How Did Goethe’s Poetry Influence Schubert in his songs? The romantic period sparked a new type of a music composition called as art song. Art songs are pieces that have a solo voice along with a piano accompaniment. These art songs contain themes that are based on patriotism, nationalistic and romantic sentiments. One major component that plays an important part in enforcing the theme of the art song is poetry. Schubert, one of the most acclaimed lied composers of the romantic era mostly used Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s poems for his lyrics. Goethe’s poems were vey famous and his lyrics ended up being used in the works of Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Brahms and Wagner. In this essay, I will be focusing on Schubert’s famous lied “Der …show more content…
Music was to Goethe an essential part of life, and above all, perhaps, it brought solace (Stokes). Goethe, studied law, and had started a small legal practice, but Goethe’s love for music made him write many verses that were later used as lyrics for art songs. While composing Die Erlkonig, Goethe was a chief advisor for Carl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. Goethe was vey much fascinated by the Lied that composing lyrics was a part time job when Schubert was the chief advisor in Weimar. Goethe wrote Die Erlkonig as a Singspiel called Die Fischerin in 1782. On the other hand, Schubert was born to a rich family. Schubert’s father was the principal of a parish school and his mother, an owner of a locksmith company. Schubert was keen to learn music and learnt piano and voice. Schubert who was only 18 at that time and used to teach piano and voice in spite of having these lessons that generated him a good pay, Schubert also composed every morning in 1815. Schubert was very dedicated to composing Lieder every day, and in 1815 alone when he was just 18, Schubert had written over 140 lieder and over 20,000 bars of music. Both Goethe and Schubert were dedicated to the lieder and spent time and effort to compose