Over the last year I have been working on a masterpiece of romantic music by the Austrian Composer Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828). This inventive and exquisite arrangement of Schubert’s Lob der Tränen is from the hand of the 19th century guitar virtuoso, J.K. Mertz.

Mertz’s guitar music, unlike that of most of his contemporaries, followed the pianistic models of Liszt, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schubert and Schumann, rather than the classical models of Mozart and Haydn. He was active in Vienna (c.1840-1856). As virtuoso, he established a solid reputation as a performer. He toured Moravia, Poland, and Russia, and gave performances in Berlin and Dresden.

In 1846 Mertz nearly died of an overdose of strychnine that had been prescribed to him as a treatment for neuralgia. Over the following year he was nursed back to health in the presence of his wife, the concert pianist Josephine Plantin whom he married in 1842. Some speculation may lead one to the conclusion that listening to his wife performing the romantic piano pieces of the day during his period of recovery may have had an influence on the sound and unusual right hand technique he adopted in his pianistic arrangements such Lob der Tränen (In Praise of Tears).

Schubert produced a vast catalogue during his short life, composing more the 600 vocal works (largely Lieder), and well as several symphonies, operas, and a large body of piano music. J.K Mertz has given us Lob der Tränen among other Schubert songs, to play on the guitar and capture their extraordinary beauty. There are a myriad of outstanding recordings of this virtuosic guitar arrangement on YouTube. This is my humble addition.

I’ve included Schubert’s original text in English below.

In Praise of Tears
English translation by Richard Wigmore

Warm breezes,
fragrant flowers,
all the pleasures of spring and youth;
sipping kisses
from fresh lips,
lulled gently on a tender breast;
then stealing nectar
from the grapes,
dancing, games and banter:
what the senses alone
can obtain:
ah, does it ever satisfy the heart?

When moist eyes
glisten
with the gentle dew of sadness,
then, reflected in them,
the fields of heaven
are revealed to the gaze.

How refreshingly,
how swiftly
every fierce passion is quelled;
as flowers are revived
by the rain,
so do our weary spirits revive.