Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel

Synopsis

According to Wikipedia, an art song is “a vocal music composition, usually written for one voice with piano accompaniment … often a musical setting of an independent poem or text intended for the concert repertory as part of a recital.”

The 600-plus art songs of the Viennese composer Franz Schubert are the most familiar examples of the genre and rank among the greatest achievements of the Romantic Era in music.

On today’s date in 1814, Schubert was just 17 when he finished one of the most famous of them, Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel, a remarkably empathetic setting of a scene from Goethe’s Faust in which the naïve young Gretchen confesses being both terrified and thrilled by falling passionately in love.

British pianist Graham Johnson has recorded all 600-plus Schubert songs with some of the greatest singers of our day, and said, “The most amazing thing is that a 17-year-old boy can somehow enter into the female psyche with such an incredible amount of understanding as if he himself had experienced such feelings … there is a real distinct feeling of Schubert blown away by the drama and the story he has read.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Gretchen am Spinnrade, D118; Elly Ameling, soprano; Dalton Baldwin, piano; Phillips 420870

On This Day

Births

• 1903 - American composer Vittorio Giannini, in Philadelphia

• 1916 - Swedish composer Karl-Birgir Blomdahl, in Växjö

• 1943 - British composer Robin Holloway, in Leamington Spa

Premieres

• 1845 - Wagner: opera Tannhäuser (Dresden version), in Dresden at the Hoftheater

• 1894 - Chadwick: Symphony No. 3, by the Boston Symphony, Emil Paur conducting

• 1901 - Elgar: Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, in Liverpool, by the Liverpool Orchestral Society

• 1905 - Sibelius: Violin Concerto (revised version), in Berlin, conducted by Richard Strauss and with Karl Halir the soloist. The first version of this concerto premiered under the composer's director in Helsinki, with Victor Novácek as soloist, on February 8, 1904, but the composer withdrew this version and revised the concerto

• 1922 - Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition in the orchestration by Maurice Ravel, in Paris, Serge Koussevitzky conducting

• 1928 - Honegger: symphonic movement, Rugby, in Paris

• 1953 - Morton Gould: Inventions for Four Pianos and Orchestra by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Mitropoulos

• 1964 - Virgil Thomson: Autumn (Concertino for harp, strings, and percussion), at the American-Spanish Festival of Music in Madrid, with Nicanor Zabeleta the harp soloist and Enrique Jordá conducting

• 1967 - Gershwin: public premiere of Lullaby for string quartet (composed c. 1919-20), at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., by the Juilliard String Quartet. During his lifetime, Gershwin would occasionally arrange impromptu performances of this piece at parties if sufficient string players were in attendance.

• 1990 - Shulamit Ran: Symphony, by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Gary Bertini conducting. This work won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1991.

• 1996 - John Adams’ Clarinet Concerto Gnarly Buttons with soloist Michael Collins and the London Sinfonietta conducted by the composer

Others

• 1739 - Handel completes his Concerto Grosso No. 4 (see Julian date: Oct. 8)

• 1933 - German conductor and composer Otto Klemperer leads his first concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The program includes Leo Weiner’s transcription of J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, Stravinsky’s Petrouchka Ballet Suite, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.