Schubert, Franz - work

Schubert, Franz

 

 

 

2. Works.

(i) Songs.

Schubert's first surviving song dates from his 15th year, and he probably wrote the last of his more than 600 completed songs only a few weeks before his premature death. In terms of separate works, almost two-thirds of Schubert's are lieder, and during his lifetime they were the principal vehicle of his fame. The nearly 300 ballads and lieder of the Stuttgart court composer Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg provide one of the few visible lineages leading to Schubert. Spaun wrote that, from his Stadtkonvikt days, Schubert ‘never ceased to do justice to Zumsteeg's songs, indeed he always expressed himself with the same warmth about their value …’. Schubert may have been attracted by Zumsteeg's attempt to enhance serious poetry (Schiller, Goethe) with music, by his use of through-composed as well as strophic procedures, and by the admixture of recitative and lyrical sections. Six of Schubert's songs between 1811 and 1816, including Hagars Klage, use texts set by Zumsteeg while emulating his general musical strategies as well. Yet from the beginning Schubert's accompaniments bore little relationship to the continuo-derived patterns of Zumsteeg, and his sense of both musical and dramatic coherence always transcended Zumsteeg's largely local phrasing. The lieder of the Berlin composer Carl Friedrich Zelter were probably even less of an influence, though the complexity of some of his accompaniments approach those of Schubert.

While his skill at setting verse grew throughout his lifetime, from the age of 17 onwards Schubert was composing masterful songs that ranked with the best produced over the next 100 years. Nothing in the Berlin school or in the songs of Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven could have prepared Schubert's admirers for his breakthrough lied, Gretchen am Spinnrade (d118), of October 1814. Not only do its freely modified strophes trace a mounting dramatic trajectory that unites the whole, but the spinning-wheel accompaniment serves as one of the protagonists. What may account partly for Schubert's great leap was his lifelong passion for poetry, in this instance his first encounter with Goethe. Schubert continually and assiduously sought out verse that both conveyed meaning(s) and was suited through its declamation for musical realization. His unrelenting search led him to more than 150 poets over a 17-year career. He set the greatest poets of his own and the preceding generations (Schiller, Goethe, Klopstock, Heine, Rückert) but also gave extraordinary voice to his friends (Mayrhofer, Schober, Bauernfeld, Ottenwalt, Spaun) as well as to a bewildering array of minor poets from Hölty (more than 30 songs, mostly from 1815–16) to Stolberg.

Schubert's uniqueness lay not only in his raising of the lied from a marginal to a central genre but in his ability to fuse poetry and music in ways that seem not only unique but inevitable. Like those of Wolf, but few others, Schubert's songs can withstand the closest scrutiny because they contain so many layers of meaning and stylistic intersection. He reinvented in dazzling variety the kind of kinetic, moto perpetuo accompaniment first found in Gretchen: the undulating waves of Auf dem Wasser zu singen (d774), the impetuous brook in Wohin? (no.2 from Die schöne Müllerin), the shimmering demisemiquavers of Liebesbotschaft (no.1 from Schwanengesang), or the gently rocking figuration of Nacht und Träume (d827). As Schubert's expressive range developed, the integration of melody (the reciter of the text), harmony and accompaniment increased steadily. In the laconic Am See (d124) of 1814, the folklike melody and simple oom-pah accompaniment seem reminiscent of Zumsteeg but already include passages where the piano and voice lines interact with one another. By Rastlose Liebe (d138) of the next year, Schubert had combined the moto perpetuo rhythm in the right hand with a slower but equally urgent rhythm in the left hand, both counterpoised to the breathless delivery of the voice. In Erlkönig (d328), from the autumn of 1815, he expanded this strategy into a large ballad structure unified by virtuoso triplet rhythms and concluding with an understated recitative that invests the death of the young boy with an almost unbearable poignancy.

Over the next dozen years Schubert invested every stylistic aspect of the lied with a richness that, dramatically speaking, rivalled and even surpassed opera. Although his harmonic language grew out of the chromaticism of Mozart, his harmonic daring in lieder could approach that of mid-century Wagner. In Stimme der Liebe (d412) of 1816, a hymn to love, Schubert passes through no fewer than six remote keys in the course of 30 bars. In the more expansive Ganymed (d544), he moves through three distantly related keys specifically linked to Goethe's irregular poetic structure. The ecstatic hymn to the almighty, Die Allmacht (d852), moves rapidly through highly chromatic sequences. Trost (d523), a premonitory song about death from January 1817 and headed ‘mit schwärmerischer Sehnsucht’ (with passionate longing), slips on the word ‘tief’ (deep) from B major down to the flattened sixth of G major, a relationship that Schubert would invoke repeatedly over his career. Schubert's rhythms, often overlooked, play an important role in defining the immediate character of a song, whether the energized syncopations of Der Musensohn (d764), the floating two-against-three rhythms of Frühlingsglaube (d686), or the static, hypnotic chords of Meeresstille (d216). In Der Jüngling und der Tod (d545) the slow dotted rhythms in the prelude signify the inevitable tread of death.

But it is as a melodist that Schubert formed and sustained his reputation as a song composer. Against the backdrop of Beethoven's predominantly instrumental style there is no doubt that Schubert's melodies stood out for his successors as well as for the generations that have followed. Yet the irony is that no Viennese composer's melodies depend as heavily on their accompaniments for their effect as Schubert's. The celebrated melody of Ave Maria! (d839) leans heavily on the regular triplets and deceptive cadences of the piano part. Each verse of An Sylvia (d891), one of Schubert's Shakespeare settings from 1826, makes ingenious use of bar form, in which the A′ phrase moves through the mediant and the culminating B phrase is the only one to cadence on the tonic note. But the undeniable appeal of this melody grows equally out of the imitation in the piano at phrase ends, the playfully staccato ascending figure in the piano's bass, and the independent melody in the piano's right hand at the culminating end of the B phrase. As Schubert matured this interdependency between melody and accompaniment only grew deeper.

The nearly 200 songs published in Schubert's lifetime are generally performed as if their groupings were of no consequence; but there is ample internal evidence that he compiled his opuses carefully. In op.59, a group of four songs published in 1826, Schubert opens with Du liebst mich nicht (d756) in A minor, followed by another heartbreak song, Dass sie hier gewesen (d775), in the relative major. The third song, Du bist die Ruh (d776), uses a similar form of address to the first song but in a different, comforting mood, signalled by the more distant common-tone shift from the key of Dass sie hier gewesen, C major, to E major. Finally, the whimsical, bittersweet Lachen und Weinen (d777) is in A major, to which the previous song's E major serves as a retrospective dominant. Hence the opus skilfully groups two pairs of songs in contrasting moods but united by the general theme of love.

Schubert's ongoing interest in song groupings may help explain his receptivity in 1823 to Wilhelm Müller's narrative cycle of 23 poems with prologue and epilogue entitled Die schöne Müllerin, published as part of a larger volume entitled Seventy-Seven Poems from the Posthumous Papers of a Travelling-Horn-Player. The growth of Müller's poems out of literary party games in Berlin resonated with Schubert's experiences in Viennese reading circles in 1821–2. He was doubtless also influenced by Beethoven's song cycle An die ferne geliebte of 1815–16. After boiling Müller's verse down to 20 poems, Schubert set each one with a directness and urgency that place Müller's often elliptical or ironic emotions in sharp relief and heighten the sense of dramatic narrative. As set by Schubert, Die schöne Müllerin (d795) is less a tragic love story than a metaphor on the Romantic conviction that true love on this earth finds its fulfilment only in death. Four years later Schubert returned to Müller's 1821 volume and seized on the 24 poems of Winterreise, a more interior, emotionally more nuanced portrait of another lovesick wanderer. Though less immediately tuneful, the songs of Winterreise are structurally more complex and varied. Following his rejection in love, the protagonist ends up resigning himself to the chilling alienation experienced in the last song by ‘the hurdy-gurdy man’, a perspective that must have struck a sympathetic chord with Schubert.

Schubert's song forms – strophic, ternary, bar, through-composed, to name the most common – are often spoken of in defining terms, but they are invariably the by-product of his encounter with the chosen poetry rather than a pre-existing predilection. With the exception of some of the longer narrative poems, the vast majority of the poetry Schubert set was in some variant of stanzaic form, and his predecessors most often followed this cue with matching musical strophes. While Schubert was sensitive to the poetic form, he was more influenced by his assessment of a poem's emotional trajectory and dramatic possibilities. The result was a remarkable range of variations on a few formal types. While something like a third of Schubert's songs make use of strophic form, only a relatively small number utilize strict strophic form, in which the same music is repeated literally for each stanza. Among the mature works these include almost half of the songs in Die schöne Müllerin and both of the exquisite Shakespeare settings (d889, 891). All of these and other such songs contain level sets of verses (several with refrains) and often project a selfconscious folk quality. But even those in strict strophic form often transcend the folk pattern. The torrential triplets of the eight-bar introduction to Ungeduld, from Die schöne Müllerin, says more about impatience than Müller's four stanzas; the concluding refrain, with its two high As, provides an operatic climax entirely foreign to this genre. In other instances, such as An die Musik, Schubert writes out the music to the two stanzas, whose impact is cumulative rather than serial. More frequently Schubert's strophic forms are modified to suit the dramatic situation. Gebet während der Schlacht (d171) places an arioso/recitative before a written-out strophic form. His favourite variant is to turn from major to minor for the closing stanza, as in Der Wachtelschlag (d742), Tränenregen from Die schöne Müllerin, and Im Frühling (d882). Schubert's predilection for major–minor contrast, and for minor-keyed inflections within a major context and vice versa, derives from Mozart but goes far beyond him. Along with Brahms, he ranks as the greatest major–minor colourist in Western music.

Ternary forms (An den Mond, d193), bar forms (Die Forelle, d550) and rondos (Der Einsame, d800) are scattered throughout Schubert's song output, always motivated by the dramas inherent in their texts. But the most frequent strategy adopted by Schubert over his song career has been described by Formenlehre theorists as ‘through-composed’ (German durchkomponiert), a catch-all for all those songs that do not fit preconceived schemes. From the impressionistic simplicity of the 32-bar Meeresstille (d216) to the cathartic dramatic scena Die junge Nonne (d828), Schubert responds in seemingly infinite ways to the inner drama of his chosen poems. In this freedom of structure he is approached only by Hugo Wolf at the end of the century.

In the end, perhaps no one summarized Schubert's achievement in song better than his lifelong friend Joseph von Spaun:In this category he stands unexcelled, even unapproached … Every one of his songs is in reality a poem on the poem he set to music … Who among those who had the good fortune to hear some of his greatest songs does not remember how this music made a long familiar poem new for him, how it was suddenly revealed to him and penetrated to his very depth.

Robert Winter

(ii) Partsongs and choruses.

Schubert's production of polyphonic songs and choruses extended chronologically almost as widely as that of the lied. At the age of 15 he modelled a comic trio, Die Advokaten (d37; TTB and piano), after a work by Anton Fischer (although in the tradition of Mozart's Das Bandel); only months before his death he composed Glaube, Hoffnung und Liebe (d954; two tenors, two basses, chorus and wind) for the dedication of the new bells in the Dreifaltigkeitskirche in the Alservorstadt. He completed more than 150 such works, amounting in length to some 30% of his lieder output. The fledgling tradition of part-singing in Vienna was consolidated in 1809 in Berlin with Zelter's founding of the Liedertafel, a men's organization modelled loosely on the Meistersinger guilds. The practice spread quickly throughout the German-speaking regions and Schubert became its most important Viennese representative. Almost two-thirds of Schubert's partsongs or choruses are for men's voices, reflecting the essential child-rearing duties assigned to women in Biedermeier Europe. About a fifth are for mixed voices, and only half a dozen call for women's voices. The remainder are either unison or unspecified. In practice, many works could be performed with either one, several or many voices to a part, blurring any hard and fast distinction between solo and choral partsongs. In these works Schubert presents a rich variety of dispositions, including SATB, SAT, STB, TTB, TTBB, TTBBB, TTTTBBBB, SA, SSA, SSAA, chorus, double chorus, often spiced with additional combinations of soloists. The songs divide almost evenly between unaccompanied and accompanied. Schubert had a particular gift for inventing apt and varied vocal sonorities; in Lied im Freien (d572; TTBB) the outer sections are set in sprightly homophony punctuated by appoggiaturas to celebrate the coming of May. The second stanza's focus on the play of light and shade is treated in imitation, while the leisurely strolling of the third stanza is set as a slow fugato. The accompaniments range from simple keyboard to groups of horns, strings, wind and even full orchestra.

Many of these songs and choruses are occasional pieces. Ten carry generic drinking-song titles such as Trinklied, Punschlied or Wein und Liebe, while others are titled Schlachtlied or Fischerlied. Yet in his partsongs Schubert was drawn to a similar array of poetry as in the solo songs. The fifth and last of his settings of Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt (d877 no.1) is the only one to mirror Goethe's scene as a duet between Mignon and the Harper, and easily surpasses the solo settings in emotional range. A remarkably high percentage of these works received their premières in Schubert's lifetime, and a goodly number were published. With its elaborate piano accompaniment, the SSAA quartet, Gott in der Natur (d757, first performed in 1827), is a hymn of praise to nature on almost as grand a scale as its solo counterpart, Die Allmacht. The more intimate Des Tages Weihe (d763) uses an SATB quartet to create a sense of gratitude more compelling than could be achieved by a solo voice. Night songs especially stimulated Schubert's colour palette. Wehmut (‘Die Abendglöcke tönet’, d825, TTBB) contrasts the monotone chiming of the bell with the magic of sunset. Mondenschein (d875), on a text by Schober and which received its première in the last year of the composer's life, exemplifies the best of Schubert's chromatic and major–minor inflections, here in a skein of aching appoggiaturas. Nachtgesang im Walde (d913; first performed in 1827) uses the echo effect of four horns to exquisite effect. Both Die Nacht (d983c) and Nachthelle (d892; first performed in 1827) highlight the upper male range to portray vividly the allure of night. Nachthelle is built around an ethereal piano accompanment that invests the choral echoes of the solo tenor with a special glow.

Geist der Liebe, d747 (TTBB; first performed in 1822), easily surpasses Schubert's solo setting of the same Matthisson poem. Ständchen (d920; alto and TTBB chorus), written for Anna Fröhlich, is at least the equal of either of Schubert's more celebrated solo serenades. Certain texts lent themselves naturally to the partsong. The collective energy of Der Tanz (SATB; d826) seems to spring off the page; and the repeated references to battle in Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's Gebet (SATB; d815), one of Schubert's most ambitious partsongs, call for an equally collective utterance. Mirjams Siegesgesang (d942), for soprano, chorus and piano (Schubert doubtless intended to orchestrate it), is Schubert's most direct homage to Handel, whose music was frequently performed in Vienna. When reading Handel's music at the piano, Schubert is supposed to have remarked to Hüttenbrenner: ‘Oh, the daring of these modulations! Things like that do not occur to the likes of us even in a dream!’ Amateur choruses and part-singing reached their peak of popularity during the 19th century, and it is to be regretted that Schubert's partsongs, which include some of his finest inspirations, are performed comparatively rarely today.

Robert Winter

(iii) Sacred music.

Schubert was occupied with the composition of music for the church from his 15th year until the end of his life. In volume his sacred output falls only slightly short of Mozart and greatly exceeds that of Beethoven. Schubert attended mass regularly as a child and probably continued the practice into his adulthood, especially while living with or visiting his family. As with other areas of his personal life, direct evidence concerning Schubert's religious beliefs is hard to come by. In an 1824 diary entry he wrote that ‘It is with faith that man first enters the world. It comes long before reason and knowledge, for to understand something one must first believe something … Reason is nothing other than analysed faith’. After contracting syphilis Schubert made a number of heartfelt utterances in the ensuing years that may show him struggling to come to terms with his bleak destiny. Less than a decade earlier he had written in another diary that ‘Man resembles a ball, to be played with by fate and chance’. Whether or not Schubert evolved a Christian humanism that combined elements of messianic Judaism and Platonism (with its view of life as an ascent towards divine perfection), his involvement with theological questions, broadly construed, seems to have been an important theme of his creative life.

Between 1812 and 1814 Schubert experimented with several Kyrie settings, as well as a Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Salve regina. He wrote the first four of his six completed masses in close succession between 1814 and 1816, probably in response to a demand from the Lichtental church, his local parish, and perhaps in an effort to gain the attention of the soprano Therese Grob. They bear an obvious affinity to the Austrian Missa brevis tradition practised most conspicuously by Mozart. The first of these, that in F (d105) composed in 1814 for the centenary of the Lichtental church, shows an adolescent composer fully conversant with the Viennese church tradition. From the brilliant use of brass in the Gloria to the kinetic fugue (albeit one over-reliant on sequences) of the ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’, Schubert writes with an assurance rivalled at this age only by Mozart. In maintaining a single tempo in both the Credo and the Sanctus, Schubert departs confidently from tradition. Not unlike Mozart before him, Schubert felt no obligation to present the mass text in its entirety. He habitually omits the Credo text: ‘[Credo] in unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam’, which might suggest a lack of sympathy for the institutional church. But on other occasions Schubert omitted liturgical text in an unpredictable fashion, a practice that suggests a more relaxed, empirical approach congruent with the practices of several contemporaries. Schubert's Second Mass, in G (d167), was composed less than a year later; scored for only strings and organ, it is also his shortest and most intimate mass. If the dates on the autograph are reliable, he started and completed it in six days. Although its textures are on the whole more homophonic than those in the F major Mass, movements such as the Gloria of the G major Mass brim over with visceral rhythms, wide-ranging chord dispositions and a harmonic momentum that extends beyond mere sequence. By contrast, the Mass in B (d324) is less personal, operating within a narrower expressive range. The last of Schubert's masses in the Missa brevis tradition, in C major (d452), invokes most strongly the examples of Haydn and Mozart, although with a wider harmonic spectrum. During this same period Schubert composed an ambitious German setting of the Stabat mater (based on the paraphrase by Klopstock) and several of his six settings of the Tantum ergo.

Following this burst of activity, Schubert then withdrew from large-scale sacred projects for several years. The most remarkable fact about the Mass in A (d678), whose intended performance destination is unknown, is that Schubert finished it. He commenced work in the autumn of 1819, at a time when he was reaching beyond his seemingly effortless youthful style towards a more complex and personal mode of expression. The years between 1818 and 1822 produced, among others, four unfinished symphonies, an unfinished oratorio, an unfinished string quartet and three unfinished piano sonatas. Work on the mass extended over three years, parallelling very closely the gestation period for Beethoven's Missa solemnis op.123 (although nothing suggests that Schubert was aware of Beethoven's project). Comparisons are inevitable, and it makes sense to acknowledge at the outset that the scale of Beethoven's is epic, monumental and symphonic, while Schubert's mass is more human and intimate in tone (although his orchestra includes trombones), intrinsically spontaneous and harmonically more far-reaching, nowhere more so than in the visionary Sanctus. It is still possible to imagine Schubert's mass receiving a performance in a Viennese church, while Beethoven's demands the concert hall (where, in fact, it received its first, albeit partial, performance). Schubert's mastery of string figuration in the faster sections of the Gloria and Credo and the delicious use of pizzicato in the Benedictus provide an irresistible forward momentum. The opposition of female and male voices in the ‘Hosanna’ and the hushed opening of the Credo represent colours largely foreign to Beethoven's palette. The confident sweep of the Handelian ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’ fugue that concludes the Gloria testifies to the lofty contrapuntal ambitions of a composer who, in the very last month of his life, sought out the instruction of Simon Sechter.

Lazarus (d689), begun in February 1820 without any apparent external stimulus, fits neatly into Schubert's experimental period, for its highly original blending of elements of cantata, oratorio and staged drama (Schubert's score includes stage directions). Although breaking off in the second of three planned acts (representing the death, burial and resurrection of the New Testament character), the highly flexible vocal delivery looks forward to the technique of Wagner's music dramas.

Elsewhere Schubert responded to the implorings of friends and associates. The eight chordal hymns plus epilogue of the Deutsche Messe (d872) fulfilled J.P. Neumann's (the librettist of Schubert's unfinished opera Sacontala) desire for liturgical music that could appeal to the broadest segment of the congregation. Schubert's setting of Psalm xlii (d953) in Hebrew was very probably commissioned by cantor Salomon Sulzer, whose rendition of Schubert's Der Wanderer had greatly impressed the composer. The synagogue in the Seitenstettengasse was only two years old, and Schubert's contribution doubtless strengthened the hand of the man responsible for diffusing historic anti-semitism in Vienna.

As with most of Schubert's mature sacred works, the Mass in E (d950) seems to have been a response to inner need rather than external imperative. While building upon the foundation of the A Mass, it integrates with remarkable success the symphonic organization of Beethoven with Schubert's seemingly limitless melodic and harmonic invention. Although more compact than that in the Gloria of d678, the concluding Gloria and Credo fugues, with their sharply chiselled subjects, suggest a composer who had studied Beethoven's Missa solemnis. The frequent changes in mood and tempo throughout are unified by closely spaced points of imitation (extended to impressive lengths in the ‘Hosanna’). Original orchestral touches include the thematic role played by the timpani in the Credo. The ‘Et incarnatus est’, based on a long, arching, waltzlike melody, echoes the corresponding section of Haydn's Heiligmesse in being composed as a round, with each voice (two tenors and soprano) taking the melody in turn. The flowing but harmonically rich four-part solo writing of the Benedictus looks forward to Verdi's Requiem. The awesome modulations of the Sanctus and the anguished chromaticism of the Agnus Dei, based on an adaptation of the C minor fugue subject from the first book of Bach's Das wohltemperirte Clavier, still retain their shock value today. In the E Mass Schubert had reached his full stride as a composer of large-scale sacred works. The same assurance can be heard in the skilful blending of solo and choral writing in the Tantum ergo (d962) and in the rhapsodic oboe solo that drives the offertory Intende voci (d963), both composed a month before the composer's death.

Robert Winter

(iv) Dramatic music.

In no other arena of Schubert's artistic life did he encounter more frustration than in dramatic music. At first blush, the sense of drama evinced in songs like Erlkönig, not to mention his dazzling lyrical gift, would seem to have marked Schubert as an ideal composer of dramatic music. But like Haydn, Schubert lacked the instinct for long-range planning and cumulative dramatic development that came so naturally to a Mozart or a Verdi. Perhaps he could have learnt through experience, as exemplified by his growth in the realm of symphonic music. But the circumstances for a positive learning curve could not have been more disadvantageous during Schubert's lifetime. The two principal Viennese theatres, the Burgtheater and the Kärntnertortheater (both owned and controlled by the emperor), were in decline. The Burgtheater had ceased producing opera altogether, while the Kärntnertortheater faced financial difficulties. Nor did the three suburban theatres offer more opportunity. The enthusiasm for the operas of Rossini upon their introduction in Vienna in 1816 had turned by 1821 into what the Viennese called the ‘Rossini Rummel’ (Rossini craze). Strict censorship introduced by Metternich forbade any subjects challenging the imperial authority. Finally, the paucity of opportunities had drained Vienna of virtually all of its professional librettists. In all it was an extremely poor environment for any composer of German opera.

Schubert's enthusiasm for dramatic music nonetheless overcame any objective assessment of his chances for success. Opera, in particular, remained the surest path in Vienna (and throughout most of Europe) to fame and fortune. Between 1811 and 1827 Schubert began no fewer than 16 full-scale dramatic works (not including the two fine numbers added to Hérold's Das Zauberglöckchen and the incidental music to Helmina von Chézy's Rosamunde), completing half of them. Half of those he began are Singspiele growing out of the same tradition that produced Mozart's Entführung and Zauberflöte. Schubert's first two efforts, Der Spiegelritter (d11) and Des Teufels Lustschloss (d84), were composed before he was 18. Based on existing librettos by August von Kotzebue, a respected and successful Viennese dramatist, their magical plots (statues that move, seduction by an Amazon) stimulated Schubert's Romantic imagination only sporadically, as in the texture-based night music that opens Act 2 of d84. In 1815, the same year that produced some 160 lieder, the teenaged Schubert commenced no fewer than four Singspiele, completing at least three of them. The single act of Der vierjährige Posten (d190), Theodor Körner's improbable tale of a sentry who gets left behind by his comrades, required only 12 days to complete. Its spirited music includes a quartet in the form of a round that may have been inspired by Beethoven's ‘Mir ist so wunderbar’ from Fidelio. The next, and more serious, work, Fernando (d220), includes a heroine Eleanora who seeks and finds her lost husband, and whose name probably harks back to Beethoven's opera as well. Its one act was probably tossed off in a couple of weeks but includes a good example of storm music and a moving prayer. The one surviving act of the three-act Claudine von Villa Bella (d239) holds out little promise; if ever completed, the two final acts have disappeared without a trace. The libretto for the final member of the quartet of 1815 Singspiele, Die Freunde von Salamanka (d326), was penned by Schubert's lugubrious friend Mayrhofer. Its tortured tale of male-dominated matchmaking offered Schubert few opportunities for dramatic conflict, witnessed by its tedious, repetitive phrase structure.

In May 1816 Schubert embarked on his first opera on a classical theme, Die Bürgschaft (d435), based on a story about rebellion against the despotism of the King of Syracuse. Probably based on the ballad by Schiller, the anonymous libretto offered a number of opportunities for dramatic development, none of which Schubert responded to. His desire for operatic experience seems to have obliterated any sense of self-criticism that might have prompted him to abort the project well before the middle of the third act. This undisputed failure may account for the interval of almost three years before Schubert's next operatic project, the Singspiel Die Zwillingsbrüder (d647). Adapted by Georg von Hofmann from a French comedy, the story entangles the fortunes of two identical twins with that of two lovers, Lieschen and Anton. It holds a special place as the only opera of Schubert's to be performed in his lifetime (six times at the Kärntnertortheater, starting on 14 June 1820). Perhaps more than in any other of his operas, Schubert mastered (with more than a nod to Mozart) the pacing and character development of ensembles, from duets to quartets. Even more promising musically are the eight complete and four sketched numbers of Adrast (d137), probably begun in the autumn of 1819. Presumably based on Mayrhofer's adaptation of Herodotus's account of King Croesus, it contains some of Schubert's most audacious writing. Why he abandoned such an intriguing project is a mystery, although it may have been to accept a commission in the summer of 1820 from the Theater an der Wien for the score to the melodrama Die Zauberharfe (d644). Almost half of its 13 numbers employ the technique of melodrama, with the voice speaking over an orchestral background. Schubert appears to have been quite stimulated by the orchestral freedom implied by this style. Without the lost libretto the full context for Schubert's score is difficult to see, but for originality its harmonic language can withstand comparison with any achievements to the middle of the century and beyond.

In the autumn of 1820 Schubert once again took on an operatic project (Sacontala, d701) subverted by a convoluted libretto, this one from the theologian J.P. Neumann; the composer was soon forced to abandon it. In spite of critical acclaim, the two fine numbers that Schubert contributed to Hérold's Das Zauberglöckchen in June 1821 doubtless did little to enhance his reputation. In the hopes of gaining the recognition he yearned for, Schubert finally tackled in the autumn of 1821 a full-scale grand opera (i.e. without spoken dialogue). Alfonso und Estrella (d732), on a barely plausible plot blending medieval chivalry and romantic nostalgia (influenced by the Walter Scott craze that was sweeping across Europe) by Schubert's confidant Franz von Schober, occupied Schubert for over five months. In spite of Schubert's best efforts, Schober's material (involving the usurpation of an 8th-century Spanish king) is too static and contains too few opportunities for ensembles that advance the drama. In spite of some interesting experiments with accompanied recitative, the work moves in slow motion. After completion, composer and librettist touted it around unsuccessfully. With some relief Schubert may have returned in 1823 to the medium of Singspiel in Die Verschworenen (d787). Castelli's loose adaptation of Aristophanes' Lysistrata makes considerable use of both choruses and ensembles, and Schubert responded with some of his most varied music and pointed characterization. This final effort in Singspiel probably holds the stage better than any of Schubert's other operas.

After Die Verschworenen Schubert plunged almost immediately into some 300 bars of Rüdiger (d791), only to leapfrog quickly into another grand opera, Fierrabras (d796). Based again on a libretto by a friend of Schubert's (Josef Kupelwieser), most of the opera's action takes place in the spoken dialogue between the musical items. In spite of several of the finest operatic numbers Schubert would pen, including a serenade, an impassioned rage aria for Fierrabras's daughter Florinda, the ravishing duet ‘Weit über Glanz and Erdenschimmer’ and several powerful sections of melodrama, Fierrabras cannot hold the stage. It was the last opera that Schubert would finish, although he continued to hunt for suitable librettos for the rest of his life. In the summer of 1827 yet another Schubert friend, Eduard von Bauernfeld, provided the composer with operatic fodder. Schubert sketched all but the final two numbers of the two-act Der Graf von Gleichen (d918) but could not bring himself to finish it, although he salvaged ideas from the first-act trio (no.3) for the first movement of his unfinished D major Symphony (d936a). There is considerable irony in the circumstance that Schubert's most acclaimed piece of dramatic music, Rosamunde (d797), was assembled hastily for a play at least as convoluted as any of his most problematic librettos. Helmina von Chézy's Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern was pilloried by the critics, but Schubert's ten numbers quickly took on a life of their own. With the composer given days rather than weeks to prepare the music, more than half of the numbers are recycled: for example, the overture is taken from Alfonso und Estrella, the Entr'acte in B (no.6) is based on the song Der Leidende, and we cannot rule out the possibility that the Entr'acte in B minor (no.1) – a fully fledged sonata movement – was originally the finale for the unfinished Symphony in B minor. Given the speed with which Schubert mastered other genres, and given the promise scattered among his operatic failures, his lack of opportunity to learn from actual performances, and the absence of a Da Ponte or a Boito as a mentor, sentenced him to an undeserved fate.

Robert Winter

(v) Piano music.

Although Schubert may have learnt the violin first, the piano anchored his creative life. His first surviving work is a fantasy for piano duet (d1); among his last works (September 1828) are three incomparable piano sonatas (d958, 959, 960). He composed more than 700 vocal and instrumental works to include the piano, many of considerable complexity. Schubert's surviving sketches suggest that he composed as if at the keyboard. Although he made little use of the extra low notes available on larger Viennese pianos from 1816 (his borrowed instruments evidently did not include these notes), Schubert's exploitation of the piano's tone colour at least equals Beethoven's. His piano music is often described as of moderate technical difficulty, but many of the large-scale works (especially, but not only, the ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy) include passages that require considerable virtuosity; as to its interpretative demands, Schubert's keyboard music is as challenging as any composed in the 19th century.

Although Schubert returned periodically to the fantasy, his lengthiest involvement was with the solo piano sonata. His first effort, the Sonata in E major (d157), from which three of a projected four movements survive, dates from early 1815. That autumn two movements of the Sonata in C (d279) display a confidence and virtuosity scarcely to be expected in an 18-year-old. The opening sonata-form movement is the first to employ Schubert's characteristic device of a recapitulation beginning in the subdominant – a procedure found in earlier works such as Mozart's Sonata in C, k545, and Beethoven Coriolan overture. The Allegretto in C (d346) may have been intended as a finale. Five pieces comprising d459 and 459a have been posited as a single sonata in E from 1816. The autograph of the first (and the beginning of the second) movement is headed ‘Sonate’, but it is not clear how the other three movements might have related. In the otherwise lean year of 1817 Schubert nonetheless commenced at least five sonatas, of which the Sonata in A minor (d537) constitutes his first completed effort. Its magnificent first movement, alternately fierce and poetic, is followed by two movements of lesser significance. Schubert re-used the theme of the slow movement as the main theme in the finale of the late A major Sonata d959. Retrogressive in style are the three movements of the Sonata in A (d557), which may constitute a complete work. Equally fragmentary is the three-movement Sonata in E minor (d566), for which Schubert may also have intended the Rondo in E, d506. The key of the Sonata in D major (d567) is probably unprecedented; in the mid-1820s Schubert took it up once again, revising and augmenting it substantially while transposing it to the more orthodox key of E major. Three movements (an Andante in A, d604, and the Scherzo in D and the Allegro in F minor that comprise d570) may belong with a fragmentary Allegro moderato in F minor (d571) to form a four-movement work. The piano-rich year of 1817 was crowned by the four-movement Sonata in B major (d575). The exposition of the first movement traverses no fewer than four separate keys in leisurely fashion, with all the material linked persuasively by a dotted rhythm upbeat. Only the short-breathed finale falls below the level set by this first movement.

During the years 1818 to 1822 Schubert left three other unfinished piano sonatas (d613, 625, 655). The most interesting and extensive is the second, in F minor. If a D major Adagio (d505) was intended as the slow movement, then only the first movement requires conjectural completion. The compact finale (whose recapitulation exists as a single line in Schubert's draft) combines Chopinesque virtuosity and Beethovenian propulsion to impressive effect. Schubert's first sonata to maintain a consistently high level throughout is the ‘little’ Sonata in A major, d664 (so dubbed to distinguish it from the later A major sonata), all three of whose movements are in sonata form. In the first movement the serene, expansive lyricism of the opening theme and more assertive second group challenge gender stereotyping, in which the first theme is traditionally more ‘masculine’ and the second more submissively ‘feminine’. The Andante, built on a gently sighing theme is, unusually, monothematic, whereas the finale contrasts the fleet opening theme with a halting second group which then turns into a rollicking ländler. Throughout the finale the pianistic figuration is both idiomatic and original.

Whereas Schubert completed only four of the dozen sonatas he began before 1822, he finished all but one of the eight he began after 1822. Before he began any of them he composed the unique ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy (d760), a product of the stylistic exploration and experimentation years around 1820. Exploiting every sonority Schubert could conjure up, the four movements are linked by similar dactyllic rhythms and constitute a novel and intriguing cyclic structure; the finale combines a recapitulation of elements of the first movement with strenuous fugato writing. The slow movement, with its elaborate pianistic figuration, is based on an episode from the song Der Wanderer (d489) – hence the work's nickname. The two A minor sonatas (d784 and d845) of 1823 and 1825 are studies in contrast. The earlier sonata was Schubert's most original keyboard sonata to date, bleak, compact yet teeming with ideas. A single dotted rhythm in the opening unleashes a torrent of dotted octaves in the development which are fused with a contrasting accompanying rhythm. After a modest start, the B section of the ternary slow movement soars to unexpected heights over a bed of triplets. The agitated finale alternates eerie whisperings with ferocious eruptions. The four-movement A minor Sonata d845 shares the thematic richness and variety of the shorter work but is conceived on a more symphonic, even Beethovenian, scale. The dramatic range suggests that Schubert had, at least psychologically, moved the piano sonata from the drawing room into the concert hall. Begun and abandoned shortly before Schubert's lengthy summer sojourn of 1825, the thematically more restrained C major Sonata (d840, known as the ‘Reliquie’) sports an expansive first movement whose deceptively gentle gait is belied by a harmonic audacity (especially in the astonishing transition to the second subject) found in no previous Schubert sonata. With its exuberant energy and rich, wide-spaced textures, no other work of Schubert's reflects his natural surroundings more vividly than the D major Sonata d850, composed during his stay in and around Bad Gastein in the summer of 1825. Fashioned for a professional pianist, Karl Maria von Bocklet, Schubert felt free to give the torrential yet dancelike triplets of the first movement full rein. The emotional range of the slow movement is unprecedented in Schubert's piano music; the seemingly innocuous syncopation that launches the subdominant second group rises to a thunderous fff climax. The driving five-note dotted upbeat of the hemiola-laden Scherzo is a perfect foil both to the trio, with its wide harmonic vistas, and the relaxed, playful rondo finale. The opening Molto moderato of the G major Sonata d894, in 12/8 time, shares its tempo marking and spirit of almost timeless contemplation by the first movement of the B Sonata (d960). Perhaps taking a cue from the corresponding movement of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, Schubert ‘orchestrates’ every triad to maximize its sonority, drawing upon techniques from low-slung fifths to doubled and tripled thirds. The finale of the G major Sonata suggests another homage to Beethoven, here his Piano Sonata in G, op.31 no.1, of 1802.

Only their position at the end of Schubert's short life prompts us to label the final trilogy of piano sonatas (d958–60) as late. Now in his prime, Schubert laid out three independent solutions to the challenge of the keyboard sonata, the first opening with a blatant tribute to the theme of Beethoven's 32 Variations in C Minor. The coincidences end there, however; the ambiguities in the sonata peak in the much maligned finale, a frantic tarantella whose apparently rambling structure belies a strikingly original treatment of sonata form. In the A major Sonata Schubert replaces ambiguity with extroverted clarity. As in Beethoven's op.106, the magisterial opening proclaims the textural and formal spaciousness of the work. Yet it is not without discontinuities; beginning as a static barcarolle, the F minor Andantino contains a central episode which comes as close to a nervous breakdown as anything in Schubert's output, while during the rapid play of registers in the Scherzo he torpedoes a placid passage in C major with a plummeting scale in C minor. Although the last movement borrows its theme from the early A minor Sonata d537 and its schematic sonata-rondo layout and some of its textures from Beethoven's op.31 no.1, it transcends both these models and constitutes one of his most subtle and alluring finales. If Schubert invests the ostensibly confident A major Sonata with a tinge of sadness, the final Sonata, in B major, is suffused by the composer's characteristic melancholy, mingled with a feeling of contemplative ecstasy. The stepwise elegiac opening alternates with disembodied trills in the bass, leading to remote keys, notably F minor, before the exposition is over. The emphasis on F minor (and the enharmonically related G major) in this movement prepares listeners for the remote key of C minor in the slow movement. The suspension of time in the A section gives way to a serene A major melody that mirrors in range and contour the theme with which the sonata opened, while conjuring up the sonorities of the preceding A major Sonata. Characteristically, Schubert's tune explodes in a catharsis out of which the opening stillness re-emerges. The opening of the finale again takes a cue from Beethoven, here the second finale of the String Quartet in B, op.130, published in May of the preceding year. Like Beethoven, Schubert feints mischievously at C minor before affirming the tonic key, B. But the movement's textures and emotional ambiguity are uniquely Schubertian.

During his career Schubert composed more than 400 waltzes, ländler and other dances for piano, publishing (and probably composing) them in sets. Most were improvised at social occasions or dance parties, then refined and written down later. Technically accessible, these predominantly 16-bar binary forms are rarely routine, and a surprising number withstand comparison with Schubert's finest work. The five Ländler (all in A major or minor) that open d366 encompass the playful leaps of nos.1 and 2, the sombre hymn of no.3, the poignant, appoggiatura-laden inner-voice melody of no.4 and the driving bass of no.5. Pianists such as Sviatoslav Richter have created mini-sets from these groupings, repeating one or more of the dances, perhaps much as Schubert did. The much smaller collection of Moments musicaux, impromptus and Klavierstücke that Schubert composed between 1823 and 1828 are examples of the favourite Romantic genre of the short, self-contained piano piece that became popular during the 1820s (precedents go back at least to Beethoven's op.33 bagatelles of 1802). The compositional freedom afforded by this new genre stimulated some of Schubert's most original creations. The six Moments musicaux, composed between 1823 and 1828, use familiar formal patterns such as the minuet and trio (nos.1 and 6) as a vehicle for enigmatic and sorrowful expression that is quintessentially Schubertian. The enduring popularity of no.3 in F minor, originally published as Air russe, derives at least partly from its anticipation of a pas seul by Tchaikovsky.

Perhaps in response to the 1821 publication of pieces of the same title by the Bohemian composer Jan Vořišek, Schubert's publisher Haslinger gave the title Four Impromptus to d899. In their ternary design the impromptus may have been influenced by Tomášek's 1807 ‘Eclogues’, written in protest to the vapid variation compositions of the time. Only the first of Schubert's impromptus, a mixture of sonata, variation and through-composed elements, is not cast in ternary form. The bold opening dominant octaves act as the foil to a muted funeral march, which Schubert contrasts with an imitative, sensuously italianate closing theme. While less experimental formally, the remaining three impromptus are highly individual. The A section of no.2 is a fleet moto perpetuo, while no.3 (first published in the key of G for fear that amateurs could not navigate G) is the quintessence of the slow-moving Schubert melody over a flowing arpeggiated accompaniment. The last member of the group sports a key signature of A major but moves for more than 30 bars through A minor, C major and B minor before finally arriving in the home key. The contrasting B sections of all three are highly dramatic. The final set of four impromptus (d935) was apparently meant as a continuation of the first set. They suggest a four-movement piano sonata in F minor, with the first movement a full-blown sonata, the second a tender minuet, the third a set of variations on the theme from Rosamunde also used in the Andante of the A minor Quartet, and the fourth a highly original finale containing some of Schubert's wittiest and most audacious piano writing. Although the posthumously published Drei Klavierstücke exist only in draft, they hold their own with the impromptus, of which they were perhaps a continuation. In all three sections of great urgency contrast with those in which time seems to stand still. Throughout the late piano pieces, Schubert explores a wide range of relationships between the tonic and the submediant in all its forms (major and minor, lowered and raised), an alternative to the Classical polarization of tonic and dominant, and one that was extensively cultivated by later Romantic composers.

Schubert's most original contribution to the keyboard repertory is arguably his music for piano duet. Although familiar from the 18th century, keyboard music for four hands was largely restricted to ephemeral pieces or utilitarian arrangements of orchestral works. Mozart invested the genre with more ambition but, as with the lied, it was Schubert who took a marginal genre and made it central. His earliest works for piano duet were three fantasies (d1, 9, 48), while a modest rondo (d608) from January 1818 and four polonaises (d599) and a sonata (d617) of Mozartian proportions composed in Zseliz during the summer of that year mark the beginning of Schubert's sustained interest in the genre. His first enduring success was a set of three Marches militaires (d733), possibly written during the summer or autumn of 1818, which was followed by a further 11 marches over the next decade. Schubert's unusual interest in the march scarcely stemmed from any enthusiasm for war but rather from the great range of stylistic possibilities it afforded, from funeral march to evocations of toy soldiers. The best of these marches (which include the six Grandes marches of 1824) exploit the full range of four hands while preserving a sense of intimate conversation.

The Grand Duo (D812) of June 1824 marked a watershed in Schubert's development, instantly raising the piano duet to a medium worthy of comparison with the string quartet or the symphony. Both the first and second movements feature leisurely three-key expositions, with Schubert's favourite submediant as the intermediate key. The massively scored Scherzo, with its minor-keyed trio, is a foil for the sly opening of the finale (initially in A minor rather than the expected C major), which grows again to heroic proportions. At this same period Schubert invested variation form with similar substance and prestige in the Variations in A on an original theme (d813). The seventh variation is extraordinarily bold in its chromatic colouring, while the heavily dotted eighth and final variation leads to a poetic and ultimately triumphant coda. No work of Schubert's, incidentally, proclaims more clearly his love of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Shortly after returning from Zseliz for the last time, Schubert essayed the Divertissement à l’hongroise in G minor (d818), which has given rise to intriguing speculation as to the exact nature and degree of its Hungarian influence. This three-movement work is much more substantial than its title suggests, as is its companion probably composed the next year, the Divertissement sur des motifs originaux français (d823).

Between January and June of his last year Schubert created no fewer than three enduring works for piano duet. The Fantasy in F minor (d940) shares with the ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy a continuous four-section scheme. The haunting opening theme returns in the finale, setting the seal on a cyclic structure; in between comes a Largo which contrasts quasi-Baroque double-dotted rhythms with yearning lyricism, and a fleet Scherzo, both in the unlikely key of F minor. The F minor finale is itself framed by the opening theme, between which Schubert unleashes a fugue based on a new theme. It matters little that the fugal texture gradually dissolves, for the momentum carries through until the final poignant recall of the opening. The masterly compression of the F minor Fantasy is in stark contrast to the passionate expansiveness of the Allegro in A minor d947, subtitled Lebensstürme when Diabelli published it in 1840. Few sonata movements by Schubert integrate so many diverse ideas so successfully. Because of its key, some commentators have suggested that the sublime Rondo in A major (d951) may have formed the finale of a larger work headed by d947. Belonging to the same family as the finale to Beethoven's E minor Sonata op.90, Schubert's movement is likewise a sonata-rondo, with a central episode that functions as a development and a long coda in which one of the themes is heard in the tenor part.

Robert Winter

(vi) Chamber music.

Schubert's first instrument was the violin, and he began writing string quartets at the age of 13 or 14. The existence of a family quartet provided the impressionable teenager with a ready made laboratory. Yet the demands of the new medium perfected by Haydn, Mozart and the Beethoven of the Razumovsky quartets took Schubert almost a decade to assimilate fully. The youthful experiment of the quartet in mixed keys (d18) of 1810–11 was succeeded by a progressively more assured series of seven quartets over the next two to three years. In these works the influences of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven are readily apparent. Between 1814 and 1816, years dominated by song composition, Schubert produced only three quartets whose movements are of widely varying quality. In many of these early quartets Schubert resorts, not always successfully, to quasi-orchestral textures.

It was another four years before he produced the first movement of a quartet in C minor, the so-called Quartettsatz (d703) of 1820, a work of furious intensity that heralded Schubert's maturity as a composer of instrumental music. Its concentration and variety of texture and register paved the way for the three great quartets of Schubert's last years. While the poignant, long-spanned theme-and-accompaniment opening of the Quartet in A minor (d804) (the first of a planned set of three) is rooted in the world of song, the movement as a whole reveals a new thematic economy, tautness of development and phrase-by-phrase logic. Schubert borrowed the theme of the Andante from his incidental music to Rosamunde; but the quartet movement is expanded into a more substantial ABAB form, plus a coda based on both A and B (d677). The minuet, which quotes Schubert's Schiller setting Die Götter Griechenlands, resumes the sombre pathos of the first movement. The ostensibly cheerful opening of the A major finale is undercut by a minor-mode second group and an ambivalent final cadence. Schubert followed the A minor immediately by the Quartet in D minor (d810), nicknamed ‘Death and the Maiden’ because the theme of the second movement draws on the song of that name. The first movement uses full, almost orchestral textures with a previously unthinkable power and intensity. Yet there is almost no doubling, with Schubert relying instead on an extraordinary range of widely spaced double and triple stops. The celebrated G minor slow movement takes the chorale-like theme through a series of five variations in which, except for the exquisite variation in the major, harmony dominates melody. The explosive dotted-rhythm scherzo is seemingly modelled on the first few bars of a German dance (d790 no.6). The grimly inexorable sonata-rondo finale is cast as a saltarello, and may have been in Mendelssohn's mind when he wrote his Italian Symphony. Schubert's final quartet, in G major, d887, dates from almost two years later, and is contemporary with Beethoven's last quartet, op.135. Although Schubert's quartet is formally less sophisticated than Beethoven's, it is revolutionary in the way it makes the contrast between major and minor modes the basis of much of the structure. Schubert's harmonic language was fuelled from the outset by the frequent equivocation between major and minor; but during the course of his career local colouring was gradually supplanted by longer-range strategies, of which d887 provides the most far-reaching and disturbing example. The modal interplay is reinforced by contrasts of dynamics, spacing and texture, with a telling use of pizzicato.

Between 1816 and 1827 Schubert composed eight works for piano and a single wind or string instrument. The four sonatas for violin and piano (d384, 385, 408, 574; the first three were published as sonatinas, perhaps to enhance their appeal to an amateur market) are compact, graceful works whose unassuming character conceals an intimate understanding of the medium's conversational potential. In 1826–7 Schubert returned to this same combination for the Rondo in B minor (d895), easily his most impressive work for this medium, and the Fantasy in C, d934. The technical demands of both works are considerable, but equally evident is Schubert's penchant for formal experimentation. Generations of flautists have celebrated Schubert's decision to write his ingratiating set of variations for flute and piano (d802) on Trockne Blumen from Die schöne Müllerin. The Sonata for arpeggione and piano (d821), is often underrated, although its cause is not helped by modern arrangements for various instruments, from the cello to the flute. The arpeggione's soulful, almost speechlike upper register was clearly in the forefront of Schubert's mind when he composed this idiosyncratic work.

Apart from a youthful movement for piano trio, Schubert's three principal works for piano and strings are all products of his last decade. The five movements of the ‘Trout’ Quintet (1819) suggest a looser, divertimento-like structure, while the presence of the double bass gave Schubert the opportunity to exploit open, airy textures. The recapitulation of the opening movement, beginning in the subdominant, is a compressed transposition of the exposition, while the second and last movements make considerable use of transposed repetition, all factors suggesting that the work was composed rapidly. The variation fourth movement is based on Die Forelle, the popular song composed two years earlier, with the song's A phrase repeated to give the quintet theme added weight. In spite of its modest technical demands and accusations that its appeal is only of the surface, the ‘Trout’ Quintet projects a timeless freshness that has ensured its perpetual popularity.

Schubert probably composed, or at least began, both of his expansive piano trios in the autumn of 1827. His recent friendships with the pianist Bocklet, the violinist Schuppanzigh and the cellist Linke may have rekindled his interest in the medium after a gap of some 15 years. In the first movement of the B Trio (d898), Schubert creates delightfully fluid textures, with the strings now playing in unison, now engaged in conversational interplay, while piano accompaniments invariably include thematic elements. The approach to the second group – the emotional centre of the movement – employs a favourite Schubertian device in which a sustained single tonic note (here, A in the cello) is suddenly redefined as the mediant of the secondary key (F). The intensely lyrical but disjunct theme is expanded to ten bars, with the melodic peak reserved for the final statement in the piano. In the ensuing Andante, cast in a free ternary design, the serene A section encloses a volatile central episode. The trio of the Scherzo, a movement of almost symphonic scope, features a sighing stepwise melody that passes from violin to cello before concluding in a poignant duet. Labelled a rondo, the sonata-form finale opens playfully before launching into an ambitious series of thematic developments crowned by a rhythmic transformation of the opening theme in triple metre. A Notturno in E major (d897) was probably intended as the original slow movement of the B Trio. Its turbulently imitative B section, contrasting with the timelessness of the opening, has a volcanic power found in many of Schubert's later slow movements. The sheer length of this ABABA movement may have led the composer to replace it by the present Andante. The E Trio (d929) opens with a triple-time triadic theme reminiscent of Beethoven's ‘Eroica’ but soon moves, via virtuoso runs in the piano, to a plaintive second group in the quite unexpected key of B minor. The exposition and recapitulation sustain much of their interest by constantly inflecting the major mode with the minor, enabling Schubert to draw out the descent from B minor to the dominant a semitone below. After reaching a fff climax in the coda, the movement ends with witty and touching piano reference to the second group. The marchlike Andante, based on a C minor theme that derives from a Swedish folksong, employs the same ABABA form as the Notturno but in an even freer fashion. Schubert accompanies the first return of the A theme with explicitly marked tremolandos that lead to a shattering climax in B minor, the key that had played a crucial role in the first movement. The lilting Scherzando, written in close canon, makes one wonder how Schubert could have doubted his own contrapuntal skills. The movement ends with a truncated return of the trio, recalling the final allusion to the second theme in the opening movement. As in the B Trio, the huge finale (totalling 748 bars) frequently changes metre (from 6/8 to 2/2) here to accommodate a hypnotic repeated-note theme. More novel is the varied return of the first theme from the slow movement, creating the kind of cyclic structure that would prove irresistible to composers of the next generation. Perhaps under pressure from friends, Schubert acknowledged the problematic length of his finale and authorized two cuts generally adopted today.

Schubert composed two chamber works for unusual combinations of instruments. The Octet in F (d803; string quartet plus double bass, clarinet, horn, and bassoon) was commissioned by Count Troyer, who played the clarinet at the first performance. The work contains a few orchestral-style tuttis, none of which, however, undermines the work's essential chamber style. Except for passing shadows in the coda of the Adagio and the minuet, the first five movements, which include a set of brilliant variations on a jaunty theme from the operetta Die Freunde von Salamanka, are almost entirely free from the sombre colours found in much of Schubert's later music. Only in the introduction to the finale, with its eerie tremolandos, does darkness fall unexpectedly before evaporating in a breezy quickstep march. An internal impulse seems to have fuelled the composition of what many regard as Schubert's crowning achievement in chamber music, the String Quintet in C (d956), whose genesis overlaps with the late piano sonatas. Schubert's choice of a second cello rather than the second viola preferred by Mozart was prompted by his evident affection for the cello's plangent tenor range and by the increased textural possibilities offered by the extra cello. Unlike Boccherini in his quintets with two cellos, Schubert gave each of the instruments virtually equal prominence. In only a few other works, notably the G major Quartet, does Schubert derive a large-scale structure so cogently from the opening material, heard in the first movement as a deeply felt struggle between minor and major; in a masterly stroke of ambiguity, the apparent slow introduction here turns out to have been in the movement's basic Allegro tempo all along. The achingly beautiful cello duet that forms the intermediate stage of the three-keyed exposition derives much of its poetic effect from the reinterpreted G in the second cello that sinks flatwards to E. Perhaps the most astonishing feature of the movement is its range of textures (including liberal use of pizzicato), with the instruments often grouped into two pairs plus one single voice. Remarkably, the movement seems to expand the sonorities of chamber music rather than veering towards an orchestral style of writing.

The ethereal, disembodied melody of the Adagio creates an illusion of time suspended. Major–minor contrasts continue to colour the harmonic discourse at both the local and structural levels, the latter most evident in the abrupt juxtaposition of the A section in E major with the anguished B section in F minor. With the return of the A section haunted by distant echoes of the earthly struggles in the B section, it is not surprising that musicians such as the pianist Artur Rubinstein – not to mention the writer Thomas Mann – expressed a wish to die while listening to this movement. Extreme contrasts continue in the Scherzo, where the manic energy of the Scherzo itself provides a haunting foil for the wraithlike stillness of the D trio, which, like the F minor episode of the Adagio, is placed a semitone above the movement's main tonality. For his finale Schubert took refuge in the Viennese dance music he had known since a child, all the while counterpoising the pronounced lilt of the main theme with ppp textures of the most transparent delicacy. In a bittersweet, disquieting ending that only Schubert could have conceived, the Quintet ends with the notes D–C, leaving the question of mode as ambiguous as in the opening chords of the first movement.

Robert Winter

(vii) Orchestral music.

Of all the genres in which Schubert worked, the one that interested his friends and supporters least was orchestral music. When Antonio Salieri reportedly said: ‘He is a genius! He can write anything: songs, masses, string quartets …’ it is no accident that he omitted any mention of symphonic music. Along with Salieri, the Schubert circle, with its poets, playwrights, painters and philosophers, was far more involved with the more intimate forms of music-making, especially the lied. Nonetheless, Schubert's interest in composing for orchestra dates back to his mid-teens and dominated his deathbed. He began more symphonies (13) than Beethoven, and completed seven. Schubert's first six symphonies, most of them written for performance by a private orchestra which had grown out of the family string quartet, are apprentice works, full of ingratiating touches and, less frequently, genuine originality. It is worth remembering that at the age when Beethoven finished his First Symphony, Schubert had little over a year to live. Born at just the right moment to inherit the full symphonic flowering of Mozart and Haydn, as well as the intimidating assaults of Beethoven, Schubert took full advantage of his legacy. Although his first essay, an Allegro in D (d2b), calls, unusually, for trombones, his First Symphony (d82) adopts the formal outline and scoring of Haydn's second set of London symphonies: a slow introduction leading to a sonata-form Allegro, a spacious slow movement, a symphonic minuet in the tonic key of the work, and a lighter, scurrying finale that opens softly before a tutti explosion. Mozartian touches can be heard, especially in the slow movement with its echoes of the ‘Prague’ Symphony; but the reappearance of part of the slow introduction immediately before the first movement's recapitulation is an impressive and individual stroke. Although he may already have been familiar with Beethoven's first six symphonies, Schubert rarely betrayed a direct influence in these early works; one obvious exception is the use of the Eroica Symphony's ‘Prometheus’ theme in the opening movement of the First Symphony. From the syncopated, scampering thematic material of the opening Allegro, through the theme-and-variations slow movement and the off-tonic (C minor) minuet to the use of three distinct key centres in the exposition of the finale, the Second Symphony, in B major (d125), displays considerably more nerve and ambition. The Third Symphony (in D, d200) looks back to no.1 in its tonality and its Mozartian patina, although the jaunty themes of the first movement, and the buffo-style finale, have a whiff of Rossini. Schubert's Fourth Symphony (in C minor, d417) betrays no influence of Beethoven's epic Fifth Symphony in the same key, harking instead back to Mozartian chromaticism. In spite of the title of ‘Tragic’ added by Schubert as an afterthought, the dominant moods are those of pathos and agitation rather than tragedy. The groping chromaticism of the slow introduction owes much to the opening of Mozart's ‘Dissonance’ Quartet; but the second group of the main Allegro gravitates to the submediant – a characteristically Schubertian stroke – and the movement ends nonchalantly in the major. Of the two major-mode inner movements, the A Andante includes two troubled sections in the minor, while the minuet, in E major, is disturbingly chromatic. The finale, which also moves to the submediant for the second group, recasts the recapitulation entirely in the major, although the effect is more colouristic than a true resolution of preceding conflicts.

The popularity of Schubert's Symphony no.5 in B (d485) derives on the surface from its amiable themes (the first subject launched exquisitely by an in-tempo four-bar introduction) and transparent, chamber musical textures (the orchestra includes neither clarinets, trumpets nor drums). Its deeper appeal stems from its classical balance of thematic and structural elements. In the first movement Schubert abandons his hitherto usually perfunctory recapitulations for a genuine resolution, adding 16 new bars that prepare for the final cadence. The three remaining movements repeatedly invoke Haydn and, especially, Mozart: the slow movement, for instance, virtually quotes the theme of the minuet finale from Mozart's Violin Sonata in F, k377, while the minuet is clearly indebted to the G minor Symphony k550. Schubert's final youthful symphonic venture, the Sixth Symphony, in C (d589), suggests a composer looking for new directions but not sure where to strike out. There are pre-echoes of the ‘Great’ C major, but also the unmistakable influence of Rossini, one that also permeates the two overtures ‘im italienischen Stile’ composed by Schubert at the same period as the symphony.

Written within just over four years of each other, the first six symphonies portray a gifted apprentice largely content to embellish – with a dash of Rossini and his own more relaxed phrase structure – the exalted legacy of Haydn, Mozart and, to a lesser degree, Beethoven. During the years 1818–22 he strove to evolve a more individual, subjective conception of the four-movement sonata ideal; and his struggles are betrayed by the fact that all of the symphonies he began at this period remained torsos. Sketches for the outer movements of a symphony in D (d615, May 1818) were abandoned, in spite of promising ideas. Some two years later a more ambitious symphonic project, also in D (d708a), suffered the same fate, although extensive piano score sketches for four movements reveal some original ideas, including a daring choice of the key of the tritone (A major) for the second group in the first movement. The following year, 1821, Schubert completed a draft of a symphony in E (d729) that finally makes a decisive break with Haydn and Mozart. Following a bold minor-mode introduction to the first movement, Schubert eschews the repeat of the exposition. Three of the movements employ his characteristic three-key exposition, and the thematic structure is highly unified. Yet Schubert's full scoring (for an orchestra including trombones and four horns) of less than a third of the opening movement betrays his dissatisfaction with a work that was quickly abandoned, although its completion has proved irresistible to conductors and scholars from Weingartner onwards.

For all these promising efforts, nothing really prepares us for the mournful rise and fall of the bass theme that opens the famous ‘Unfinished’ Symphony (d759). Unlike his previous symphonic attempts, Schubert fully orchestrated the first two movements, together with part of the Scherzo. Orchestral works in B minor were almost unheard of in 1822; and originality informs every aspect of the work. The startling move to the submediant, G major, is accomplished with shattering swiftness. The soaring cello theme that follows and its syncopated accompaniment, are treated at length in the latter part of the exposition; the development works the opening theme to a pitch of almost hysterical anguish before recalling the syncopated accompaniment in isolation from the cello melody – an effect of indescribable poignancy. At the start of the recapitulation the main theme is withheld in order to enhance the dramatic force of its reappearance in the coda. With its towering climaxes, its subjective, almost confessional, tone and its extreme contrasts between violence and lyrical pathos this movement is unprecedented in the symphonic literature.

In the E major Andante con moto Schubert uses a familiar structural pattern (ABABA) to uniquely poetic ends, from the assuaging opening theme, exquisitely shared between horns, strings and woodwind, through the haunting clarinet and oboe melody over a syncopated accompaniment (shades of the first movement) and the volcanic tutti explosions, to the coda, with its miraculous harmonic sleights-of-hand. Nowadays Schubert's two completed movements are sometimes performed with an orchestral completion of the Scherzo and, as a finale, the imposing B minor Entr'acte from Rosamunde, which makes at least a plausible conclusion.

Having failed to complete four successive symphonies, Schubert might have given up on symphonic ventures. Yet Schubert's travels in Upper Austria in the summer of 1825 seem to have unleashed an astonishing creative energy and optimism that found expression in the ‘Great’ C major Symphony (d944). Few works have such unquenchable rhythmic vitality or seem more expressive of their direct surroundings, from the opening horn call, which returns as a triumphant apotheosis in the coda, to the brisk step of the stoical, marchlike Andante con moto, from the joyous alfresco dance of the vast sonata-form Scherzo, saturated by its opening motif, to the surging triplets of the gargantuan finale. Having found his symphonic voice – a voice at once lyrical, colouristic and expansive – Schubert was understandably eager to undertake more symphonic projects. The so-called Symphony no.10 (d936a) was the principal work to occupy the composer on his deathbed. He lived long enough to sketch a three-movement work in which the last movement was apparently to combine the function of scherzo and finale. The first movement exhibits structural gaps that challenge any projected completion. Like the ‘Unfinished’ of six years earlier, the first movement includes a second group whose lyrical main theme forms the movement's emotional and structural centre – so much so that the development opens with a slowed version of it. The last revisions appear to have been made in the remarkable slow movement (again in B minor!), which has an uncanny foretaste of Mahler. As perhaps the last music Schubert composed, its mingled serenity and sense of loss may have grown out of his acceptance of his own fate. Originally labelled ‘Scherzo’, the third movement soon developed into a kind of contrapuntal rondo, sporting fugato, canon, double counterpoint, and even augmentation, all testimony to Schubert's renewed contrapuntal studies in the last weeks of his life.

Robert Winter

(viii) Schubert's style and influence.

19th- and earlier 20th-century commentators struggled to define Schubert's style, confining their arguments largely to whether he fitted more into a Viennese Classical or a Romantic mould. In practice, Schubert borrowed freely from the traditions of Haydn, Mozart and, eventually, Beethoven while simultaneously developing his own strategies to new, subjectively expressive ends. Perhaps most significant here was Schubert's extension of the polarized tonic–dominant Classical harmonic discourse to a full range of flat-side relationships – subdominant, flat mediant, submediant and, especially, flat submediant. With its flat-side staging posts, the well-documented three-key exposition attenuated the pull of the dominant. Though Schubert was by no means the inventor of this strategy (well-known precedents include the first movement of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata), he raised it to extraordinary levels of subtlety. Along with this came both a blurring and an intensified colouristic use of the major–minor modal system. In its simplest form this might involve converting a major-mode theme into the minor (an extension of Mozart's practice), or it might involve a systematic rhetoric of ambiguity, as in the first movement of the C major Quintet. If Schubert's use of rhythm has received less attention, its generally looser, post-Classical structure proved eminently capable of supporting the arching melodic periods for which he is justly known. Although Schubert's melodic gift has long been celebrated, it resists generalization. But his characteristic fingerprints include a predilection for themes that revolve around the mediant, that move mostly by steps but are defined by a telling leap, in which each phrase carries the impetus for the next, and in which closure (often on to the tonic) is delayed until the last possible moment.

In line with this broadened expressive range, Schubert's style can best be understood as a series of four discrete styles. There is first of all the openly popular manner, captured in works like the Octet (d803), songs from Die schöne Müllerin and the ‘Trout’ Quintet. Schubert's popular tone is even more pervasive than Mozart's, surfacing in substantial as well as occasional genres. Counterpoised to this is what might be called the ambitious style – works (and passages) that openly declare their complexity. While weighted towards the last half of Schubert's career, they include works from every genre in which he worked. The late symphonies, masses, string quartets and piano sonatas contain only the most obvious examples. An extension of the ambitious style is the learned style, found primarily in contrapuntal passages ranging from the elaborate palindrone in Die Zauberharfe, the mirror counterpoint in the ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy, the extended fugal passages in both late masses, to the quasi-fugal writing in the F minor Fantasy for piano duet (d940). Finally, Schubert penned passages that can only be described (albeit unhistorically) as avant garde. These include music best described as ‘unhinged’, such as that in the slow movements of the G major Quartet and the A major Piano Sonata (d959), or the so-called Lebensstürme for piano duet. But they also include the Wagnerian pre-echoes in Lazarus and the Count's recitative (no.2) in Der Graf von Gleichen, or the Mahlerian premonitions in the Andante of Symphony no.10.

Schubert's direct influence on the course of 19th-century music arguably exceeded that of Beethoven. That, like Beethoven, he exercised no influence over opera, the dominant form of public music for the duration of the century, does not diminish his contribution. The flood of lieder by composers such as Franz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf and Mahler are quite unimaginable without the extraordinary precedent of Schubert. Of these, it was perhaps Wolf who came closest to replicating the vast emotional range of Schubert. While Schubert's writing for piano was less obviously innovative than that of Chopin, Schumann and Liszt, its influence was by no means neglible. The ability to exploit and extend the singing qualities of the Viennese piano, the wealth of innovative accompanimental textures, the formal experimentation, and the cultivation of new single-movement genres, including miniatures such as the Moments musicaux, were all to leave their mark on subsequent generations. While the only mature symphony of Schubert's known between 1839 and 1868 was the ‘Great’ C major, its impact on Schumann, Mendelssohn and, much later, Brahms and Mahler (who also knew the ‘Unfinished’) was profound. It is hard to imagine Brahms at all without the example of Schubert. Mahler's sense of spacious Austrian countryside draws directly from the Schubert of the ‘Great’ C major. The gradual publication of Schubert's works throughout the 19th century meant that new discoveries were constantly being made, affording numerous opportunities for influence. These cropped up in unexpected places: the harmonic vocabulary of the King of Ragtime, Scott Joplin, is lifted in almost textbook fashion directly from Schubert, while unmistakable Schubertian gestures such as the ubiquitous flat sixth chord pop up in, say, the Beatles' I saw her standing there. Indeed, the very language of musical theatre, from Siegmund Romberg to Andrew Lloyd Webber, is saturated with Schubertian melodic and harmonic syntax.

Robert Winter

 

by Grove online