Ex. 8-6: Auf dem Wasser zu singen

"Auf dem Wasser zu singen" (To Be Sung on the Water) is a song Schubert wrote in 1823, when he was 26 (D. 774). The poem is by Count Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg, who wrote it in 1782 while on his honeymoon, for his new wife Agnes.

On the surface it is a happy scene: a boat glides over the water at sunset, and the waves shine with red evening light. But in the last verse the mood changes: time itself flies away "on dewy wings," and the poet imagines the day when he too will be carried off, out of the passing of time.

Schubert's piano plays fast, flowing notes all the way through, like light moving on the water. The song is in A-flat major, and its harmony keeps shifting between bright and dark, like light and shadow on the water.

Schubert wrote this in 1823, the same hard year he fell ill and wrote his song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, which is also in this app. Ex. 14-4: Der Müller und der Bach by Franz Schubert Years later, he used the same key and the same kind of rippling piano writing in the middle of one of his last piano pieces, the Impromptu in A-flat (Op. 90 No. 4).

From the album Classical Barbra by Barbra Streisand. She recorded this Schubert song in 1973, but it was left off the original 1976 album and first released on the expanded edition in 2013. Other songs on this album are also in this app.
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