ABSTRACT
Three songs to poems by Johann Mayrhofer for bass and piano are Auf der Donau (On the Danube), Der Schiffer (The Boatman), and Wie Ulfru fischt (Ulfru fishing). As a set the songs make a dramatic sequence covering the beginning, climax and aftermath of a storm on a river. The boatman faces the possibility of his imminent doom with defiance and courage; the angler looks on the fish who have evaded his rod and line with a degree of humour. Johann Mayrhofer resorts to a commonplace metaphor in which a small boat gliding on the water is emblematic of individual human life on the river of Time, a metaphor tinted in blackest nihilism. All three songs make expressive use of the minor sixth degree of the scale, and when this functions as an appoggiatura resolving on to the fifth degree, the dominant, it usually expresses anxiety or grief.
