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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