Ex. 11-3: Nacht und Träume

Composed in 1822–1823 (D. 827), to a poem by Matthäus von Collin, and published in 1825 as Op. 43 No. 2. Schubert wrote it around the same time as his song cycle Die schöne Müllerin (1823), which is also in this app. (Ex. 14-4: Der Müller und der Bach by Franz Schubert) Marked "Sehr langsam" (very slowly), the song keeps a single dynamic — pianissimo — that never changes from start to finish.

The song is in B major. Partway through, it slips into G major — a distant, warmer key — before finding its way back to B. The move away to G major and back to B mirrors the poem: night and dreams sink down over the sleeper, then fade as day returns.

The pianist Gerald Moore, one of the 20th century's greatest song accompanists, called it one of the most difficult songs to play: the slow, sustained broken chords in the piano must sound beautiful without becoming mechanical.

The playwright Samuel Beckett, author of Waiting for Godot, used the song's last seven bars in his short 1982 television play of the same name, Nacht und Träume.

From the album Schubert: Lieder by Elly Ameling and Dalton Baldwin (1974)
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