Episode 247: Schubert’s Schwangesang, D. 957, mvt 8. Der Atlas
Aug 16, 2026 · 14 min · 7 segments
We're jumping on the Greek pop-culture band wagon this week with a German lied. Be sure to like, and share with a friend! Music…
Aug 16, 2026 · 14 min · 7 segments
We're jumping on the Greek pop-culture band wagon this week with a German lied. Be sure to like, and share with a friend! Music…
We're doing as best we can this week to both tie into our previous few episodes about fantastical and ancient music and maybe jump on the bandwagon of pop culture this week as well.
And so we wanted to bring a little flair of the Greek gods to our humble podcast for this episode.
Beethoven's Creatures of Prometheus Overture, Max Bruch's aptly named and relevant Odysseus Oratorio, Carl Nielsen's Helios Overture, and the list goes on and on.
However, Public Domain has once again gotten in our way of providing recordings for some of these more famous... mythology-inspired works, so we've found a more obscure but by no means less impressive work, a single movement from Schubert's Schwangesang D957.
Go back to episode 85 and 190 for more in-depth bios, but here's just a quick summary to start.
He started music lessons at a young age and soon progressed to singing in the Imperial Court Chapel in Vienna, where he was widely regarded as a musical genius.
His first adult profession was as a school teacher, but upon realizing he couldn't maintain classroom order, he quickly got out of that profession.
Luckily, he realized he could fall back on his music and soon had an extensive catalog of works under his belt.
He tutored the children of the Esterházy court, and like the Schumanns, he also held salon-like gatherings with his musical friends on a regular basis to play his works.
When he was 24 years old in 1821, he actually officially published a collection of songs.
However, just seven years later in 1828, Schubert passed away at the young age of 31.
And the piece we're looking at today, Schwangesang, was actually published posthumously a year after his death in 1829.
The collection of 14 songs in Schwangesang were all composed in the last year of Schubert's life.
The first seven have lyrics from poems written by Ludwig Rillstab, the next six by Heinrich Heine, including the movement we'll be investigating today, and the final is a poem by Johann Gabriel Seidel.
Though all these poems in Lieder were published together, it's unlikely that that's how Schubert himself had envisioned it.
In all of his other published song cycles previously, there is just one poet's words that he's used, and there's a much more well-encapsulated narrative between the movements.
However, the publisher, Tobias Haslinger, likely grouped them all together for purposes of sales.
Haslinger himself gave the collection its name, Schwansang, or Swan Song, famously in myths, swans sing just before their death.
We're doing as best we can this week to both tie into our previous few episodes about fantastical and ancient music and maybe jump on the bandwagon of pop culture this week as well.
And so we wanted to bring a little flair of the Greek gods to our humble podcast for this episode.
Beethoven's Creatures of Prometheus Overture, Max Bruch's aptly named and relevant Odysseus Oratorio, Carl Nielsen's Helios Overture, and the list goes on and on.
However, Public Domain has once again gotten in our way of providing recordings for some of these more famous... mythology-inspired works, so we've found a more obscure but by no means less impressive work, a single movement from Schubert's Schwangesang D957.
Go back to episode 85 and 190 for more in-depth bios, but here's just a quick summary to start.
He started music lessons at a young age and soon progressed to singing in the Imperial Court Chapel in Vienna, where he was widely regarded as a musical genius.
His first adult profession was as a school teacher, but upon realizing he couldn't maintain classroom order, he quickly got out of that profession.
Luckily, he realized he could fall back on his music and soon had an extensive catalog of works under his belt.
He tutored the children of the Esterházy court, and like the Schumanns, he also held salon-like gatherings with his musical friends on a regular basis to play his works.
When he was 24 years old in 1821, he actually officially published a collection of songs.
However, just seven years later in 1828, Schubert passed away at the young age of 31.
And the piece we're looking at today, Schwangesang, was actually published posthumously a year after his death in 1829.
The collection of 14 songs in Schwangesang were all composed in the last year of Schubert's life.
The first seven have lyrics from poems written by Ludwig Rillstab, the next six by Heinrich Heine, including the movement we'll be investigating today, and the final is a poem by Johann Gabriel Seidel.
Though all these poems in Lieder were published together, it's unlikely that that's how Schubert himself had envisioned it.
In all of his other published song cycles previously, there is just one poet's words that he's used, and there's a much more well-encapsulated narrative between the movements.
However, the publisher, Tobias Haslinger, likely grouped them all together for purposes of sales.
Haslinger himself gave the collection its name, Schwansang, or Swan Song, famously in myths, swans sing just before their death.
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