Comparing Die Schöne Müllerin And The Beautiful Maid Of The Bell

Despite having a relatively short life, Franz Schubert managed to compose over 1,500 works, two of them being song cycles. The first of these is titled Die schöne Müllerin, which translates to “The Beautiful Maid of the Mill.” This piece, which is inspired by Wilhelm Müller’s poem cycle of the same title, depicts the story of a young mill hand who, while searching for work, finds love and meets his death as a result. While the text and music conjure beautiful scenes of a mill by a babbling brook, the events that surrounded this piece’s composition were not so ideal.
Although the details surrounding the exact date and creation of Die schöne Müllerin, scholars agree that “the composition of this cycle coincides with Schubert’s discovery that
Through text and music, the piece tells the story of a young mill hand: “the first three songs bring us to the locale of the love affair, the next twelve songs trace step-by-step the progression from first encounter to returned love to rejection, and the last five recount the bitter aftermath and suicide.” The text of the piece comes from Wilhelm Müller’s poem of the same title, which started out as a liderspiel, or “song play.” Originally, this piece featured multiple characters, with roles that were read and sung, and was set to music by multiple composers. Müller later revised the poem to be told solely in the miller lad’s voice, which is the version Schubert set music to in 1823. Since this piece is only told through one character’s voice, it is classified as a monodrama, which still conforms to the typical song cycle template. Like a typical song cycle, this piece includes piano accompaniment throughout the entire piece. However, Schubert takes the opportunity to create imagery in the piano part. For example, in “Das Wandern,” the flowing sixteenth notes in the piano part represent the brook that the main character is walking along as he searches for work at the nearest mill. Schubert also takes liberties in the forms he uses for each of the songs in this cycle. He alternates writing strophic, modified strophic, and through-composed songs. This, in addition to the integration of the voice, piano, andpoetry, brings variety to the song cycle as well as represents the development of the lied as a serious musical form. The length of the piece also lends it to conforming to the normal song cycle format. Schubert composed twenty songs for this song cycle, which does make it lengthy, but is still considered “normal” for a song