good amount of rubato, giving a contemplative pulse alongside the somber harmonies. With a melody line of mostly descending notes, the piece sounds sorrowful and sad as you listen to it, but in mm. 28-58 when it switches to a major key, the mood of the piece switches to a more energetic and light heartened as the bass line moves faster, also speeding up the harmonic changes. In the text at m. 28 is taken over by the brook who tries to cheer up the miller

After analyzing the piece, there can also be seen many dissonances that are purposely used for effect and a number of chromatic chords that still function within the harmonic progressions of the piece as either stand-alone chords-such as the major median chord with the flat root (bIII), or expansions of another chord that is more “common-practice” that has a stable harmonic function, like the applied dominant chords mentioned earlier. Even with these uses of dissonance, there is still a relatively standard harmonic progression throughout the piece that focuses a dominant to tonic progression, using minor four as a predominant a couple of times throughout the piece, notably in mm. 11, 73, and 101, and also the Neapolitian sixth chords in mm. 15 and