fight for a song: Franz Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin

Piotr Olech altMarek Toporowski pianoforte

Franz Schubert's “Beautiful Mill” was created in 1823 to the poems of Wilhelm Müller, the source of which was surprisingly light: the story of the miller and the miller's daughter was born as a kind of salon literary fun, in which the poet took part. Müller transformed the works written for her into a self-contained extended cycle, and Schubert selected twenty poems from it, creating one of the first great musical stories of its kind - a story expressed in a series of songs.

Her hero sets off on the road, following the stream that leads him to the mill and meets the eponymous miller. The initial joy, fascination and hope gradually give way to envy, disappointment and despair when a rival — the hunter — appears. Remarkably, the girl herself remains an almost absent character. Schubert omitted one of the poems that more accurately described her life, so that she becomes the object of the imagination of a miller rather than a full-fledged heroine.

So the most important partner of the hero turns out to be not the beloved, but the stream: the guide, the confidant, and in the finale also the place of his death. Schubert composed part of the cycle during his own serious crisis, which is why it is difficult to hear “The Beautiful Grinder” only as a story of disappointed love. It is also a poignant portrait of a man whose idea of happiness is increasingly at odds with reality and who ultimately fails to find a place for himself in the world.

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Piotr Olech photo of the artist's archive