Hi,
My friend needs to know whether on the score for the Trout Quintet, there are any words (not performance directions). He said that in the Romantic period, composers would often write words which described their pieces/what it would be aspired to sound like. Is there any such notation on this score?
Thanks!
Nicki

Hi,
I've had a look on the score I have and there's nothing other than the odd pizz etc.
Caveat - it's the Music Minus One score so not exactly Urtext...

Satie's your man for peculiar musings in a score...

Ok thanks

I've been reading 'An Equal Music', and the main character talks about "lyrics" to it.

I remember at school singing a song to the famous tune, about a trickling brooklet and a trout at play..I don't think these are necessarily anything to do with Schubert but they could be. Try a google search?

I have an old copy of the score and parts I got in Vienna second hand, so I'll have a look later, but its Archie walking time now.

There are no words other than performance directions on my score. But the original Lieder was D550 (for voice and piano), and the 4th movement (andantino) of the quintet was based on this tune, as a theme and variations, thus it became known as th "Trout" quintet. It was a song first, music by Schubert, words by Schubart coincidentally.

"Schubert met Sylvester Paumgartner (1764-1841), an art patron and amateur cellist, who commissioned Schubert to compose a Piano Quintet which later became well known as his Trout Quintet (D667), being based on one of Schubert's Lieder melodies, Die Forelle (The Trout, D550)."

Listen here to the song.

Listen here to the quartet movement.

In einem Bächlein helle,
Da schoß in froher Eil
Die launische Forelle
Vorüber wie ein Pfeil.
Ich stand an dem Gestade
Und sah in süßer Ruh
Des muntern Fischleins Bade
Im klaren Bächlein zu.

Ein Fischer mit der Rute
Wohl an dem Ufer stand,
Und sah’s mit kaltem Blute,
Wie sich das Fischlein wand.
So lang dem Wasser Helle,
So dacht ich, nicht gebricht,
So fangt er die Forelle
Mit seiner Angel nicht.

Doch endlich ward dem Diebe
Die Zeit zu lang. Er macht’
Das Bächlein tükisch trübe,
Und eh ich es gedacht,
So zuckte seine Rute,
Das Fischlein zapelt dran,
Und ich mit regem Blute
Salt di Betrog’ne an.

In a clear brooklet,
in lively haste,
the wayward trout
flashed arrowlike by.
Standing on the bank,
contentedly I watched
the jolly little fish
swimming the clear brook.

An angler, with rod,
stood on the bank, cold-bloodedly noting
the fish’s twists and turns.
As long as the water
remains so clear, I thought,
he'll never take the trout
with his rod.

But at last the thief
tired of waiting. Artfully
he muddied the brooklet,
and the next moment,
a flick of the rod,
and there writhed the fish;
and I, with blood boiling,
looked at the deceived one.