The verse (Wilhelm Müller – printed original edition, 1824) with changes by Franz Schubert

From: Winterreise – Song XXIV

Drüben hinterm Dorfe
steht ein Leiermann,
und mit starren Fingern
dreht er, was er kann.

Over there beyond the village
stands a hurdy-gurdy man,
and with stiffened fingers
he turns as best he can.

Barfuß auf dem Eise
schwankt er hin und her;
(Schubert: wankt er hin und her.)
und sein kleiner Teller
bleibt ihm immer leer.

Barefoot on the ice
he sways to and fro;
(Schubert: staggers to and fro.)
and his little plate
always remains empty.

Keiner mag ihn hören,
keiner sieht ihn an;
und die Hunde knurren
um den alten Mann.

No one wants to hear him,
no one looks at him;
and the dogs are growling
around the old man.

Und er läßt es gehen,
alles wie es will,
dreht, und seine Leier
steht ihm nimmer still.

And he lets it all go,
everything as it will,
turning, and his hurdy-gurdy
never stands still for him.

Wunderlicher Alter,
soll ich mit dir gehn?
Willst zu meinen Liedern
deine Leier drehn?

Strange old man,
shall I go with you?
Will you turn your hurdy-gurdy
to my songs?

Work data & overview

• Composer: Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
• Cycle: Winterreise D 911, no. 24 (Der Leiermann)
• Text source: Wilhelm Müller, Winterreise (1823/24)
• Composition: 1827; first print 1828 (Part II, closing song)
• Key / metre / tempo: A minor, 2/4, very slow, very simple
• Duration: approx. 3:00–4:00 minutes
• Scoring: voice and piano
• Form: varied strophic form with a drone-like basic model

Data on the verse

• Author: Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827)
• Stanza form: 5 stanzas of 4 lines each
• Devices: image of the outcast, doppelgänger figure, personification of the hurdy-gurdy, open final question

Origins & cycle context

“Der Leiermann” stands at the end of Winterreise like a final vision. After the inner emptyings of the preceding songs, there appears a figure who seems at once strange and familiar: an old musician, standing outside the village and mechanically turning on.

In the context of the cycle, the hurdy-gurdy man is more than a marginal figure. He is the wanderer’s mirror-image and counter-image: just as lonely, just as fallen out of the community, just as trapped in a motion that no longer brings any visible gain. Where all the wanderer’s ties to love, home, society, and hope have been broken, there remains at the end only this mute, circling existence.

The closing question, “Shall I go with you?”, makes the song so shattering: the cycle ends not with consolation, not with collapse, not even with death, but with an open possibility. Precisely therein lies the relentlessness of this finale.

Performance practice & reception

Tempo & pulse: the song demands the utmost calm, but no Romantic breadth. The 2/4 pulse remains minimal, almost mechanical, like a worn turning motion. Too much rubato destroys the coldness of the scene.

Piano image: the drone fifths in the left hand and the dry hurdy-gurdy motion in the right hand must remain simple, hard, and imperturbable. Little pedal, no veils of haze, no warm bath of sound.

Voice: the vocal line requires sobriety. No lamenting overstatement, but an almost speech-like, concentrated narration. Only in the final stanza may the question open into a real abyss – not loudly, but unresolvably.

Historical reference interpreters

• Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau – baritone
• Hans Hotter – bass-baritone
• Peter Schreier – tenor

Current interpreters with whom I collaborate

• Gerrit Illenberger
• Benjamin Russell
• Matthias Lika
• Johann Kristinsson
• Johannes Kammler

Analysis – music

Drone, rigidity & hurdy-gurdy motion

The musical basic model of “Der Leiermann” is radically reduced. Drone-like fifths and hurdy-gurdy-like repetitive figures create an atmosphere that stands almost outside traditional Lied rhetoric. The music no longer seems to narrate, but merely to be there.

The vocal line remains within a narrow ambitus and is often led close to the syllables. As a result, it seems almost de-Romanticized: no emphatic arch, no expansive singing, but a voice holding to one last, brittle line.

Harmony, form & the open question

Harmonically, Schubert remains for a long time close to A minor. Small deviations and side-steps occur, but without opening any truly resolving perspective. The form appears both strophically bound and trapped within one and the same condition.

The closing question does not stand out through dramatic harmony, but precisely through its lack of resolution. The song ends not with an emphatic goal, but in an open field of sound. This openness is not Romantic suspension, but musical suspense: the listener remains standing at the same threshold as the wanderer.

Visual representation

Artistic visualisation by Evgenia Fölsche:
The wanderer stands facing the hurdy-gurdy man – a figure at the edge of the world. Barefoot, the old man stands upon the cracked, bare ice. The cold seems merciless, his garment is torn, his gaze empty and turned inward. In front of him lies a bowl upon the frozen ground – yet it remains empty. No one listens, no one gives him anything.

And yet he goes on playing. Mechanically he turns his hurdy-gurdy, undisturbed by frost, poverty, and indifference. The image concentrates on this motionless, almost frozen scene: the ice reflects the inner rigidity, the hopelessness, and the existential coldness that surrounds both the hurdy-gurdy man and the wanderer.

Here the hurdy-gurdy man becomes the wanderer’s mirror figure. What the wanderer recognizes at the end of his journey is a possible image of his own future: absolute loneliness, severance from social bonds, an existence beyond hope or expectation. Yet in the monotonous motion of the hurdy-gurdy playing there lies at the same time something unshakable. The music continues to sound – reduced, sparse, almost without development – like Schubert’s insistently circling accompaniment figures in the piano.

The image makes visible what remains unspoken in the song: is the hurdy-gurdy man a symbol of despair – or of the radical consistency with which someone preserves his inner sound, regardless of outer recognition? In this open question, Winterreise comes to an end. The wanderer looks at the player – and perhaps recognizes in him his own echo.

Analysis – poetry

“Der Leiermann” forms the endpoint of Winterreise. The poem describes an apparently external encounter: the wanderer meets an old man who stands barefoot in the ice and mechanically turns a hurdy-gurdy. Yet from the outset it becomes clear that this figure is more than a chance appearance. He is mirror-image, double, and the wanderer’s final surface of projection.

Stanza 1: Beyond the village

Drüben hinterm Dorfe
steht ein Leiermann,
und mit starren Fingern
dreht er, was er kann.

Over there beyond the village
stands a hurdy-gurdy man,
and with stiffened fingers
he turns as best he can.

The place is decisive: “over there beyond the village.” The hurdy-gurdy man stands outside the social order, beyond the community. His fingers are “stiff,” thus marked alike by age, by cold, and by rigidity. Nevertheless he keeps turning. Already here there appears the image of a motion that no longer expresses goal or hope, but mere continuation.

Stanza 2: Cold, poverty, lack of footing

Barfuß auf dem Eise
wankt er hin und her;
und sein kleiner Teller
bleibt ihm immer leer.

Barefoot on the ice
he staggers to and fro;
and his little plate
always remains empty.

The second stanza sharpens the misery. Barefoot on the ice – this is utter defenselessness. The empty plate makes the hurdy-gurdy man not merely poor, but completely disregarded. His art earns nothing, his presence calls forth no pity, his motion remains without response.

Stanza 3: Fallen out of the community

Keiner mag ihn hören,
keiner sieht ihn an;
und die Hunde knurren
um den alten Mann.

No one wants to hear him,
no one looks at him;
and the dogs are growling
around the old man.

The repetition “no one … no one …” makes the abandonment absolute. The hurdy-gurdy man is neither heard nor looked at. Even the dogs respond not with closeness, but with hostility. He has fallen out of the order of the living and now exists only at the margin.

Stanza 4: Mechanical turning-on

Und er läßt es gehen,
alles wie es will,
dreht, und seine Leier
steht ihm nimmer still.

And he lets it all go,
everything as it will,
turning, and his hurdy-gurdy
never stands still for him.

Here the figure’s true radicalism comes to the fore. The hurdy-gurdy man no longer reacts to the world. Everything may go as it will. Only the hurdy-gurdy remains in motion. This image describes an existence without expectation, without goal, without consolation – but also without interruption.

Stanza 5: Encounter with the double

Wunderlicher Alter,
soll ich mit dir gehn?
Willst zu meinen Liedern
deine Leier drehn?

Strange old man,
shall I go with you?
Will you turn your hurdy-gurdy
to my songs?

Only in the final stanza does the wanderer himself speak. The encounter becomes direct address. He calls the old man “strange” – alien, uncanny, no longer quite of this world. With the question whether he should go with him, the hurdy-gurdy man becomes the wanderer’s mirror figure. The final line expressly joins the two through the musical: my songs and your hurdy-gurdy. Therein lies the greatness of this ending: not resolution, but an open, terrifying possibility.

“Der Leiermann” does not lead Winterreise to an ending in the usual sense. Instead there remains the image of a stilled, sparse existence that continues on – without goal, without answer, without final closure.

Meaning & effect within the cycle

As the final song of Winterreise, “Der Leiermann” is no finale in the traditional sense, but a glimpse into another form of existence. The wanderer encounters a figure who already lives out what inwardly awaits him: complete severance from society, possession, hope, and goal.

After the Mock Suns, where the wanderer wishes even the last light to be extinguished, here the consequence appears: a human being who stands in the ice, without response, yet continues to exist. Music remains – but not as an expression of community or consolation, rather as mechanical, naked motion.

The closing question, “Shall I go with you?”, belongs to the most open endings in music history. It leaves the wanderer standing at the threshold: not back in the world, not unequivocally in death, but before a form of existence beyond both realms. It is precisely this openness that makes the effect of the song so indelible.

Thus “Der Leiermann” appears like the final, icy breath of Winterreise: still, simple, sparse, and in that very spareness of shattering greatness.

Evgenia Fölsche – performances & audio

Evgenia Fölsche keeps the drone unyieldingly calm; the dynamics remain narrow, the diction plain and without sentimentality. In this way a concentration arises in which the hurdy-gurdy man appears not as a figure of effect, but as a silent final authority.

Listening example: Der Leiermann with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore

To the Winterreise overview