With the exception of the finale to the Ninth Symphony — and granted, that’s a pretty big exception — Beethoven didn’t set much of Friedrich Schiller’s texts to music. There are a couple sketches of songs, a tiny piece from William Tell, and two canons.
Beethoven told Czerny:
Schiller’s poems are very difficult to set to music. The composer must be able to lift himself far above the poet; who can do that in the case of Schiller? In this respect Goethe is much easier. (Thayer-Forbes, p. 472)
Friedrich Schiller’s 1801 play The Jungfrau von Orleans (“The Maid of Orleans”) portrays the life of Joan d’Arc, although rather fictionalized, particularly towards the end. The play was at least a partial source for operas by both Verdi in 1845 and Tchaikovsky in 1881.
When Joanna (as she is named) dies at the very end of the play, her last words are “Kurz is der Schmerz und ewig is die Freude!” or “Brief is the sorrow and endless is the joy!” This is the text Beethoven used for a three-part canon catalogued as WoO 163.
The “Kurz ist der Schmerz” canon (WoO 163) is inscribed “For Herr Naue as a souvenir from L. v. Beethoven, Vienna, November 23, 1813.” The recipient Johann Friedrich Naue, a music director at Halle, was visiting Vienna.
#Beethoven250 Day 264
Canon “Kurz ist der Schmerz” (WoO 163), 1813
An animated score accompanies this studio recording.
Beethoven was fond of quoting another line from Schiller’s “Maid of Orleans”: When someone would mention the little notebook he always carried to jot down musical ideas, he’d say “I may not come unless I bear my flag.” (Beethoven Impressions by His Contemporaries, p. 42)