Winterreise, D. 911: Der Leiermann

Der Leiermann is the last song in Schubert's Winterreise cycle, and it stands apart from everything that came before it in its absolute desolation. A hurdy-gurdy player — the leiermann — stands at the edge of a village, ignored by everyone, his instrument grinding out a bare, droning melody in the cold. The piano imitates this drone precisely: the left hand sustains an empty fifth — no third, no harmonic warmth — throughout almost the entire song, while the right hand plays a tune that circles back on itself without resolution. The vocal line enters over this drone with the flatness of exhaustion, a voice that has given up expecting anything. The emotional register is beyond sadness; it is the numbness that arrives after sadness has run its course. Harmonically, Schubert does almost nothing — the music is stripped of the developmental ambition that usually animates his work, and the effect is devastating. The wanderer ends the cycle by asking the old man whether he should follow him, whether his songs would suit the hurdy-gurdy's unchanging drone. No answer comes. Historically, this cycle represents one of the most unflinching confrontations with psychological dissolution in the Western musical canon. You listen to this alone, at night, when you have stopped fighting something and arrived at a strange, cold peace with it.