The Sunday listening It is a space in which a musical page becomes an opportunity to tell, think and discover. Every week, a chosen listening to cross the history of music with sensitivity and human gaze, seeking in every sound what continues to speak to the present.
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The heart that cannot stand still
Today’s listening: Franz Schubert – Gretchen am SpinnradeD 118
by Marialuisa Veneziano
30 August 2026
Before you start music
There are educated thoughts.
They come, they get recognized and then, with some common sense, they leave.
And then there are others.
The ones coming back.
Let's get them out and get back. We change room and follow. Let’s try to take care of each other and they, with a tenacity that deserves best cause, begin exactly from where we left them.
Schubert was just seventeen years old when he turned one of these thoughts into music.
A girl sits at the archer.
Hands work.
The wheel turns.
But she's not there anymore.
It is entirely within the memory of a man.
🎧 Open listening. Then keep reading.
This page is designed to be read with music next door.
SCHUBERT – GRETCHEN AM SPINNRADE, D 118 (click on the black arrow to make the listening appear)
Inside the score
Before Margherita gave us a word, the piano already told us everything.
The right hand constantly draws circular figures of semichrome.
It is wheel of the archer.
On the other hand, the left scans a regular, almost mechanical movement: the pedal, the foot gesture that keeps the wheel moving.
Schubert does something extraordinarily modern: he does not simply describe an object.
It transforms an external gesture into psychology.
The wheel turns because the archer turns.
But after a few jokes we understand that Gretchen's thinking is also turning.
Meine Ruh ist hin.
My peace is lost.
All the Lied was born of this impossibility to stop.
The piano continues to grind time while the voice recalls the passage of Faust, his face, smile, the sound of his words.
The more she thinks about him, the more the music turns on.
We are not looking at a girl at the archaeologist.
We're listening an obsession from within.
🎧 Listen to this.
Follow the piano.
At first the wheel seems almost regular, domestic.
Then listen to what happens when Gretchen begins to remember Faust more intensely.
The vocal line goes up.
Harmony tends.
The breath becomes more and more urgent.
As long as the memory arrives:
His kiss.
And that's where Schubert makes the most beautiful gesture.
For a moment, the wheel stops.
The piano loses its incessant movement.
As if the memory had become so powerful to interrupt even reality.
Quiet.
Suspension.
Then Gretchen returns to himself.
And slowly the wheel starts again.
It's one of the moments when we understand why Schubert didn't just "play" Goethe.
He read it through the sound.
The note remains
There are thoughts that we do not remember: we continue to live them.
The greatness of Gretchen am Spinnrade is not only the famous imitation of the archaeologist.
If so, we would have a wonderful descriptive music page.
Schubert does something much deeper.
At first we believe that the piano represents the wheel.
In the end we understand that it represents Gretchen.
His thought became circular.
It does not proceed towards a conclusion. He always comes back to the same point: he.
This is what happens to us when a memory becomes too big.
The world keeps moving.
We continue to do the necessary things.
We open doors, we answer, we work, we fix, we walk.
The wheel turns.
Yet, under every gesture, there may be a name around which everything secretly continues to rotate.
Schubert knew.
She was seventeen.
Which is slightly irritating for all of us who at seventeen years were already satisfied when we could understand what to do in the afternoon.
Take him with you
When the track ends, the wheel has not solved anything.
Gretchen is no longer free than he was at first.
The memory remains.
The desire remains.
Even the shade seems to bring it back to the point from which it had left.
Yet we have understood something.
Not all thoughts must lead us somewhere.
Some come back because they keep something that we have not yet finished loving, understanding, losing or wanting.
Maybe that's why Schubert lets the wheel continue.
He's not trying to heal Gretchen.
He listens.
And in doing so he transforms his restlessness into one of the most extraordinary musical images of the human mind.
A wheel.
A girl.
A memory.
And that strange truth for which, sometimes, while life continues perfectly to proceed, the heart remains firm at the same point.
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The thread that does not break
Listening today: Johann Sebastian Bach – Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu ChristBWV 639
by Marialuisa Veneziano
23 August 2026
Before you start music
There are Sundays where we don't need a music that distracts us.
We do not need someone to convince us that everything will be fine, nor those too well-packed consolations that come when, frankly, we would rather be left alone.
We need something different.
Something he can stay.
Without explaining.
Without fixing.
Without rushing.For the first Sunday listening Let's start right from here.
For less than three minutes of Bach.
Three minutes in which, apparently, happens very little.
And maybe almost everything.
🎧 Open listening. Then keep reading.
This page is designed to be read with music next door.
Johann Sebastian Bach, Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639 – organ. (click on the black arrow to make the video appear)
Inside the score
Now let Bach play.
Don't try to understand.
In the upper voice there is the coral: a slow, clear, almost vulnerable melody. He doesn't conquer space. He's not raising his voice.
Question.
Under her, the left hand continues to move in a regular plot of semichrome.
The song breathes.
Time continues.
And even deeper, on the pedal, a third voice proceeds with quiet, essential step, supporting the entire building without ever reclaiming the center of the scene.
Three lines.
Higher voice → question
Internal voice → movement
Pedal → supportOne question.
Something that keeps walking.
Something, below, that supports.It's counterpoint, of course.
But in Bach the counterpoint, when it reaches this dizzying simplicity, almost ceases to look like a compositional technique and becomes a way of thinking about existence.
Words don't have to look like they can be together.
Everyone keeps their way.
Yet none is completely alone.
🎧 Listen to this.
If the track is still in progress, try to follow only the Upper heading.
Let her breathe.
Then, at the second listening, forget it for a few moments and seeks the continuous movement of internal voice. You will notice that, while singing hardens and seems almost to stop, under him something continues inexorably to flow.
Finally look for pedal.
It's nothing to be noticed.
Bach, fortunately, had not yet known the need to become viral.
Yet without that discreet line everything would lose its weight.
At this point he listens again to the set.
You won't hear three parts anymore.
You'll feel an organism.
The note remains
Bach does not interrupt the pain. He builds a large order around him to contain it.
Maybe that's what makes this little page so necessary.
Bach does not eliminate dissonance.
He leads it.
It doesn't erase the tension.
He gives her a place.
He doesn't want what hurts to stop doing it immediately.
It gives him a form.
And the difference is immense.
We live in a time in love with solutions. If we're restless, we have to react. If we're tired, we have to start again. If something breaks, we may have already transformed it into "growth opportunity" by Monday morning.
Bach's not in a hurry.
The title itself of the coral was born from an invocation: "I invoke you."
It is not the statement of those who already have the answer.
It's someone's voice calling.
And music preserves exactly this condition: not the triumph of those who understood everything, but the dignity of those who continue to seek.
Take him with you
Now the song is probably over.
And nothing around us has miraculously changed.
The room is the same. The issues left open are still open. The absences were not filled. And on Monday, with the proverbial delicacy of Monday, it continues to approach.
Yet something could have moved a few millimeters.
We listened to a voice capable of asking without shame.
Once able to continue without becoming an enemy.
And something, lower, which continues to support even when we almost don't notice it.
Bach didn't promise that everything will be okay.
He offered us something more serious:
a form in which even what we cannot solve can continue to breathe.
Three minutes.
No final answer.
But maybe a little more space within us.
And this Sunday can be enough.
What did you hear?
Listen to the song once again, this time without reading. Then tell us in the comments which of the three voices remained within you.
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