Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828); AUT

Read biography at allmusic.com.

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Whereas Beethoven was the first composer to assert himself as independent from the constraints of the 18th century aristocracy, Franz Peter Schubert, born a generation later in 1797, was perhaps the first bohemian. The son of a school teacher, Schubert declared himself fit for nothing but composing music, and lived a modest existence with the support primarily of friends while he quietly revolutionized the art in his brief thirty-one years on earth. The first of the great Viennese composers who was actually from Vienna was barely known, except for his songs, in the city that was mad for Rossini and other more flamboyant forms of entertainment.

The songs of Schubert number over 600 and range from his earliest masterpieces, such as Gretchen am Spinnrad and Die Erlkonig to the desolate Wintereisse of his final year, and it might be said that the German lied pervades most of Schubert's music. In instrumental works such as the fifteen piano sonatas, a long melody is often the subject matter in a way that is quite different from the pithy germ cells that concerned Beethoven. That Schubert, who worshipped Beethoven and lived in his shadow, could so resolutely forge his own independent path, is one of the miracles of the man who died only one year after his idol.

Where Beethoven is ultimately a classical composer, Schubert truly paves the way toward the full flowering of Romanticism with his lyric songlike themes that develop discursively and episodically. While the classical sonata moves inexorably toward an increase of tension and dominant harmonies, Schubert relaxes his forms with a tendency to move in the direction of subdominant harmonic areas. Schubert expanded the sense of musical time with his "heavenly length" (Schumann's remark on his discovery of the Great Symphony #9 in C Major in the closet of Schubert's brother), and he is also one of the first composers to fully explore the possibilities of the lyric miniature. The Impromptus, Moments Musicaux and many small dances for piano reached popularity long before his expansive sonatas.

Schubert, who is known as one of the greatest melodists, was equally a master of harmonic miracles, creating breathtaking surprises with the imaginative reharmonization of a single note. In the first movement of the great C Major String Quintet, the dominant note of g is reached on the threshold of the new second theme group. Rather than starting in the key of G, the music hovers and slips downward to settle in the magical key of Eb with the g now reinterpreted as the third of the Eb chord. With Schubert we have a full realization of the idea that we are no longer in the key of C major, but of C major-minor. Thus, a world of surprising but inevitable harmonic relations is opened up, and the frequent changing of mode from major to minor and vice versa is partially what gives Schubert his characteristic bittersweetness.

In Schubert we have the first clear depiction of the Romantic ideal of the poet-musician as a lonely wanderer. This conceit grows naturally from the soil of the German poetry that Schubert was immersed in his songs and also inhabits instrumental music such as the First Impromptu and the 9th Symphony. In the symphony, the French horn melody of the introduction and the contrast of the solitary voice of the oboe against the world of the full orchestra in the main body of the movement, give voice to the fragile poet navigating in the larger world. This symphony is pervaded by march rhythms that bravely venture forth into the unknown and reach the edge of the abyss as in the crisis of the second movement, an Andante where the plaintive oboe is again the main protagonist. This Ninth Symphony with its expansive sense of time and reliance on rhythmic propulsion, is as every bit as seminal to the later symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler as is the Ninth of Beethoven. The lonely wanderer of Schubert still echoes in Mahler's wayfarer at the end of the century.

Schubert left more unfinished music than any great composer. In addition to the famous Unfinished Symphony there are magnificent torsos of abandoned string quartets and sonatas. Of all the great composers, we perhaps know the least about Schubert. He was always poor and unworldly and relied on the support of his circle of friends. Many masterpieces were only performed at the middle class parties dubbed as Schubertiads by his inner circle. Here pictured in now famous engravings we see Schubert at the piano playing dance music for the enjoyment of the lucky ones.

For all his bohemian lifestyle, Schubert was known to wake up very early and compose everyday at least until noon before joining his friends at the Red Hedgehog. Even with company, his ability to disappear in private concentration was famous. Schubert's love life is also mysterious, but he probably contracted syphilis from a servant girl when he was teaching the Esterhazy girls one summer at their estate. The recurrence of his symptoms led a doctor to recommend that he stay with his brother in the new suburbs of Vienna where, ironically, the lack of good plumbing led to his contraction of typhus.

There was one public concert of Schubert's music before his death. With the proceeds, Schubert bought tickets for his friends to see Paganini a few days later. The latter's imminent appearance was too important for the papers to waste space on Schubert's concert. This program probably included premieres of one of the piano trios, late string quartets and posthumous piano sonatas (such as #20 in A). In this music Schubert offers us a wisdom of humanity and the world that is hard to explain in one so young. The ominous trills under the angelic theme of the Piano Sonata #21 in Bb inevitably seem autobiographical. Schubert will forever be one of our most beloved composers, for while he does not shy from showing us the void, he puts his arm around us and consoles us with the tenderest love and understanding.