SCHUBERT Licht und Liebe (D.352) Score

"In his entire output of vocal music with piano accompaniment, Schubert wrote only two duets, Mignon und der Harper (Mignon and the Harper) (D. 877, No. 1) and Licht und Liebe (Light and Love) (D. 352). There may be many reasons for this. Schubert preferred to express the emotions of one character at a time, he preferred poems in the first-person singular -- but whatever the reason, songs for two singers are extremely rare. This is the more regrettable in that the two duets are of surpassing loveliness. Schubert's setting of Matthaus von Collin's Licht und Liebe from 1816 is in three sections: the first verse is for tenor, the second is for soprano, and the two voices combine for a repetition of the first verse. The first verse has a melody of inspired yearning in G major, the second verse has a melody of aching loneliness in E minor, and, with a magical modulation through B minor, the first verses' tenor melody returns as a melting duet with the soprano. The coda's close -- a rapturous cadenza for soprano and tenor on the words "Love is the sweetest light" -- is one of the most beautiful moments in all Schubert."
James Leonard for All Music

Performed by Anke Vondung (Soprano), Konrad Jarnot (Tenor) and Christoph Berner (Piano), transposed from G major to E major

English translation (by Richard Wigmore for Oxford Lieder):

Love is a sweet light.
Just as the earth aches for the sun
and those bright stars
in the distant blue expanses,
so the heart aches for love’s bliss,
for love is a sweet light.

See, high in the silent solemnity,
bright stars glitter up above:
from the earth flee the dark
heavy baleful mists.
Alas! Yet how sad I feel
deep in my soul;
once I brimmed with joy;
now I am abandoned, unloved.