AMD 3

Recently, my voice professor gave me a German piece to work on composed by Schubert. I immediately translated the piece called Schafer's Klagelied. This means "The Shepherd's Song of Complaint". Here is the German with the English translation:

Schäfers Klagelied

Da droben auf jenem Berge,

Da steh ich tausendmal,

An meinem Stabe [hingebogen]¹

Und schaue hinab in das Tal.

Dann folg ich der weidenden Herde,

Mein Hündchen bewahret mir sie.

Ich bin herunter gekommen

Und weiß doch selber nicht wie.

Da stehet von schönen Blumen

Die ganze Wiese so voll.

Ich breche sie, ohne zu wissen,

Wem ich sie geben soll.

Und Regen, Sturm und Gewitter

[Verpass]² ich unter dem Baum.

Die Türe dort bleibet verschlossen;

Doch alles ist leider ein Traum.

Es stehet ein Regenbogen

Wohl über jenem Haus!

Sie aber ist [fortgezogen]³,

Und weit in das Land hinaus.

Hinaus in das Land und weiter,

Vielleicht gar über die See.

Vorüber, ihr Schafe, nur vorüber!

Dem Schäfer ist gar so weh.

Shepherd's Song of Complaint

High upon that mountain,

I have stood a thousand times,

bowed over my staff

and gazing down into the valley.

I have followed my grazing flock,

my hound standing guard for me.

I have come down somehow

and I do not myself know how.

Full of lovely flowers stands

the whole meadow.

I pick them without knowing

whom I should give them to.

And rain, storm and thunder -

beneath the tree I wait for it to pass.

The door there remains closed,

for all is unfortunately a dream.

There stands a rainbow

arching over that house!

But she has gone,

and far away to distant reaches.

To distant reaches and further,

perhaps even across the sea.

It's all over, my sheep, it is simply all over!

It is such woe for your shepherd.

As you can see, this shepherd is not very happy. However, there were words/bits of phrases that I understood before I looked up the translation! Words that I recognized were 'und Regen, Sturm, und Gewitter' (And rain, storm, and thunder!), Ich bin (I am), ein Traum (a dream), ein Regenbogen (rainbow)! This got me quite excited although there were huge chunks of the piece that I could only make educated guesses of the meaning. Something wonderful that is made quite readily available to singers is IPA (international phonetic alphabet). This is a list of symbols that have certain pronunciations attached to them. And it is universal (same list of symbols no matter what language)! When singing in a foreign language, this is your BEST FRIEND! This helps a lot in German because of the umlauts and differences between stressed/unstressed syllables in German. Also, after being in a German class for some time now, singing and speaking German are pretty different! Dissecting this piece and looking at it from the language stand point really helped my dramatic interpretation of this piece. I can tell this is going to be a fun piece to perform.