SCHUBERT’S DIE FORELLE

Back in the old days, the washing machine just used to stop at the end of its cycle. There’d be a click to tell you the door could be opened, and that was it.

Then they added a bleep to washing machines. And then (being so preoccupied about whether they could, and not stopping to think about whether they should), they added a symphony. Now at the end of every cycle, the Fancy Samsung (our new washing machine) plays a whole 16-bar tune - a ringtone to let you know that your washing is indeed ready to be taken out and strung up to dry.

For the last month or so I’ve been trying to work out what that tune is. It’s a pretty little melody, very simple, classical - probably (I thought) from the Romantic period. It’s got a Mozartian motif but I didn’t think it was Mozart. It’s been a puzzle.

Then yesterday, I found it! The Fancy Samsung is playing Schubert’s Die Forelle - a song, set to the words of an old German poem called The Trout. Our washing machine is literally singing about a trout every time it finishes a load of washing.

By the way, if you want to hear Schubert’s Die Forelle, click here to see the music dart by in all its fishy glory.

Now, I bet the Samsung Boffins were just looking for something cheery to program into their washers, but digging a little further, it turns out they might have been cleverer than that. The words of The Trout (Die Forelle) are, well, a bit deeper. It’s about somebody fishing…

In a limpid brook

the capricious trout

in joyous haste

darted by like an arrow.

I stood on the bank

in blissful peace, watching

the lively fish swim 

in the clear brook.

An angler with his rod 

stood on the bank

cold-bloodedly watching 

the fish’s contortions.

As long as the water 

is clear, I thought,

he won’t catch the trout 

with his rod.

Fair enough. The happy little trout can see the fishing line in the clear water.

But at length the thief

grew impatient. Cunningly

he made the brook cloudy, 

and in an instant

his rod quivered,

and the fish struggled on it.

And I, my blood boiling,

looked on at the cheated creature.

Oh. And…

You who tarry by the golden spring
Of secure youth,
Think still of the trout:
If you see danger, hurry by!
Most of you err only from lack
Of cleverness. Girls, see
Seducers with their tackle!
Or else, too late, you'll bleed.

Okay.

A kind of brutal way of spelling out the metaphor, don’t you think?

So, basically then, the Fancy Samsung is singing about how much better it is to swim around in clean, clear water, lest you get seduced by people who try to sow confusion to trap you with dirty water. How very apt for a washing machine.

Nice work Samsung Boffins: a morality tale with every clean cycle! And I thought it was just a cheery tune.