Franz Schubert composed over 600 songs, most of which concern love, loss, Nature, and death. Besides his gifts at the piano, Schubert mastered the guitar, and many of his songs suit the instrument, since it tends not to overpower the vocalist. Many of Schubert’s works had their debut at Schubertiads, musical evenings arranged by the composer’s friends to support him materially while celebrating his talents.

Several of the selections chosen by baritone Philippe Sly and guitarist John Charles Britton have gained note over the generations: Auf dem Wasser zu singen is a lyric in strophic form that captures the freedom of singing upon friendly waters. An Sylvia, after Shakespeare, is a searching love-ballade. Erlkoenig, after Goethe, is a virtuoso vehicle for the singer to take three roles: the ailing child, the fearful father, and the seductive voice of Death.

The Staendchen (Serenade) is from late in Schubert’s life, a strophic lyric pleading for the singer’s lover to join him and make him happy. In Wohin? “Whither?”) the singer’s long gaze at a babbling brook makes him ponder his fate. In Der Doppelgaenger, after poet Heinrich Heine, a man sees the double of himself, gazing helplessly at the house of the woman who rejected him. Der Lindenbaum evokes the image of an often-visited tree where the protagonist once sought love, but now it only promises respite in death.

”The Miller and the Brook,” from the cycle The Fair Maid of the Mill, has a forlorn lover converse with the
running stream, seeking consolation. A more plaintive note occurs in Du liebst mich nicht, “You don’t love me,” in which the repeated revelation of denial makes the narrator question to value of all creation. Der Tod und das Maedchen, “Death and the Maiden,” composed in 1817, involves a conversation between a young girl who implores Death to leave her be, but Death “reassures” her that the sleep he delivers is kindly. The rhythm strongly resembles the A Minor Allegretto movement from Beethoven’s 7th Symphony.