Is it still possible to listen to Viola (Violet), D. 786? Or has its horticultural-show imagery, its mawkish morality, and, most of all, its great duration (19 verses taking almost 15 minutes in complete performance) made it merely a quaint reminder of the nineteenth century's astounding ability to endure both sentimentality and endless length? And, a pertinent question perhaps, did poet Franz von Schober and composer Franz Schubert believe a word or a note of it? After all, von Schober was the lax, lazy, and lascivious layabout who introduced the timid and uninitiated Schubert to the libidinous delights of whorehouses in the late autumn of 1822. And it was Schubert who, having sampled those voluptuous pleasures, contracted the venereal disease that put him in the hospital in early 1823 and killed him in the autumn of 1828. As it happens, Schubert composed his setting of von Schober's Viola in March 1823, the same time he began working on both the fateful Symphony in B minor and the song cycle Die Schoene Mullerin, and heard in context of his life and works, Schubert's Viola takes on a greater depth and poignancy than it might otherwise have. Or, to put it more precisely, putting Viola in context of Schubert's life and works lets the contemporary listener hear the depth and poignancy that was always present in Viola but that two centuries' worth of pseudo-sophistication have nearly effaced. Von Schober's poem tells the pathetic story of the eponymous flower who literally dies for love. Schubert's setting of von Schober's 19 verses is structured as a continuous song-rondo, with the delicate music of the opening verse returning as the 5th, 14th, and 19th verse. The music of the second and fourth verses is quietly ceremonial, the tempo of the sixth through eighth verses switches from four to three in a bar and gradually becomes more excited. But the music turns to the minor in the ninth verse and comes to a fearful halt in the tenth verse. The 11th through the 14th verses are a single musical unit of rushing force that returns the song to the opening verse. The 15th through 17th verses go in hurried search for Viola, who is found in the 18th and penultimate verse to some of Schubert's tenderest music, which gracefully leads back to the final statement of the opening verse. Whether one considers its imagery and morality hopelessly nineteenth century, Schubert has forged from these elements a completely coherent song of enormous duration.

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