With the conflict with France at an end, it might seem odd for Beethoven to compose a song about a soldier going off to war, but “Des Kriegers Abschied” (“The Soldier’s Farewell,” WoO 143) might best be considered as one of Beethoven’s post-war patriotic compositions.
The text of “Des Kriegers Abschied” comes from Christian Ludwig Reissig, the disabled Austrian soldier who solicited composers to set his poems to music. In The Beethoven Song Companion, Paul Reid calls this one “the poorest of the Reissig poems set by Beethoven.”
Composed in late 1814, “Des Kriegers Abschied” tells of the soldier’s love of country and the love of the girl he leaves behind. “My arm belongs to my country, My heart to my lovely beauty,” the poet vows in the first stanza, and then again at the end of the next three stanzas.
#Beethoven250 Day 276
“Des Kriegers Abscheid” (WoO 143), 1814
An animated score accompanies this studio recording by Peter Schreier.
On 19 October 1814, the 17-year-old Franz Schubert expressed his own German patriotism by composing a song on a scene from Goethe’s Faust. The emotionally searing “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel) is now considered a landmark in German lied.