Ex. 10-3: Jägers Abendlied

Jägers Abendlied (Hunter's Evening Song) is Schubert's second song to this poem by Goethe. He wrote it early in 1816, when he was 19. He had already written a song to the same poem in June 1815, but that first song was printed only in 1907. One editor thought that Schubert had probably forgotten it by the time he wrote the second one.

In April 1816 this song was one of the sixteen Goethe songs that a friend of Schubert's sent to Goethe in a book. It was printed in Vienna in 1821, in a set of four Goethe songs, and all four had been in that book. Schubert dedicated the set to a court official who later wrote the first book about Salieri, Schubert's teacher.

Goethe wrote the poem in the winter of 1775–76, when he was 26 and had just moved to Weimar. It was first printed in 1776 without his name, with the title "Hunter's Night Song." Later he changed some lines, and the title became "Hunter's Evening Song."

In the poem, a hunter walks quietly through the fields in the evening with his gun ready, and suddenly he sees the face of the woman he loves clearly in his mind. He imagines that she too is out walking somewhere at this moment, and he wonders whether she ever thinks of him. When he thinks of her, it is like looking at the moon, and a quiet peace comes over him.

Goethe's poem has four verses, but Schubert left out the third. In that verse, the hunter wanders through the world, east and west, angry and unhappy, because he has to leave her.

Many other composers wrote songs to the same poem, among them Goethe's friend Carl Friedrich Zelter in 1807 and Fanny Hensel around 1824. Goethe himself liked plain, simple songs like Zelter's.

From the album Schubert: Goethe Lieder by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Jörg Demus (1999)
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