Schubert: Lachen und Weinen, song for voice & piano, D. 777 (Op. 59/4)

Five of Franz Schubert's six Lied-settings of Friedrich Rückert poems, including Lachen und Weinen, D. 777, were composed in a single gust sometime during late 1822 or early 1823 while Schubert was recuperating at his father's home from the first blast of the illness that would eventually end his life at 31 (the other Rückert Lied was probably composed a bit earlier). In fall of 1826, the firm of Sauer and Leidesdorf published Lachen und Weinen as the last song of Opus 59, a set which contains two of the other Rückert Lieder and one song to another poet's verse, and the song was quick to find its way onto pianos and programs around Europe.
The Lachen (laughter) and the Weinen (tears) of the poem are those of a young girl, and Schubert's response is both lighthearted and deeply sympathetic. There is a gentle, almost lullaby-like sway to the rhythm -- clearest during the piano introduction, interlude, and coda but present throughout the song in one form or another -- that continually reminds us of the subject's innocence, and yet the delicate way that Schubert dips from A flat major to A flat minor each time the girl remembers her tears is not at all the trite, garishly colored " ext-painting" it might be had a less sensitive composer tried it; like Brahms after him, Schubert possessed a keen appreciation and respect for the lives and feelings of children. The song is essentially strophic in two stanzas, but Schubert cleverly and subtly differentiates the two strophes of music from one another to match the text. ~ Blair Johnston, All Music Guide