Der Tod und das Madchenis a very famous lied composed by Franz Schubert in February 1817 for voice and piano. The text of this piece is derived from a poem written by German poet Matthias Claudius. The text of this poem displays that it is a dialogue between a girl and death with death, trying to persuade the girl to die, similar to Schubert's other lied, 'Der Erlkonig'. This piece provides two sections, the passionate music of the fearful maiden and the slow soothing melody of death.
'Der Tod und das Madchen' begins with an introduction of D Minor, already setting the mood of the piece before the vocalist starts singing. With a slow time signature of 2/2, accompanied by a piano playing chords in both hands with the dynamics playing pianissimo (pp ), 'Der Tod und Das Madchen' intellectually presents the musical theme of 'death'. The singer of this piece enters in on bar 9 with unusual rhythm compared to the first 8 bars, causing the singer (maiden) to sound more agitated when she sees death. The dynamics of this entire section is marked piano and the tempo marking is 'Etwas Geschwinder' meaning 'somewhat faster'. The melody in this section gradually increases in pitch only chromatically to an extent. The piano part changes with a syncopated rhythm, playing chords of quavers substituting with each other in both hands. Two interesting chords are added in this section to create the eerie mood intended in this piece. The first, being in system 3 bar 1 is a diminished chord and the second being the last chord of this section being an imperfect cadence, both with the purpose of stating the current mood of the maiden. The tone the singer brings in both sections change due to the characters within the piece. The vocalist in the maiden's part is sung in a higher register, compared to the death's part which is sung in a lower register with the notes sung mainly being a D and an F. However, in this third and final section, being the Death's song, the music returns to the tempo and the dynamics of the first introduction of the piece. The key of this section modulates to F major, being the relative major of D Minor. The key modulates to D major on the last syllable of the song and the last seven bars is nearly a repeat of the first introduction except that it is in a major key and shortened by one bar. The texture of this piece is mainly homophonic throughout, except the first introduction (8 bars) and the last introduction (7 bars). Continuous chords being played by both hands in the piano part keeps the piece thick as well as the vocalist singing on top of it. Similar to his other piece, 'Der Erlkonig', 'Der Tod und Das Madchen' is classified as program music which is music that is intended to evoke images or convey the impression of events and in this case, this lied is famous for doing so depicting the emotions of the two characters through the music. |