The second of this summer’s three concerts takes place at Market Square Church in air-conditioned comfort on Wednesday at 7:30. It opens with two works for cello and piano by Frederic Chopin, the fairly well-known Introduction & Polonaise brillant Op. 3 and the almost unknown Cello Sonata in G Minor, his last major work. (You can read about them in this earlier post, here.)
The second half of the program features one of Franz Schubert’s final works, his String Quintet in C Major, composed in two, maybe three weeks’ time only a matter of weeks before he died at the age of 31.
As Peter Sirotin said, getting ready for the last program of MSC’s Summermusic ten years ago, "Any day which includes a performance of the Schubert Quintet is a good day." He admitted the work is one of his "Top 3" favorite pieces. I’ve often referred to it as one the Great Pieces (Period) – not just of Chamber Music, but Classical Music In General.
|
Three Composers: Johann Jenger (l.), Anselm Hüttenbrenner, & Franz Schubert (r.), by their friend Joseph Teltscher (c.1827) |
There are so many things that continue to amaze me no matter how many times I hear Schubert’s Quintet.
This performance of the quintet – complete in one “clip” – was recorded at a summer music festival in Montana in 2016 with the Dover Quartet joined by cellist Matt Haimowitz. You may remember the Dover Quartet from their appearance with Market Square Concerts in 2017.
The first movement, with its expansive and harmonically tentative opening, and striking contrasts between sections of contemplation and high drama, is proof this is going to be not only a serious work, it’s going to be seriously long. The first two movements combined, in fact, are as long as most four-movement string quartets are in their entirety up until Beethoven began writing his Late Quartets only a few years earlier in 1825. The famous slow movement – to describe it in words is, as Lucy Murray points out in her program notes, “to do it an injustice” – begins at 21:00. The scherzo, its joyful, earthy first section and otherworldly contrasting meditation, begins at 35:50.
If a single adjective can summarize any of these individual movements – sublime comes closest to describing the slow movement – exuberant best catches the finale’s mood, typical of that earthy Viennese spirit we’re familiar with in Brahms’ finales (written some sixty years later), especially with its Hungarian dance-like elements. This finale is probably Schubert at his most convivial, out enjoying Vienna’s night-life (and Schubert and his friends did love to party). In fact, if anything, as trite as it may sound, there’s really no other single work I can think of that looks at so many different aspects of “the meaning of life” as this quintet.
People have said there must have been a rush to complete
as much music as he could before he died, not that you'd know
how much time you have left in your life. And certainly not if you were in your early-30s like Franz Schubert. But that’s the way Schubert was most of his
life, writing as much music as he could possible get down on paper:
how else do you end up with nearly a thousand pieces in your
catalogue in a span of just 18 years?
From November, 1827, to his
death a year later, Schubert wrote (if not completed) 36 works,
according to Otto Deutsch’s catalogue, including
- Piano
Trio in E-flat (D.929, published as Op.100) - November ‘27 (the
B-flat Trio had been written the month before)
- Fantasy in C
for Violin & Piano (D.934) based on the song “Sei mir
gegrüsst”) - December ‘27
- Four Impromptus for Piano
(D.935, published as Op.142) - December ‘27
- Fantasy in F
Minor for Piano Duet (D.940) - January-April ‘28
- “Auf
dem Strom” (D.943), song for tenor, horn & piano - March
‘28
- Symphony in C Major “The Great”
(D.944) – though we now think it was probably composed two years earlier, there
had been evidence it was begun (or more likely, revised) in March
‘28
- Three Impromptus for piano (D.946) often called
more generically “Drei Klavierstücke” - May ‘28
- Mass
in E-flat (D.950) - begun June ‘28
- Quintet in C
for Strings (D.956) - sometime in August-September ‘28
-
Fourteen Songs known as “Schwanengesang” (D.957) -
finished between August & October ‘28
- Piano Sonata in
C Minor (D.958) – September ‘28
- Piano Sonata in A
Major (D.959) – September ‘28
- Piano Sonata in
B-flat Major (D.960) – last page dated 26th September ‘28
-
Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (“Shepherd on the Rock”)
(D.965) October ‘28
Whether you’d consider them all
“masterpieces” or not, this list of fourteen works (really 27,
since you should count the songs of Schwanengesang individually
as it’s not really a single work per se) does not include nine
other songs (two or three written earlier that could’ve fit into
the set of “Swan-Songs”), eleven part songs and short choral
works (including a setting of Psalm 92 in Hebrew, written for a
specific temple’s Sabbath service), four other “miscellaneous”
works for piano solo or duet and - oh yes – two large-scale
unfinished works, a symphony in D Major (D.936a) and an opera, The Count of Gleichen, listed as D.918 because it was begun the
previous summer. And one should also include some “homework
assignment” for his counterpoint lessons, which I’ll get to,
later.
Look at those works completed if not all written in
September 1828, the three last piano sonatas, the C Major Quintet and
several of the Swan-Songs (only the first and last are actually
dated). While there are sketches that exist for material that ended
up in the piano sonatas from earlier that summer, most of the work on
them was done in a matter of three weeks.
And in less than eight weeks, he died ten weeks shy of his 32nd birthday.
It’s not that he knew he was dying. His health had not been good, off and on, especially after 1822 when, at the age of 25, he began showing the first symptoms of syphilis, presumably in November, not long after he finished... or rather, left unfinished the B Minor Symphony (“The Unfinished Symphony”), the score dated October 30th, 1822, and the virtuosic Fantasy in C, a piano solo known as “The Wanderer Fantasy,” also one of his most dramatic, violent and, at times, pessimistic pieces. Signs of illness may not explain the despair of the fantasy or even why he never completed the rest of the symphony (he had started the third movement but stopped after nine measures), since we normally think of works of art being unhampered by reality, but the chronology is difficult to ignore.
It was at the end of August, 1828, that Schubert, on the advice of his doctor, moved out of his friend Schober’s house in downtown Vienna to take a room in his brother’s new suburban home just outside the city, since the air – and no doubt the quieter life – would be better for his health. And then in the next few weeks he wrote the string quintet and three sonatas. Could there be some correlation between his health and his inspiration? Certainly, the quintet is one of the loftiest works anyone has ever written under any circumstances.
Today, a composer could brag he (or she) doesn’t write anything unless it’s commissioned or would at least have a performance of it already lined up. We’ve lost that romantic notion of the struggling artist writing for the sheer pleasure of creating art, the product of pure inspiration.
To say Schubert was famous may not be entirely accurate but statements about his being unknown are not exactly truthful, either. His music did not bring him a great deal of money, though his short dance pieces for piano were popular and his songs were well-known, probably circulating more in manuscript copies, the early-19th Century answer to ipods and illegal downloads. By a small group of music lovers, he was certainly respected, but he had difficulties getting his works performed, mostly because he was writing things that were not practical for Vienna in the 1820s: keep in mind, things had gotten tough enough, economically, that even Beethoven threatened to leave for new financial possibilities in Paris or London.
Ironically, the first public, largely professional concert of Schubert’s music was also his last. It took place on March 26th, 1828, the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death as it turned out, and included the E-flat Piano Trio, several songs and part-songs including Auf dem Strom, after opening with a movement of (presumably) the not-yet-performed G Major String Quartet. The attendance was good, the response, since it was mostly of Schubert’s many friends and acquaintances, enthusiastic, but there was no critical mention of it in the press because all of Vienna (in fact, all of Germany, apparently) was taken up with the five concerts being given by the then-all-the-rage violinist Nicolo Paganini, performances which brought in about 5600 florins per concert. While I have no idea what a florin in 1828 might be worth today, it’s enough to mention that Schubert’s concert brought in 320 florins total, less than 6% of Paganini’s box-office take. For him, he thought he’d done fairly well – not enough as he’d’ve liked, but he was feeling flush enough to plan a couple of summer vacations. Unfortunately, these never came about.
Which brings me back to those “counterpoint lessons” Schubert had set up just before he died. When he was working on the Mass in E-flat earlier that year, he had been studying Handel oratorios: Messiah, he’d said, was one of his favorite works. A few months before his death, Schubert told friends about these Handel scores, realizing “Now for the first time, I see what I lack.” He arranged to take lessons with organist Simon Sechter to “make good the omission.”
What was it that Schubert, at the age of 31 and who’d been composing since before he was 13, lacked?
Counterpoint.
Usually, this is assumed to mean “the writing of fugues,” something that by 1828 was pretty old-fashioned already. Composers might insert “a fugal section” to show that they know how to do something academic, that they’ve learned their craft. It might not always sound natural, given the flow of things: Beethoven aside (who at least admitted he approached it “with some license”), I often feel like we should do The Wave whenever a 19th Century composer breaks into a “learnéd” fugue midstream (there’s one in Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony of 1885 that usually reduces me to a puddle of giggles).
It's possible the "writing of fugues" was what concerned him, though. In 1826, he had applied for (and not gotten) a post as assistant court composer for church music and had, no doubt, written the Mass in E-flat as an audition piece. But he was passed over for a more senior and more professionally successful composer, Josef Weigl, primarily an opera composer. Perhaps they figured "Schubert - he's what, 29 years old? Let him try again next time..."
When I listen to Schubert’s quintet, it amazes me that he felt so insecure that he had to go study counterpoint. I’m not familiar with his masses – at least the last two “mature” ones – but fugues aside, the art of writing melodically and rhythmically independent lines that are interdependent harmonically, a broader definition of counterpoint, is not something I would think Schubert was lacking!
All you have to do is listen to the opening of the second movement.
Listen to at least a few of the opening minutes of this performance with live musicians, the Borodin Quartet with cellist Alexander Buzlov. I specify “live musicians” because often, when you see these “graphic scores,” the sound is sometimes computer or synthesizer generated. For those who do not read music, this can give you a visual image of what the music “looks” like; even for those who do read music, it can help clarify the textures, how the lines move, or how the intensity rises or falls.
= = = = =
= = = = =
I realize this passage is not “three melodies” which is what a definition of (three-part) counterpoint implies, especially to someone familiar with Bach; I’m referring to three independent lines and how they relate to each other. Long slow notes in two- and three-part harmony in the inner voices (as they’d be called, regardless of the fact they’re instruments), with rhythmic filagree-like patterns in the 1st violin that remind me of birdsong, and one cello plucking along on what sounds like the downbeat with the harmonic underpinning. These are three fully defined layers of easily identifiable ‘sound’ – the long slow notes actually turn out to be the melodic layer – that becomes clearer the second time around, about 2½ minutes later, when the “bird-calls” of the 1st violin are replaced by plucked chords answering the cello’s bass line. Then, having taken about 5 minutes to run twice through this theme – speaking of expansive – there’s a sudden change of mood: the violins now have the decidedly more dramatic theme, here, the cellos’ bass-line now more insistent, turning back over on itself, and the middle voices now playing an agitated pattern, filling in the harmony but completely separate, rhythmically, from the outer parts, a far cry from the relaxed contemplation of the first theme.
Why would anybody who could create passages like that feel that insecure about needing to study counterpoint?
Unfortunately, we’ll never know what impact those lessons with Simon Sechter would have on Schubert’s later music. He only took one lesson – on November 4th, 1828. He had already complained of feeling sick the week before but managed to walk the four or five miles to the church where his brother Ferdinand’s Requiem was being performed, not counting a three-hour walk they and the choirmaster took afterwards before walking home (no public transportation to the suburbs in those days). Complaining of feeling tired, understandably, Schubert still felt well enough to walk the mile-or-so to and from his teacher’s house for the counterpoint lesson the next day. That weekend, Schubert attended a friend’s dinner party where much wine was drunk and everybody thought he was feeling pretty good (in any number of ways). By Tuesday of that week, then, he “took to his bed,” did not make it to the next lesson - in fact, never left the house again.
Another friend showed up with a copy of his setting of Psalm 23 which needed some corrections. There was no real anxiety – he had been ill before and had recovered before – and Schubert himself complained only of feeling tired, not of any pain. A few days later, he sat up in bed to make corrections on the publisher’s proofs for the second half of the Winterreise songs – keeping in mind the final song, “Der Leiermann” (“The Hurdy-Gurdy Man”), one of the most desolate songs in the repertoire. He wrote to his friend Schober, asking if he could borrow any books by American author James Fennimore Cooper he hadn’t read yet.
Two days later there was, as they say, “a turn for the worse,” presumably after friends came and played Beethoven’s C-sharp Minor Quartet, Op.131, for him at his request. By the end of the performance, he had become so excited and his condition had deteriorated so rapidly, they put him back in bed. His friend the librettist of The Count of Gleichen came by to visit the next day or so: Schubert had continued to work on it up until that week, and they even talked about another collaboration once he finished this one. Apparently, in these first two weeks of November, he also worked on the sketch for the slow movement of the D Major Symphony, before things got so bad, he was unable to work at all. A few more days passed: on the 18th, Ferdinand wrote later, Schubert began hallucinating, then died the following day. As his friend, the poet Grillparzer wrote for the epitaph, “The art of music here entombed a rich possession, but far fairer hopes.”
So it is impossible – for me, at least – to listen to this quintet and not dwell on things deeper than the acquisition of contrapuntal skills or on the expansion of harmonic and structural techniques to create a work that lasts between 50 and 60 minutes. Schumann, who didn’t know the quintet existed then, wrote about the “heavenly lengths” of the Great C Major Symphony which Ferdinand showed to him during a visit in 1839. The Quintet, equally heavenly, somehow didn’t surface until 1850. Like the symphony, it was just too long – for the audience but also for the players – and both were first performed in heavily cut, shortened versions.
Igor Stravinsky was never one to mince words about other composers (of Benjamin Britten, he said, “He’s an excellent accompanist”), but when someone asked him if he weren’t “sent to sleep by the prolixities of Schubert,” he replied, “What does it matter if, when I awake, it seems to me that I am in paradise?”
- Dick Strawser
No comments:
Post a Comment