The shepherd on the cliff
(Poet's title: Der Hirt auf dem Felsen)
Set by Schubert:
D 965
for voice, clarinet and piano[October 1828]
Wenn auf dem höchsten Fels ich steh,
Ins tiefe Tal hernieder seh
Und singe,
Fern aus dem tiefen dunkeln Tal
Schwingt sich empor der Wiederhall
Der Klüfte.
Je weiter meine Stimme dringt,
Je heller sie mir wiederklingt
Von unten.
Mein Liebchen wohnt so weit von mir,
Drum sehn ich mich so heiß nach ihr
Hinüber.
In tiefem Gram verzehr ich mich,
Mir ist die Freude hin,
Auf Erden mir die Hoffnung wich,
Ich hier so einsam bin.
So sehnend klang im Wald das Lied,
So sehnend klang es durch die Nacht.
Die Herzen es zum Himmel zieht
Mit wunderbarer Macht.
Der Frühling will kommen,
Der Frühling, meine Freud,
Nun mach ich mich fertig
Zum Wandern bereit.
When I stand on the highest cliff
I look down into the deep valley
And sing,
Far away out of the deep dark valley
There soars up an echo
From the ravines,
The further my voice reaches
The brighter it resounds to me
From below.
My beloved lives so far from me,
So I feel such hot longing for her
Over there!
I am eating myself up in deepest sorrow,
Joy has abandoned me!
There is no hope left for me on earth,
I am so lonely here!
The song rang out in the forest with such longing,
It rang out with such longing through the night;
It draws hearts towards heaven
With an amazing power.
Spring is going to come,
Spring, my joy!
I shall now prepare myself
So that I am ready to travel.
All translations into English that appear on this website, unless otherwise stated, are by Malcolm Wren. You are free to use them on condition that you acknowledge Malcolm Wren as the translator and schubertsong.uk as the source. Unless otherwise stated, the comments and essays that appear after the texts and translations are by Malcolm Wren and are © Copyright.
☙
Themes and images in this text:
Abysses, clefts and crevasses Being solitary, alone and lonely Echo Hearts Heaven, the sky High, low and deep Hope Joy Longing and yearning Mountains and cliffs Near and far Night and the moon Shepherds Songs (general) Spring (season) Valleys Walking and wandering
This text is taken from three different poems:
1) Wilhelm Müller, Der Berghirt (The mountain shepherd), stanzas 1 – 6
2) Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, Nächtliche Schall (Night-time sound) stanzas 2 and 1
3) Wilhelm Müller, Liebesgedanken (Thoughts of love) a modified version of stanza 2
Wilhelm Müller, Der Berghirt
Wenn auf dem höchsten Fels ich steh’,
In’s tiefe Thal hernieder seh’
Und singe,
Fern aus dem tiefen dunkeln Thal
Schwingt sich empor der Wiederhall
Der Klüfte.
Je weiter meine Stimme dringt,
Je heller sie mir wiederklingt
Von unten.
Mein Liebchen wohnt so fern von mir,
Drum sehn’ ich mich so heiß nach ihr
Hinüber!
Viel steile Berge vor mir stehn,
Die Flüsse schäumend sich ergehn
Im Thale.
Der Aar sich in die Wolken schwingt,
Die Gemse durch die Klüfte springt
Hinüber!
Die Wolken ruhen auf der Höh’,
Und durch die Nebel glänzt der Schnee
Der Gipfel.
Je stolzer mir mein Mädchen thut,
Je höher steigt empor mein Muth
In Liebe.
Ein Glöckchen klingt im stillen Thal,
Die Essen rauchen überall
Im Dorfe.
Ach, Mädchen, Mädchen, nimm mich bald!
Es ist so öd’, es ist so kalt
Hier oben.
The mountain shepherd
When I stand on the highest cliff
I look down into the deep valley
And sing,
Far away out of the deep dark valley
There soars up an echo
From the ravines,
The further my voice reaches
The brighter it resounds to me
From below.
My beloved lives so far from me,
So I feel such hot longing for her
Over there!
Many steep mountains stand before me,
The frothing rivers wend their way
In the valley.
The eagle soars into the clouds,
The chamois jumps around the ravines and
Over them!
The clouds rest on the heights,
And the snow glows through the mist
On the peaks.
The prouder my girl makes me feel
The higher my courage rises
With love.
A little bell is ringing in the quiet valley
There is a smell of food everywhere
In the village.
Oh my girl, my girl, take me quickly!
It is so barren, it is so cold
Up here.
Karl August Varnhagen von Ense,
Nächtliche Schall
So sehnend klang im Wald das Lied,
So sehnend durch die Nacht;
Die Herzen es zum Himmel zieht
Mit wunderbarer Macht.
»In tiefem Gram verzehr’ ich mich,
Mir ist die Freude hin!
Auf Erden mir die Hoffnung wich,
Ich hier so einsam bin!
Der Himmel mir die Liebe gab,
Ich lebte nur in ihr:
Der Menschheit Last mir sank hinab,
Ich fand den Himmel hier!
Der Himmel mir die Liebe gab,
Doch die Geliebte nicht,
Mir strahlt ihr hohes Bild herab
Im hehren Sternenlicht.
Nach der Geliebten sehn’ ich mich,
Sie ist auf Erden nie!
Beglückt hier nimmer wähn’ ich mich!
Im Himmel nur ist sie!
Voll Sehnsucht sie empor mich zieht,
Schon wird das Herz mir leicht!
Der letzte Hauch im Lied entflieht,
Im Lied das Herz entweicht!«
Night-time sound
The song rang out in the forest with such longing,
Such longing through the night;
It draws hearts towards heaven
With an amazing power.
“I am eating myself up in deepest sorrow,
Joy has abandoned me!
There is no hope left for me on earth,
I am so lonely here!
Heaven gave me love,
I lived only in love:
The burden of humanity fell away from me,
I found heaven here!
Heaven gave me love
But not the beloved,
Her noble image shines down on me
In majestic starlight.
I long for the beloved,
She is never on earth!
I can never imagine myself made happy here!
She is only in heaven!
She draws me up full of longing,
My heart will soon be light!
My last breath escapes in song,
My heart expires in song!”
Wilhelm Müller, Liebesgedanken
Je höher die Glocke,
Je heller der Klang:
Je ferner das Mädchen,
Je lieber der Gang.
Der Frühling will kommen,
O Frühling, meine Freud’!
Nun mach’ ich meine Schuhe
Zum Wandern bereit.
Wohlauf durch die Wälder,
Wo die Nachtigall singt!
Wohlauf durch die Berge,
Wo’s Gemsböcklein springt!
Zwei schneeweiße Täubchen,
Die fliegen voraus,
Und setzen sich schnäbelnd
Auf der Hirtin ihr Haus.
Ei bist du schon munter,
Und bist schon so blank?
Gott grüss dich, schön’s Dirnel!
Ach, der Winter war lang!
Zwei Augen wie Kirschkern’,
Die Zähne schneeweiß,
Die Wangen wie Röslein
Betracht’ ich mit Fleiß.
Ein Mieder von Scharlach,
Ganz funkelnagelneu,
Und unter dem Mieder
Ein Herzlein so treu!
Und ihr Lippen, ihr Lippen,
Wie preis’ ich denn euch?
So wie ich will sprechen,
So küßt ihr mich gleich!
Ei Winter, ei Winter,
Bist immer noch hier?
So darf ich doch wandern
In Gedanken zu ihr.
Auf Siebenmeilenstiefeln
Geht’s flink von der Stell’,
Auf Liebesgedanken
Geht’s siebenmal so schnell.
Thoughts of love
The higher the bell,
The brighter the sound:
The further the girl,
The lovelier the walk.
Spring is going to come,
O spring, my joy!
I shall now prepare my shoes
So that I am ready to travel.
Let’s be off through the woods
Where the nightingale sings!
Let’s be off through the mountains,
Where the little chamois jump!
Two snow-white little doves
Are flying ahead,
And they settle down to bill and coo
On the shepherdess’s house.
Oh are you cheerful already,
And are you already so bright?
Hello to you, beautiful lass!
Oh, the winter was so long!
Two eyes like cherry stones,
Snow-white teeth,
Cheeks like a little rose
I have observed them carefully.
A scarlet bodice,
Shining and brand new,
And under the bodice
A dear heart that is so faithful!
And her lips, her lips,
How much do I value you?
Just as much as I want to speak
So much are you going to kiss me!
Oh winter, oh winter,
Are you still here?
Therefore I should still travel
Thinking of her.
With seven-mile boots
You can get away from a place quickly,
With thoughts of love,
You can travel seven times as fast.
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‘Der Hirt auf dem Felsen’ seems to be the only example in Schubert’s Lieder of passages from different poems (and even different poets) being cobbled together to make a new text. It appears that the original conception was to create a cantata or a scena for Anna Milder-Hauptmann to perform (she had asked Schubert for something of the sort as early as 1825), so we are not really dealing with a Lied – i.e. the conception of the work was not primarily triggered by Schubert’s reading of an independent poetic text[1]. It is possible that Schubert made the selections himself (after all he was familiar with the volumes in which Müller´s Der Berghirt and Liebesgedanken appeared from his work on Winterreise), but it seems more likely that it was Anna Milder´s younger sister who chose these texts for Schubert to set. Jeanette Milder-Bürde is known to have made musical settings of the two Müller texts herself, so she probably saw the possibilities of using them as a springboard for her sister´s showpiece. She may have associated them with Anna´s early success in Vienna as Emmeline in Weigl´s Die Schweizer Familie.
The text that has emerged from the selection process therefore only makes coherent sense in musical, not in poetical, terms. The changing metre and imagery trigger changes in the music, giving the impression of the changing moods of the shepherd. The desperate longing of Nächtliche Schall becomes a temporary frustration in the new context, where it serves mainly as a contrast to introduce the hope of spring from Liebesgedanken.
The basic scenario of Der Hirt auf dem Felsen is taken from Müller’s Der Berghirt. This mountain shepherd stands high on a cliff (the context makes it clear that this is not a single rock) looking down into the valley and the distant village where his beloved lives. The more he sings, the more cut off from home he feels. We do not know how long he has to spend up here before he can return, but it is clearly long enough for him to feel a sense of yearning and homesickness. He is missing his girlfriend and the warmth she offers, but also the home-cooked food back in the village.
The poem’s metre, with each iambic rhyming couplet followed by an amphibrach (weak STRONG weak), is a remarkably clever evocation of the echo effect. Less gifted poets would have used a rhyme or repetition to portray the echo, but Müller knows that the echo only conveys the final part of what went out and that our voice has been transformed before it returns to us. Müller’s design captures the effect of waiting for the echo to return and realising that the quality and the content of the original message have now changed. The shepherd even comments on this in stanza 3:
The further my voice reaches
The brighter it resounds to me
From below.
As the poem proceeds the echo serves to accentuate the shepherd’s isolation. His voice is not reaching the beloved – it is always thrown back to him and he feels increasingly distant up on his remote cliff.
Varnhagen von Ense’s Nächtliche Schall expresses a more existential type of longing than that of Müller’s shepherd. The poet creates a melancholy song about the incompatibility of our feelings of love with our actual experience of it involving real people. However, this very sense of disjunction seems to convince us all the more of the power of love in the realm of heaven, and the ability of song (both poetry and music) to offer solace. Graham Johnson speculates that these ideas about the power of song are what appealed to Anna Milder-Hauptmann when she commissioned Der Hirt auf dem Felsen and that it was she who suggested Schubert include two stanzas on this theme as part of the work. Also in favour of this hypothesis is the fact that the famous soprano got to know Vernhagen von Ense (and his more famous wife Rahel) after she moved from Vienna to Berlin in 1821.
These two ‘tragic’ stanzas (from the high point of abstract German Romanticism) are then juxtaposed with a single strophe from Müller’s more down to earth ‘folk’ style Liebesgedanken. Whoever edited the text to prepare it for musical setting decided to get rid of the (perhaps too down to earth) shoes: ‘ I shall now prepare my shoes / So that I am ready to travel’ has become ‘I shall now prepare myself / So that I am ready to travel’ (Nun mach’ ich mich fertig / Zum Wandern bereit). This is within the spirit of the poem, which concludes that thoughts of love allow us to travel more quickly than the best imaginable pair of hiking boots. The speaker only has ‘thoughts’ of love because it is still winter, spring is not yet here and he is still a long way from the beloved.
‘Zum Wandern bereit’, ‘ready to travel’, becomes the last line of Der Hirt auf dem Felsen. As in its original context in Liebesgedanken it refers on one level to the poetic persona returning to a beloved girl after a period of separation. For the shepherd going back down from the cliff top to the village deep in the valley, the route is clear. ‘Wandern’ cannot mean ‘wandering’ or ‘roaming’, either in the original or in the new context. Unlike in the first Müller song that Schubert set to music (Das Wandern from Die schöne Müllerin), here (on the last occasion when Schubert would make a Müller setting) the poet is returning to a secure, familiar environment, not setting off into the unknown. ‘Wandern’ can simply mean ‘walking’ or ‘travelling’.
[1] Richard Kramer, Distant Cycles. Schubert and the Conceiving of Song University of Chicago Press 1994
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Original Spelling Der Hirt auf dem Felsen Wenn auf dem höchsten Fels ich steh', In's tiefe Thal hernieder seh' Und singe, Fern aus dem tiefen dunkeln Thal Schwingt sich empor der Wiederhall Der Klüfte. Je weiter meine Stimme dringt, Je heller sie mir wiederklingt Von unten. Mein Liebchen wohnt so weit von mir, Drum sehn' ich mich so heiß nach ihr Hinüber! In tiefem Gram verzehr' ich mich, Mir ist die Freude hin! Auf Erden mir die Hoffnung wich, Ich hier so einsam bin! So sehnend klang im Wald das Lied, So sehnend klang es durch die Nacht; Die Herzen es zum Himmel zieht Mit wunderbarer Macht. Der Frühling will kommen, Der Frühling, meine Freud', Nun mach' ich mich fertig Zum Wandern bereit.
Wilhelm Müller, Der Berghirt
Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten. Herausgegeben von Wilhelm Müller. Zweites Bändchen. Deßau 1824. Bei Christian Georg Ackermann, pages 111-112; and with Urania. Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1822. Neue Folge, vierter Jahrgang. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. 1822, pages 419-420.
First published in Urania (see above) as the second poem of Ländliche Lieder, with each two consecutive stanzas combined into one with six lines.
To see an early edition of this text, go to page 111 Erstes Bild 125 here: https://download.digitale-sammlungen.de/BOOKS/download.pl?id=bsb10115225
Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, Nächtliche Schall
Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Vermischte Gedichte von K. A. Varnhagen von Ense. Frankfurt am Main bei Franz Varrentrapp, 1816, pages 15-16.
First published in Musenalmanach auf das Jahr 1804. Herausgegeben von L. A. v. Chamisso und K. A. Varnhagen. Leipzig, bei Carl Gottlob Schmidt. 1804, pages 60-61. Here the poem has the title Romanze and an additional stanza between stanza 1 and 2:
Es klang so zart und süß ins Herz,
Ein Herz im Liede lebt:
Und ew’ger, ew’ger Liebesschmerz
In ihm zum Himmel strebt.
It sounded so sweet and tender in the heart,
A heart lived in the song:
And eternal, eternal love-agony
Was striving towards heaven in it.
To see an early edition of this text, go to page 15 Erstes Bild 26 here: https://download.digitale-sammlungen.de/BOOKS/download.pl?id=bsb10121716
Wilhelm Müller, Liebesgedanken
Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten. Herausgegeben von Wilhelm Müller. Zweites Bändchen. Deßau 1824. Bei Christian Georg Ackermann, pages 122-124; and with Urania. Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1822. Neue Folge, vierter Jahrgang. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. 1822, pages 422-423.
To see an early edition of this text, go to page 122 Erstes Bild 136 here: https://download.digitale-sammlungen.de/BOOKS/download.pl?id=bsb10115225