Die Schatten (The Shadows, D. 50) was composed on April 12, 1813, when Schubert was a mere 16-year-old. And "mere" is the operative word: Die Schatten wears its influences on its youthful sleeve with an Italianate bel canto vocal melody over an austere North German piano accompaniment and a stormy central section surrounded by serene outer sections. But the elements are neither fused nor even reconciled: the melody seems to have only a harmonic connection with the accompaniment, and the central section seems to have nothing to do with the outer sections except as an interruption. Even the text is youthful: setting Friedrich von Matthisson's overly rhetorical four-verse poem on mortality and immortality, Schubert's phrasing is not so much asymmetrical as simply ungainly and even unnatural in places. Although there are moments in the final verse which predict the 18-year-old Schubert of 1815, Die Schatten is still the work of a mere 16-year-old.

© All Music Guide