Dying and knowing he was dying, the king of ancient Thule gave away all his worldly possessions except the golden goblet once given him by his dead mistress. Then, at the moment of his death, he threw it from his last castle to the thirsty sea below and as the goblet sank beneath the waves, so too did he sink into the arms of death.

So goes Goethe's six-verse poem "Der König in Thule" (The King of Thule) from Faust and so goes Schubert's six-strophe song from 1816 (D. 367, Op. 5, No. 5). Both are deliberately archaic, Goethe's in diction, and Schubert's it modality. Both are slow and stately, Goethe's in imagery and rhythm and Schubert's in rhythm and tempo. Both get deeper every time you listen to it, Goethe's in its breath-taking richness of literary meaning (the evanescence of love and life), and Schubert's in the emotional implications of its musical meaning (the remarkable suggestiveness of plagal cadences and flattened leading tones). And both works are masterpieces. Schubert sent a copy of his setting of "Der König in Thule" to Goethe in 1816, but the old poet apparently never heard it.

That was his loss.

© All Music Guide