Der Atlas

Franz Schubert

Written in A minor, range E4 to B♭5

Atlas is the Titan of Greek myth who holds up the heavens on his shoulders. In Heinrich Heine’s poem a man calls himself an unhappy Atlas who must carry a whole world of sorrows: his proud heart wanted to be endlessly happy or endlessly miserable, and now it is miserable. Schubert wrote it in August 1828, three months before he died, and it was published after his death in the collection Schwanengesang (“Swan Song”); the piano part is Schubert’s own.