Serenading Under the Window with Schubert's Serenade (Ständchen)
The Best Moments
Ständchen ("Leise flehen meine Lieder"), No. 4 of Schwanengesang, D. 957
I'm Franz Schubert, and I'm glad to share the best moments of my Serenade (Ständchen) with you. You'll hear how a piano that imitates a guitar carries a lover's whispered plea through the night, a song I finished in August 1828 and one that is more restless than romantic. Here on this site my fellow composers and I also teach you to recognize our pieces the moment they begin, so why not give the Trainer a go yourself?
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A Guitar With Ninety-Odd Keys
I begin the song with the piano pretending to be a guitar or a mandolin, the instruments a young man would carry under a window at night, and I like to think of it as a very polite way of clearing the throat. Then the singer joins in, in D minor, and he sounds far less serene than the title suggests, because this is a song full of anxious longing.
The Same Tune Twice, Because He Means It
In the middle I took the poet's third and fourth stanzas and gave them the same music, which is what a person does when the first plea gets no answer and he simply asks again. The song also brightens into D major here, as he lets himself hope that he and his beloved might be united.
Back Under the Window
For the last stanza I wrote different music, so the ending doesn't just repeat what you've already heard. The song closes in D minor, which means the bright hope fades and we're left in the dark, not knowing whether anyone ever opens the window.
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I hope you enjoyed learning about the best moments of Serenade (Ständchen) as much as I enjoyed telling you about them. Looking back, it's a song that never quite sits still, because the longing in it keeps shifting between hope and worry, and I think that's why people keep coming back to it. There is still a lot more to discover in this song, from the way Liszt reworked it for solo piano to the many other instruments, guitar among them, that have taken it up. The story behind the collection it belongs to, which carries a title I never gave it, is worth a closer look too. If you'd like to keep exploring, please click on the links provided, and let the song find a few more of its quiet corners for you. Next time you hear it, listen for the guitar-like piano under the voice, and I think you'll notice something new.
Recording: Lauritz Melchior (tenor), Ignace Strasfogel (piano), https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/