Schubert/Rückert ‘Du bist die Ruh’

Caspar David Friedrich, Woman Before the Rising Sun (1818)

Spring passes into summer, and for this verdant Sunday, no music could be more sublime, inspiring and transporting than this. It reminds us of the power of poets to speak of the beauty of the world in terms that stretch across the bounds of time, and the power of composers to vest their words with still greater depth. Still there is an amazing tension in this work. Rückert’s language wells with passion and is plainly a composition of temporal love. But Schubert has transposed the work into an ethereal world of spirit and faith with music which is a marvel of simplicity, classical and romantic at once–music that soothes like a balm applied to an open wound. The song is haunting.

Below, an original translation of Friedrich Rückert’s poem, followed by a performance by soprano Elisabeth Schumann from 1932. One hearing is never enough.

Du bist die Ruh,

Der Friede mild,

Die Sehnsucht du

Und was sie stillt.

Ich weihe dir

Voll Lust und Schmerz

Zur Wohnung hier

Mein Aug und Herz.

Kehr ein bei mir,

Und schliesse du

Still hinter dir

Die Pforten zu.

Treib andern Schmerz

Aus dieser Brust!

Voll sei dies Herz

Von deiner Lust.

Dies Augenzelt

Von deinem Glanz

Allein erhellt,

0 füll es ganz!

You are the calm,

The restful peace:

You are my longing and

what makes it cease.

With passion and pain

To you I give

My eye and heart

Are yours to live.

Enter here and close

Quietly behind you

the gates of your

Gentle embrace.

All other grief

You dispel from my breast:

My heart swells

With the love of you.

Your brightness alone

Lights the canopy of my eyes

Oh, fill it fully!

–Friedrich Rückert, Du bist die Ruh (1822)

Franz Schubert, Du bist die Ruh DV 776 (1823):