Meet the Candidate: Schubert

Today we continue our discussion of pieces that will be voted upon at the orchestra's next concert, You Be the Judge!, Monday, October 25th, at 7:30 p.m. The audience will be presented with various choices and will decide, on the spot, what the orchestra performs.

Squaring off against Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, which we discussed yesterday, is fellow Austrian composer Franz Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.

Franz Peter Schubert (pronounced shew-bert) was born on January 31, 1797 and died on November 19, 1828. Dying at the young age of 31, Schubert wrote an amazing number of compositions: about 600 Lieder (German songs), nine symphonies, church music, operas, incidental music, chamber music and solo piano music.

He struggled for recognition during his lifetime. Recognizing his greatness, Schubert's friends threw "Schubertiads," parties where only his music was played. An alcoholic who never had any money, Schubert moved from friend to friend for support. Following his death, great composers like Liszt, Brahms, Mendelssohn and Schumann championed his works.

Although typhoid fever is listed as the cause of Schubert's death, many believe he died from syphilis. At his request he was buried next to his musical hero, Beethoven.

Perhaps Schubert's greatest work is his  Symphony No. 8 in B minor. Commonly known as the Unfinished Symphony, Schubert started it in 1822, six years before his death, but composed only two movements (there are typically four movements in a symphony): the first movement and a slow, second movement. He also wrote a third movement, scherzo, in piano score, but only orchestrated two pages of it. Some music historians believe that the entr'acte from his incidental music to Rosamunde was actually intended as the finale to the symphony. Some conductors have put together all the aforementioned works to have a complete, four movement, symphony. Most think this is a bad idea.

Various theories have been advanced to explain why Schubert did not finish the symphony. One reason he abandoned the symphony, so a theory goes, is because he had written all three movements in triple meter (the meter of the waltz). This was simply not done (or at least rarely done), causing Schubert to give up. Another theory is that Schubert had simply evolved musically. We know that he began a new composition after composing the two movements of the symphony. Maybe this caused his compositional style to grow in a different direction. Finally, another theory states that Schubert said what he had to say, only in two movements. In other words, Schubert might have intended for the symphony to be only two movements long.

Whether or not Schubert intended a two-movement symphony is best left for musicologists (music historians) to debate. Regardless, he left us with two wonderful movements of Romantic music.

The first movement begins with the low strings playing a extremely soft passage that later becomes the basis for the development section of the movement:





The strings start a mysterious ostinato which serves as the underpinning for a duet between oboe and clarinet. The great conductor ArturoToscanini called the combination a clarboe, emphasizing the need for the oboe and clarinet to blend their sounds into one. This section is in a minor mode, making the mood quite mysterious.

Things turn brighter with the second theme in G major, played by the cellos:

In his Music Appreciation Hour, on NBC radio, Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony (not to be confused with the New York Philharmonic), added words to the theme to make it more memorable for students:



"This is a symphony, that Schubert wrote and never finished."

Schubert eventually moves into the development section of the movement, where he takes the above themes and expands on them. There are many ways composers develop themes: they may change keys, change orchestrations, use a fragment of the tune, etc. Listen to the recording of the work below and discover for yourself Shubert's techniques.

What is really odd about the symphony is that the public did not know of its existence until 37 years after Schubert's death. In 1823, the Graz Music Society gave Schubert an honorary diploma. As was the custom and to show his gratitude, Schubert dedicated a symphony to them, presenting it to his friend and society representative Anselm Hüttenbrenner. Hüttenbrenner did not have the piece performedfter Schubert's death five years later? There are torn pages in the existing manuscript. Did he damage the piece? Did he feel guilty about it, hiding the work's existence for that reason? Finally, in 1865, at the age of 76 (he died three years later), he showed it to the conductor Johann von Herbeck, who conducted the two movements on December 17,1865 in Vienna, adding the last movement of Schubert's Third Symphony as the finale.  The score was not published until after 1867. As they say, "Better late than never."

To learn more about the symphony, watch St. Louis Symphony Music Director David Robertson's excellent discussion: David Robertson discusses symphony.

Now watch a performance of the symphony's first movement: Unfinished Symphony, First Movement.

 Well, what will it be? Beethoven or Schubert? Let me know by leaving a comment on this blog.

The next two candidates, which we will begin discussing on Monday, are Copland's Hoedown and a Norwegian march by Johannes Hanssen, entitled Valdres. Lest you think there is no question about which should be played, the march was a favorite of Boston Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler.