Music Director
Franz Schubert
Unfinished Symphony
Austrian composer Franz Peter Schubert has sometimes been credited with composing works that bridged the Classic and Romantic style periods in music history. Schubert undoubtedly began with the formal and harmonic conventions of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but he added melodic genius to them. Schubert brought the German lied, or song to the forefront of musical culture.
Schubert began writing songs at fourteen, and by the time he died at the young age of thirty-one, Schubert had composed more than 600 solo lieder. He had an instinctive flair for melody, and lyricism, and excelled at setting words to melodies with creating melodies and keyboard accompaniment that expressed the vital meaning of the texts he set. He brought the song form to a new level of importance.
Schubert was raised in Himmelpfortgrund near Vienna by Franz Schubert, a parish schoolmaster and Elizabeth Vietz, a cook for a Viennese family. He was one of fifteen children, ten of whom died in infancy. At six, Schubert began to study violin with his father, an amateur musician, and piano with his brother Ignaz. As a youth, Schubert never got the kind of training he needed to become a performer. As a professional performer, he might have had a more stable financial future than he did.
In 1808 Schubert went to Convict, Vienna's chief music school, under the direction of Antonio Salieri, to be trained as a chorister for the Court Chapel. He stayed until he was almost seventeen, making close friends who helped him throughout his short life, and studying the overtures and symphonies of Mozart. He also attended operas. After Schubert composed some keyboard and chamber works, Salieri decided to train Schubert in music theory and composition himself.
Schubert composed a wind octet to commemorate the death of his mother in 1812, and a cantata for his father's name day and his first symphony in 1813. He wrote a number of string quartets for his own use, works that he played with his family. His father played cello, his brothers played violin, and Franz played the viola.
Schubert left Convict in 1813 to teach at his father's school, thereby avoiding military service. He continued studies with Salieri, whose influence can be seen most directly in Schubert's early church music and songs. Considering how short his life was, Schubert wrote a lot of music, including operas, chamber music, songs, Masses, symphonies, and piano works. He tried to have his works published without success. Schubert's friend Spaun had Erlkonig, a setting of Goethe's text published as Schubert's Op. 1 in 1816. After Schubert failed to win the position of Kapellmeister at Laibach, Franz von Schober offered to support Schubert so that he could leave teaching and compose full-time.
Schubert's strengths were most suitable to short chamber, piano, and vocal works. But nineteenth century composers were expected to write long orchestral works, especially symphonies. Schubert did not try to write a large-scale symphony until the Symphony in B minor (Unfinished), now listed as his eighth. Schubert composed the first two movements and half of a scherzo movement in 1822. Although Schubert never finished the scherzo or a fourth movement, the first two movements are performed often, and contain some of Schubert's most famous themes.
The opening Allegro moderato begins with a tribute to Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E-flat (Eroica). The first theme is a beautiful, expansive, anguished melody in B minor that very quickly moves into G Major for the second theme Landler melody derived from Austrian folk dance. The development section focuses mostly on the introductory subject, which also provides material for the coda. Schubert altered sonata form to suit his lyrical phrases.
The Andante con moto movement features a lyrical opening theme and a majestic second theme. A poignant dialogue between the clarinet and oboe in the middle section adds to the drama.
With the Unfinished Symphony, Schubert achieved his goal of creating his own orchestral voice. Unfortunately, because of illness and poverty, the symphony was not performed until 1865, long after Schubert's death.
Program notes by Beth Bergman Fisher