Work

While paging through Friedrich Rückert's Ostliche Rosen (Roses From the East), his 1822 collection of poetry on oriental themes, Schubert found "Die Wallfahrt" (The Pilgrimage), along with the five other poems of Rückert he set. However, although Schubert apparently began Die Wallfahrt in 1823, he declined to finish it. Indeed, beyond a superbly sorrowful melody for bass baritone that extends for 16 bars, and a few indications of a piano accompaniment, there is almost nothing to Die Wallfahrt. How Schubert might have concluded it, much less how he refined and polished it, is anyone's guess; the version that was completed by Dutch cleric and musicologist Reinhard Van Hoorick tastefully places just a few rolled chords in the accompaniment and adds a perfect cadence as a piano postlude.

© All Music Guide

Portions of Content Provided by All Music Guide.
© 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide is a registered trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.