“The Evil Color” as an Expression of Anger

Q: What key is the song in?

B-flat major; it contrasts directly with No. 16 (B minor) and prepares “Trockne Blumen” (E minor).

Franz Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin – Die böse Farbe (The Hateful Colour)

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Author: Evgenia Fölsche 29 January 2026

“Die böse Farbe” is song no. 17 from Franz Schubert’s cycle Die schöne Müllerin D 795 (1823), after Wilhelm Müller. As the bright counterpart to “Die liebe Farbe”, the colour green now returns as a signal of irritation and pain: the journeyman rages against the green of the world — and against his own fixation. Schubert draws this as a nimble, strophic scherzo in B-flat major, with springing motion and sharply profiled refrain-points (“Ah green, you evil colour, you”).

**The Poem (Wilhelm Müller – Seventy-Seven Poems from the Posthumous Papers of a Travelling French-Horn Player, 1821)**

I would like to go out into the world,
Out into the wide, wide world,
If only it were not so green, so green
Out there in wood and field!

I would like to pluck all the green leaves
From every branch,
I would like to make all the green grasses
Weep themselves deathly pale.

Ah green, you evil colour, you,
Why do you always look at me,
So proud, so bold, so full of malice,
At me, poor white man?

I would like to lie before her door,
In storm and rain and snow,
And sing very softly by day and night
That one little word: Farewell!

Listen, when a hunting horn calls in the wood,
Her little window rings,
And even if she does not look out for me,
I may at least look in.

O untie from your brow
The green, green ribbon,
Farewell, farewell! and offer me
Your hand in parting!

Work Data & Overview

Composer: Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Cycle: Die schöne Müllerin D 795, No. 17
Text source: Wilhelm Müller, “Die böse Farbe” (1818/1821)
Composition: Autumn 1823; first published 1824
Key area / character: B-flat major (in contrast to No. 16 in B minor), quick, strophic
Duration: approx. 1:30–2:10 minutes
Scoring: Voice and piano (transpositions common)
Form: multi-stanza song with a recurring refrain-peak (“Ah green, you evil colour, you”)

The sequence of keys in the cycle (No. 16 B minor → No. 17 B-flat major) is documented, among others, in IMSLP and analytical overviews.

Data on the Poem

Author: Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827)
Stanza form: 6 stanzas of 4 lines each (with the refrain stanza / stanza 3 as rhetorical culmination)
Devices: colour symbolism (green), imperative/direct address, hyperbole, irony (colour of hope → “evil”), leitmotif (ribbon/hunting horn)

Genesis & Cycle Context

“Die böse Farbe” forms a contrast pair with “Die liebe Farbe” (No. 16): the same colour, two perspectives. After the monochrome lament in B minor (No. 16), the tableau now turns into something bright and driven — the text intensifies from flight from the world to a ritual of farewell (removing the ribbon, saying “farewell”).

All articles & work overview: Die schöne Müllerin – Overview.

Performance Practice & Reception

Gesture: light, bright, forward-moving — irony rather than shouting. The refrain line (“Ah green …”) should be pointed, not heavy; the final stanza friendly-bitter.

Piano texture: elastic, near-staccato motion (dual pulse), clear accents; pedal only sparingly. Where the text darkens (“deathly pale”), one may cloud the sound slightly — but the basic character remains bright.

Reference Recordings (Selection)

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau – Gerald Moore
Ian Bostridge – Mitsuko Uchida
Thomas Quasthoff – Justus Zeyen
Christoph Prégardien – Andreas Staier (fortepiano)
Fritz Wunderlich – Hubert Giesen

Analysis – Music

Bright Impulse & Refrain Hook

The piano writing draws a lightly springing ribbon of quavers/semiquavers; the voice declaims in speech-like, short phrases. The refrain formula “Ah green, you evil colour, you” functions as a musical hook — with a small profile-point on “evil.”

Form, Tonal Space & Contrast to No. 16

B-flat major brightens the surface; brief minor shadows (modal mixture) emerge in close relation to the text. In its architecture, the song mirrors No. 16: where that song is ruled by drone-like rigidity, No. 17 asserts a nervous mobility — two halves of a psychological diptych.

Visual Representation

Artistic visualisation by Evgenia Foelsche:
The image shows the miller lad on the steps of the miller maid’s house, in a posture of deep exhaustion and abandonment. The place that was once associated with hope, approach, and desire for love has now become a scene of pain. Above him a storm is raging, green leaves are torn from the trees, and rain falls down upon the scene. In this way outer nature becomes the visible echo of his inner collapse.

At the centre of the image’s symbolism stands the colour green, whose meaning has changed over the course of the cycle. What once appeared to the miller lad as the colour of love, nature, and hope has now become the “evil colour” — the sign of his humiliation and loss. That the storm should tear away precisely the green leaves makes this reversal especially vivid: nature itself seems to shatter the emblem of his disappointed love. Green is no longer promise, but wound.

Like Schubert’s music, the image combines violent motion with deep inward injury. The rain intensifies the impression of desolation, while the steps of the house mark the painful nearness to the beloved — near and yet unattainable. The miller lad lies at the threshold of a world from which he is inwardly already excluded. What becomes visible is what resonates in text and music: that love has turned into bitter aversion, and that the once “beloved” colour now breaks over him as the sign of loss, anger, and despair.

Analysis – Poetry

Wilhelm Müller’s poem “Die böse Farbe” belongs to the cycle Die schöne Müllerin. It shows the young miller in a phase of bitter jealousy and inward disintegration. The colour green, previously a symbol of hope and love, has now become a hostile power that pursues him everywhere.

The first stanza opens with thoughts of flight:

I would like to go out into the world,
Out into the wide, wide world,
If only it were not so green, so green
Out there in wood and field!

The speaker wants to leave the familiar surroundings behind. Yet even in the wide world he meets green everywhere — the colour of his love. There is no escape from memory.

The second stanza intensifies hatred into something destructive:

I would like to pluck all the green leaves
From every branch,
I would like to make all the green grasses
Weep themselves deathly pale.

The wish to destroy everything green reveals an aggressive despair. Nature, once a consoling companion, now becomes the mirror of inward torment.

The third stanza names the colour directly:

Ah green, you evil colour, you,
Why do you always look at me,
So proud, so bold, so full of malice,
At me, poor white man?

The colour is personified and accused. The speaker feels mocked by it and abandoned to its power. White here stands for emptiness and the exhaustion of the self.

The fourth stanza returns to the beloved:

I would like to lie before her door,
In storm and rain and snow,
And sing very softly by day and night
That one little word: Farewell!

The speaker imagines himself before the beloved’s door, exposed to the elements. The only word that remains is “farewell.” Love has turned into resigned leave-taking.

The fifth stanza clings to observation:

Listen, when a hunting horn calls in the wood,
Her little window rings,
And even if she does not look out for me,
I may at least look in.

Even though she no longer pays him attention, the speaker remains fixated. He listens, watches, and clings to the smallest signs — an image of compulsive jealousy.

The sixth stanza brings the decisive plea:

O untie from your brow
The green, green ribbon,
Farewell, farewell! and offer me
Your hand in parting!

The green ribbon is the miller’s former token of love. The fact that the beloved still wears it nourishes one last, treacherous hope that love might endure. By asking her to remove the ribbon, he demands not possession but release: deliverance from the tormenting illusion that hope still exists. The repeated “farewell” marks the final severing.

Formally, the poem resembles a simple folk song with repeated exclamations. It is precisely this simplicity that intensifies the impression of psychic obsession and inward hopelessness.

Meaning & Effect within the Cycle

“Die böse Farbe” shows the final turning of love into jealousy and self-loss. The colour green is now no longer hope, but the sign of an unbearable memory.

Nature, once a harmonious companion, becomes the tormenting reflection of inward pain. The speaker is haunted by images from which he cannot escape.

Within Die schöne Müllerin, this song stands immediately before the resolve toward death. The inner destruction has been completed, the farewell already spoken inwardly.

Schubert sets this poem with sharply accented rhythms and bitter harmonies — the colour green becomes audibly the “evil colour.”

Evgenia Fölsche – Performances & Audio

Pianist Evgenia Fölsche reads the song as a delicately sharp capriccio: agile pulse, speaking articulation, refrain-points without pressure — and a bittersweet farewell in the “green ribbon.”

Listening example: Die böse Farbe with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore

Back to the cycle overview

Concert Enquiry

Die schöne Müllerin by Franz Schubert belongs to Evgenia Fölsche’s Lied repertoire and is regularly performed in collaboration with renowned singers. Concert programmes can be arranged flexibly and adapted to different scorings.

Evgenia Fölsche has collaborated, among others, with singers such as Johannes Kammler, Benjamin Russell and Gerrit Illenberger who include Die schöne Müllerin in their repertoire.

Send concert enquiry