Schubert: 12 German Dances, D.790

Introduction

It is by no means necessarily the case that the most remarkable musical thoughts are poured into the largest vessels, or that they are provided with titles that somehow make plain that they are, in fact, from their composers' most personal stocks. One would have to search quite some time to find more startlingly powerful poetic utterances than Franz Schubert's simply-titled Zwölf Deutsche (Twelve German Dances) for piano, D. 790. It would somehow be inappropriate if these Deutsche went by a more pretentious title, for this is some of the most deeply intimate music Schubert ever put to paper; that pianists are often reluctant to play them in public and they seem to remain forever on the fringe of the keyboard repertoire may be the most potent statement of how obviously private they really are. They remained unknown to the public until the mid-1860s, when Johannes Brahms took it in hand to edit them.

By April 1823, Schubert's health had collapsed to such an extent that it was necessary for him to be admitted into a hospital. Schubert's suffering was intense; during May he wrote a poem in which he begs for divine comfort. It was against this frightful backdrop that the 12 Deutsche, D. 790, were composed; but the dances are by no means always depressing or overtly impassioned -- they don't really express Schubert's agony, but rather transport him from it onto a plane on which such worldly matters mean nothing. Achieving such a transportation using what would seem to be just a bunch of earthy dances is something that perhaps only Chopin managed with the same kind of success.

These German Dances are very similar in kind to the Ländler and the waltz. They are to be played in immediate succession, without break of any kind, and take somewhere around ten minutes to play. The first dance is gregarious and cheerful, and gives little hint of the secrets that lie in the center of the group. As we move inward, so does Schubert's ladle draw deeper, and after the soul-searching B minor of the fifth dance, the physicality, even aggression, of No. 6 -- a bit of music that Schubert would later recycle in the Scherzo of the "Death and the Maiden" String Quartet -- seems a necessary step towards any further thoughtfulness. By the last dance things are tranquil enough, and the final strains of melody sound almost like a lullaby.

Parts/Movements

1. Ländler No. 1 in D Major
2. Ländler No. 2 in A Major
3. Ländler No. 3 in D Major
4. Ländler No. 4 in D Major
5. Ländler No. 5 in B Minor
6. Ländler No. 6 in G-sharp Minor
7. Ländler No. 7 in A-flat Major
8. Ländler No. 8 in A-flat Minor
9. Ländler No. 9 in B Major
10. Ländler No. 10 in B Major
11. Ländler No. 11 in A-flat Major
12. Ländler No. 12 in E Major