Schubert’s song cycle, “Winterreise” (Winter Journey), was published in 1828 and is another setting of the poetry of Wilhelm Müller. In the 24 songs we follow a wanderer across a winter landscape.
It’s not an easy journey – he arrives in a new town with a broken heart; everything around him reminds him of her and what he could have had. The tone of the poems and hence the songs, veers between a bitter humour and a depressed longing.
The work is a kind of monodrama – the wanderer’s views become our views and the wanderer is, at best, highly subjective. The final song, where the wanderer questions the hurdy-gurdy player, can be considered the point at which either the wanderer wanders further, or we understand the instrumentalist to have been present all along and so the cycle must start again.
Here is Hans Hotter to sing this sad music for you:
