Schubert's `Swansong' is not a song-cycle like the mill songs or the Winterreise, it is just his last 14 songs. Brahms said that there was something to be learned from every one of Schubert's 606 solo songs, prompting a slightly flippant remark from Tovey that in some cases one would have to be Brahms to know what it was. How many hundreds of them I myself know (perhaps also how many Tovey really knew) I'm not sure, but there are no blanks in the Schwanengesang. These songs make no pretence of coherence as a group, but Schubert's recurrent theme of love and final separation predominates. His very greatest music was pouring out of him in an unquenchable torrent in his 32nd and last year. He suspected that he did not have long. There are some very deep shadows indeed here, but the special sense of anguish that these songs leave comes not so much from that as from their sheer angelic beauty.
Login to your account | Forgot your password?
