Tränenregen

Tränenregen
Music: Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Words: Wilhelm Müller (1794-1827)

Tränenregen (Rain of Tears) is from Schubert’s song cycle entitled Die Schöne Müllerin (The Miller’s Beautiful Daughter). The cycle was composed in 1823. The poems used for the cycle were written by Wilhelm Müller. Die Schöne Müllerin is considered the first great song cycle of the 19th century. The cycle tells a tragic story of a traveling journeyman who apprentices with a miller at a watermill next to a stream. The young man falls in love with the miller’s daughter. When he realizes his feelings are not shared by the beautiful girl, he drowns himself in the river.

This song is in the middle of the cycle, and is the only song in the cycle written in the past tense. In it the young man is remembering sitting by the brook with his beloved. He speaks of how the brook wants to pull him in. At the end of the song rain has started falling and the girl leaves him to go home.

Franz Peter Schubert (Austrian) was an extremely prolific composer given he only lived to be 31 years of age. He wrote over 600 lieder, ten symphonies (including the “Unfinished”), liturgical music, operas, incidental music, and a large body of chamber music and solo piano music. Schubert was one of the great early Romantic era composers, and the cornerstone of German lieder.

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Key of F Major

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