Ex. 2-5: Ständchen

Ständchen (Serenade) is the fourth song of Schwanengesang (Swan Song). Schubert wrote it in August 1828, when he was 31. That summer he wrote seven songs to poems by Ludwig Rellstab and six to poems by Heinrich Heine, one after another in the same book of music paper. After Schubert's death that November, his brother sold the songs to a publisher in Vienna. The publisher put them together in one set, and he gave it the title Swan Song, from an old belief that a swan sings only once, just before it dies. The set came out in 1829.

Ludwig Rellstab (1799–1860) was a poet from Berlin. He had been an army officer, and later he became the most important music critic in the city. In 1825, at 26, he travelled to Vienna to meet Beethoven, and he left a few of his poems at Beethoven's home, hoping that Beethoven would set them to music. Beethoven never did. It is said that after Beethoven's death, Schubert found these poems among his papers. But Ständchen had also been printed in a book of Rellstab's poems in 1827, so Schubert may simply have read it there.

In the poem, a young man sings to the woman he loves at night. He asks her to come down to him in the quiet wood. The moon is shining, nobody is listening, and even the nightingales seem to sing for him. The poem ends while he is still waiting.

The piano part sounds like a guitar, the instrument that young men played when they sang a serenade at night.

In 1838 Liszt made a version of the song for piano alone, and he often played it at the end of his concerts. Since then the song has been arranged for orchestra, violin, cello, harp, organ, guitar and many other instruments.

Track 4 from the album Lieder by Fatma Said (2025)
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