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Die schöne Müllerin, D. 795, is a song cycle by Franz Schubert on poems by Wilhelm Müller. It is the earliest song cycle to be widely performed.
Müller's poems were published in 1820, and Schubert set most of them to music between May and September of 1823, while he was also writing his opera Fierabras. Schubert omitted several of the poems, such as a prologue and an epilogue delivered by the poet. The work was published in 1824 under the title Die schöne Müllerin, ein Zyklus von Liedern, gedichtet von Wilhelm Müller, which approximately means, "The lovely maid of the mill, a song cycle to poems by Wilhelm Müller".
The cycle is occasionally referred to as the "Müllerlieder," the Müller songs, a term used by the composer once in a letter. This is not especially useful nomenclature, since Schubert's later and equally celebrated song cycle Die Winterreise is also to poems by Müller.
There are twenty songs in the cycle, around half in simple strophic form, and they move from cheerful optimism to despair and tragedy. At the beginning of the cycle, a man wanders happily through the countryside. He comes upon a brook, which he follows to a mill. He falls in love with a beautiful girl who works there (she is "the beautiful mill-girl" referred to in the title). He tries to impress the mill-girl, but discovers that she and a hunter are in love. He despairs and drowns himself in the brook. The last number is a lullaby sung by the brook.
Die schöne Müllerin is one of Schubert's most admired works, and it is frequently performed and recorded. A typical performance lasts around sixty to seventy minutes.
Schubert wrote one other song cycle, Die Winterreise (The Winter's Journey) (the songs collected as Schwanengesang are sometimes performed as a set, but were collected together after Schubert's death, and were not intended as a cycle by him).
External links
- Original German (http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/merge.cgi?48) and English translations (http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/merge.cgi?48&en) of the texts
- [1] (http://www.beoton.de/muellerin.html) source of composition dates given above