Der Doppelgänger is one of the six songs from Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

's Schwanengesang

Schwanengesang

Schwanengesang is the title of a posthumous collection of songs by Franz Schubert.Unlike the earlier Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, it uses poems by three poets, Ludwig Rellstab , Heinrich Heine and Johann Gabriel Seidl . Schwanengesang has the number D 957 in the Deutsch catalogue...

 that sets words by Heinrich Heine

Heinrich Heine

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...

 for piano and tenor voice

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

. It was written in 1828, the year of Schubert's death.

Text

The title "Der Doppelgänger" is Schubert's; in Heine's Buch der Lieder the poem is untitled, making the ending a surprise.

Still ist die Nacht, es ruhen die Gassen,

In diesem Hause wohnte mein Schatz;

Sie hat schon längst die Stadt verlassen,

Doch steht noch das Haus auf dem selben Platz.

Da steht auch ein Mensch und starrt in die Höhe,

Und ringt die Hände, vor Schmerzensgewalt;

Mir graust es, wenn ich sein Antlitz sehe -

Der Mond zeigt mir meine eigne Gestalt.

Du Doppelgänger! du bleicher Geselle!

Was äffst du nach mein Liebesleid,

Das mich gequält auf dieser Stelle,

So manche Nacht, in alter Zeit?

English Interpretation

(see also footnote 1)

The night is quiet, the streets are calm,

In this house my beloved once lived:

She has long since left the town,

But the house still stands, here in the same place.


A man stands there also and looks to the sky,

And wrings his hands overwhelmed by pain:

Upon seeing his face, I am terrified--

The moon shows me my own form!


O you Doppelgänger

Doppelgänger

In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...

! you pale comrade!

Why do you ape the pain of my love

Which tormented me upon this spot

So many a night, so long ago?

Context

Heine's Buch der Lieder is divided into five sections; all the poems set in Schwanengesang are from the third, Die Heimkehr ("The homecoming"). In Schwanengesang, this song stands at the end of the Heine songs, although Heine's order is different and it has been argued that the sequence works better dramatically when the songs are performed in their order of appearance in the Buch der Lieder.

Music

Der Doppelgänger is through-composed; each stanza's setting is different. But not altogether different: the song is a kind of passacaglia on the theme of the first four bars of the piano part; this simple harmonic progression, with the piano part consisting almost entirely of block chords, dominates the song and does much to give it its feeling of inexorability, and its brief abandonment (displaced by a succession of increasingly dissonant chords) at the climax of the song signals the frantic horror of the poet.

The song is 63 bars long, and in a typical performance lasts between 4 and 5 minutes. It is in the key of B minor, the same as Schubert's Unfinished symphony.