Adelaide ("Einsam wandelt dein Freund..."), song for voice & piano, D. 95
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Adelaide ("Einsam wandelt dein Freund..."), song for voice & piano, D. 95
- Date: 1814
- Composer: Franz Schubert
- Period: Romantic (1820-1869)
Review
Schubert's Adelaide, D. 95, is not the Adelaide. Beethoven's Adelaide is the Adelaide. Composed in 1796, the song was already acknowledged to be the Adelaide by singers, pianists, audiences, and even by the poet Friedrich von Matthison, the author of the poem and the dedicatee of the song. According to his friend Joseph Huttenbrenner, Schubert admitted that if he did set Adelaide, it would sound exactly as Beethoven wrote it.Nevertheless, when 17-year-old Schubert did set Adelaide sometime in 1814, he not only wrote a song that sounds nothing at all like Beethoven's, he wrote his first song that sounds wholly and completely like the work of Franz Schubert, the greatest song composer the German language has ever known. Indeed, Schubert's Adelaide is a magnificent song, through-composed song that illuminates every line of Matthison's poem but holds them all together with the intense inwardness of its lyricism. For the first time in his brief career, Schubert's vocal melody achieves the fusion of Italianate bel canto and Germanic harmonic interest that would mark all his greatest songs and, also for the first time, Schubert's piano accompaniment sounds like an accompaniment and not a piano solo yoked to a vocal line. Although not Beethoven's Adelaide, Schubert's Adelaide is surely Schubert's Adelaide. ~ James Leonard, Rovi
Albums with Complete Performances of the Work
| Adelaide | |
| Adelaide (I), song transcription for piano (after Beethoven Op. 46), S. 466i (LW A58) |
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