Franz Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin – Pause (Pause)
Franz Schubert – Die schöne Müllerin:
“Pause” is Song No. 12 from Franz Schubert’s cycle Die schöne Müllerin D 795 (1823), after Wilhelm Müller. After the jubilation of “Mein!”, the cycle suddenly pauses: the lute is hung on the wall, entwined with a green ribbon — an image poised between fulfilment, anxiety, and foreboding. Schubert turns this into a moving stillness: “fairly quick”, yet inwardly listening, with delicate shadings and a questioning close.
The Poem (Wilhelm Müller – Seventy-Seven Poems from the Posthumous Papers of a Travelling French-Horn Player, 1821) with Schubert’s alteration
My lute I have hung upon the wall,
And wound it round with a green ribbon —
I can sing no more, my heart is too full,
I do not know how to force it into rhyme.
The hottest pain of all my longing
I was allowed to breathe out in playful song,
And as I lamented so sweetly and delicately,
I still thought my suffering was not small:
(Schubert: I still believed my suffering was not small.)
Ah, how great indeed must be the burden of my happiness,
That no sound on earth can contain it?
Now, dear lute, rest here upon the nail!
And if a little breeze blows across your strings,
And if a bee brushes you with its wings,
Then I grow afraid and a shudder runs through me.
Why did I leave the ribbon hanging there so long?
It often flies round the strings with a sighing sound.
Is it the aftersound of my love’s pain?
Or is it the prelude to new songs?
Work Data & Overview
- Composer: Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
- Cycle: Die schöne Müllerin D 795, No. 12
- Text source: Wilhelm Müller, “Pause” (first published 1821)
- Composition: autumn 1823; first published 1824
- Original key / tempo: B-flat major, fairly quick
- Duration: approx. 2:00–3:00 minutes
- Scoring: Voice and piano (transpositions are common)
- Form: Two-part scene with backward reference (lute / “green ribbon”) and an open horizon of questions
Key / tempo / numbering according to work overview (Wikipedia).
Data on the Poem
- Author: Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827)
- Stanza form: 2 stanzas of 10 / 8 lines (closing question)
- Devices: symbol (lute), colour as leitmotif (green), sound synaesthesia (breeze / bee / strings), antithetical turn (burden of happiness ↔ anxiety)
Genesis & Cycle Context
“Pause” is a turning point: after the triumphal cry of “Mein!”, happiness suddenly seems too great for words. The green ribbon (hope / the miller’s daughter’s colour) becomes a dramatic thread and leads directly to “Mit dem grünen Lautenbande” (No. 13), where the symbol receives a scene of its own.
More on the cycle (plot, work data, all song articles) can be found on the overview page: Die schöne Müllerin – Overview.
Performance Practice & Reception
Gesture & pulse: fairly quick, yet inwardly calm: the motion is breath, not pressure. Consonants soft, vowels sustained; no lachrymose slowing on “my heart is too full.”
Symbolic sound: “lute” without pantomime; instead, a coloured piano imagination (gentle arpeggiation, dolce legato). The “green ribbon” receives small points of light; at “afraid / shudder” a discreet darkening — without dramatic gesture.
Reference Recordings (selection)
- Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau – Gerald Moore (DG)
- Ian Bostridge – Mitsuko Uchida (Decca)
- Christoph Prégardien – Andreas Staier (fortepiano; harmonia mundi)
- Fritz Wunderlich – Hubert Giesen (Orfeo)
- Matthias Goerne – Christoph Eschenbach (Teldec)
Analysis – Music
Lute on the Nail & Inner Motion
Schubert’s accompaniment keeps up an inner motoric motion (moving quavers), while the melody remains a cantabile line close to speech — the paradox of a “moving pause.” Echoes of lute arpeggios can be heard, though stylised.
Form, Tonal Space & the “Green Ribbon”
The B-flat major tonal space carries the bright surface of happiness; harmonic shadows appear on “afraid / shudder.” The final question (“prelude to new songs?”) remains open — musically as a tender close without any mark of triumph.
Visual Representation
Artistic visualisation by Evgenia Foelsche:
The image shows the miller lad’s lute now hanging motionless on the wall.
After all the singing, hoping, and inward urgency, the instrument has fallen silent; what only a moment ago
was sound has passed over into stillness. The green ribbon adorning the lute
points to that token which, for the young wanderer, has become the emblem of his love.
Thus the instrument appears not merely as an object, but as the bearer
of his longing.
Of particular poetic force is the bee that has settled on the lute.
It seems like a small living echo of what once vibrated within it: humming,
trembling, sound. At the same time it subtly joins nature and music together.
Where the strings fall silent, the bee’s delicate life takes their place. In this way there arises the
impression that the miller lad’s love has not died away, but merely
changed — from sung feeling into a silent, hovering sign.
Like Schubert’s music, the image captures a moment poised between movement and rest.
“Pause” is not an ending, but a moment of stillness full of resonance. The lute’s
silence makes the inward unrest all the more palpable, while the green ribbon continues to bind
that silence to the beloved. What becomes visible is what resonates in text and music:
that love continues to sound on even when no audible tone remains — softly, tensely,
and full of expectation, like the humming of a bee upon a resting instrument.
Analysis – Poetry
The poem “Pause” stands in Die schöne Müllerin immediately after the jubilant claim of possession in “Mein!”. It marks a moment of suspension. After the loud outcry of supposed happiness, the wanderer falls silent. The language shifts from ecstatic calling to quiet self-questioning. Music, which until now has borne his feelings, now itself becomes a problem.
In the first stanza, the self describes the act of falling silent:
My lute I have hung upon the wall,
And wound it round with a green ribbon —
I can sing no more, my heart is too full,
I do not know how to force it into rhyme.
The hottest pain of all my longing
I was allowed to breathe out in playful song,
And as I lamented so sweetly and delicately,
I still thought my suffering was not small:
Ah, how great indeed must be the burden of my happiness,
That no sound on earth can contain it?
The lute — symbol of poetic and musical self-expression — is hung on the wall and entwined with a green ribbon. Within the cycle, green stands for hope and attachment; at the same time, the ribbon also seems like a bond. The speaker declares that he can no longer sing, because his heart is “too full.” The language of song no longer suffices to contain the intensity of his feeling.
Particularly striking is the retrospective glance at earlier songful lament: the wanderer was able to breathe out the “hottest pain” of his longing in songs and thought his suffering great. Yet now the happiness he feels surpasses every musical form. It is precisely happiness that silences him — a paradoxical yet central psychological turn.
At this point Schubert alters Müller’s text deliberately in his setting: Müller’s “I still thought” becomes Schubert’s “I still believed”. Whereas Müller formulates a reflective self-assessment, Schubert intensifies the emotional tone of inward conviction. The change serves the song’s intimacy, but it is not a Müller variant; it is a compositional decision in the text.
In the second stanza, nature animates the abandoned lute:
Now, dear lute, rest here upon the nail!
And if a little breeze blows across your strings,
And if a bee brushes you with its wings,
Then I grow afraid and a shudder runs through me.
Why did I leave the ribbon hanging there so long?
It often flies round the strings with a sighing sound.
Is it the aftersound of my love’s pain?
Or is it the prelude to new songs?
Breeze and bee set the lute sounding without the player’s agency. The instrument becomes a resonating body of the unconscious. The speaker is frightened by this sound: what was once his own song now appears like a foreign voice. The green ribbon flutters about the strings and produces a “sighing sound” — an acoustic image of inner unrest.
The closing questions open toward the future: is this the aftersound of past love-pain, or already the prelude to new songs? The wanderer stands on a threshold. The feeling of secure happiness is over; something new is announcing itself — and it will no longer sound cheerful.
Meaning & Effect within the Cycle
“Pause” is the lyrical moment of stillness after the cry “Mine!” The wanderer believes he has reached his goal — and falls silent. His previous strategy of ordering and mastering feelings through song no longer works. Happiness appears as an excess for which no language can be found.
At the same time, a new phase announces itself: the lute begins to sound by itself, nature takes over the voice of the inner life. In this way, what later erupts openly is already prepared: jealousy, fear, and despair will no longer be shaped by the speaker, but suffered by him. Art begins to turn against him.
Thus “Pause” acts like the moment between inhalation and exhalation in the cycle: a silence that says more than any song. From that silence there soon grows a new, darker music — the music of suffering that determines the further course of Die schöne Müllerin.
Evgenia Fölsche – Performances & Audio
Pianist Evgenia Fölsche reads the song as an inward scene: elastic pulse, shimmering “lute” colours, finely shaded words (“afraid”, “shudder”), and an open, questioning close.
Audio example: Pause with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore
Concert Enquiry
Die schöne Müllerin by Franz Schubert is part of Evgenia Fölsche’s song repertoire and is performed regularly in collaboration with renowned singers. Concert programmes can be arranged flexibly and adapted to different line-ups.
Evgenia Fölsche has collaborated, among others, with singers such as Johannes Kammler, Benjamin Russell and Gerrit Illenberger who have Die schöne Müllerin in their repertoire.
Send concert enquiryFrequently Asked Questions about Schubert: “Pause” (Die schöne Müllerin No. 12)
Click on a question to reveal the answer.
Key & tempo?
B-flat major, fairly quick; a moving pause with a melody close to speech.
What does the “green ribbon” mean?
A colour leitmotif (hope, the miller’s daughter); it links “Pause” directly with “Mit dem grünen Lautenbande” (No. 13) — from symbol to dramatic action.
Reliable poem text?
Yes: LiederNet and SchubertSong.uk document the wording and variants (for instance “playful song” versus “songful pain” in Schubert’s version).
