Frozen wanderings

Schubert’s Winterreise

Winterreise (‘Winter journey’) is a setting of 24 poems by Wilhelm Müller (left), which Schubert composed in two parts – the first 12 in February 1827, the second 12 in October of that year. After completing the first dozen, the composer, who knew he was dying from syphilis, played them to a group of friends, describing them as ‘a group of terrifying songs which I like more than anything I have done’ and breaking down in tears afterwards.

The journey described over the 24 songs begins outside the house of a girl whom, back in May, our narrator had hoped to marry. With that hope now dashed, he writes ‘Gute Nacht’ (the name of the first song) on her gate before heading off through the snow. The twin subjects of rejected love and the prospect of death loom large throughout his musings, often accompanied by ominous imagery – a creaking weather vane (‘Die Wetterfahne’), a crow (‘Die Krähe’) and, in ‘Letzte Hoffnung’ (Last hope), a falling leaf.

Schubert was still correcting the publisher’s proofs of Winterreise when he died, aged 31, in November 1828. Müller was similarly illfated, dying from a heart attack in September 1827 at just 32.