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IF YOU HAVE TEARS TO SHED . . .
After Franz Schubert died at the age of 31, his brother gathered some manuscripts of songs and sold them to a publisher. The songs had no common theme, but they decided to give the collection the name "Swan Songs."
The songs did not sell, and were neglected for ten years until piano arrangements were made of them by Franz Liszt, who performed these transcription at a concert to benefit the victims of a flood in Hungary that wiped out the city of Pest (now part of Budapest).
Today, when a football coach announces that he is leaving the team, sports announcers refer to the speech as "his swan song." They likely have never heard of Schubert, but these songs proved so influential, that the term "swan song" has entered the English vocabulary as someone's parting or dying statement.
From the collection "Swan Songs" this is the Serenade. (Other songs from this collection by Schubert that I have arranged are Doppelgänger and Die Stadt.) In a collection of sad songs, it is probably the saddest song ever written.
This music, based on the Liszt transcription, was made using only Sibelius 3 and the various MIDI patches in QuickTime. If you object to making music using such software, or if you know someone who says that music made on a computer sounds stiff and mechanical, play this for them.
The sheet music for this piece is available for a nominal fee at
my page at SibeliusMusic where you can also watch the music go by as the tune plays.
After Franz Schubert died at the age of 31, his brother gathered some manuscripts of songs and sold them to a publisher. The songs had no common theme, but they decided to give the collection the name "Swan Songs."
The songs did not sell, and were neglected for ten years until piano arrangements were made of them by Franz Liszt, who performed these transcription at a concert to benefit the victims of a flood in Hungary that wiped out the city of Pest (now part of Budapest).
Today, when a football coach announces that he is leaving the team, sports announcers refer to the speech as "his swan song." They likely have never heard of Schubert, but these songs proved so influential, that the term "swan song" has entered the English vocabulary as someone's parting or dying statement.
From the collection "Swan Songs" this is the Serenade. (Other songs from this collection by Schubert that I have arranged are Doppelgänger and Die Stadt.) In a collection of sad songs, it is probably the saddest song ever written.
This music, based on the Liszt transcription, was made using only Sibelius 3 and the various MIDI patches in QuickTime. If you object to making music using such software, or if you know someone who says that music made on a computer sounds stiff and mechanical, play this for them.
The sheet music for this piece is available for a nominal fee at
my page at SibeliusMusic where you can also watch the music go by as the tune plays.
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drakonis
The glockenspiel & calliope, not something I would have
thought of to use as instruments for this touching piece, but
it seems to work OK. Schubert was definitely the songsmith,
and this is a great one (and I'm not saying that just because
my music is posted under "SchwanSongs", a play on this very
turn of phrase :-) By the way, thank you for taking time to
do a bit of explanation/education in your music descriptions,
I watch for your stuff partly for this fun background you
post.
ttfn,
Drakonis