Or the Symphony Number 8 (Unfinished), packing more tragedy and pathos in the first movement than most composers could work into an entire composition 90 and 142, surely among the greatest short piano pieces ever written, each exploring a different mood, and together forming an encyclopedia of 19 th-century piano style The German folk song found in him its highest and finest ennoblement through him, the ancient German folk song tradition came to life again, purified and transfigured by art.īut if it had only ended there! What of the piano Impromptus, Op. Verily, as Schumann put it, "he has done enough."įranz Schubert was, beyond all question in my mind, the most fertile and original melodist that ever lived, and he is the first of the great songwriters in rank as well as in time. In 1815, his 18th year, he composed 20,000 measures of music, writing sheaf by sheaf, as one would gather grain in harvest. Assuming that he began writing when he was 16 or 17, he filled what now, in his complete, published works, make up 41 folio volumes. Schubert died leaving nearly 1,000 compositions, nearly all of which are marked by his distinctive genius. Imagine, on top of this: nine symphonies, 22 works for string quartet, 36 works for solo piano, 45 sacred works, 18 works for the stage, and over 200 other miscellaneous instrumental and vocal works. One is struck by the seemingly inexhaustible wellspring of melodic invention! Six hundred and fifteen songs! Running the whole emotional spectrum from the lively and playful Die Forelle, to the glowing Abendrot (literally evening red, but depicting the afterglow of a beautiful sunset, both sung here by the incomparable Fritz Wunderlich:Īnd who can fail to fall in love with Schubert’s An Sylvia, based on a text drawn from the Shakespeare comedy "Two Gentlemen of Verona," - especially when it is sung by Fritz Wunderlich. Liszt called Schubert "the most poetical musician that ever was." Schumann was equally complimentary, saying that "Schubert’s pencil was dipped in moonbeams and in the flame of the sun." Of Schubert he said: "Franz has my soul." The invalid was told the names of his visitors, and made feeble signs to them with his hands. Here he is with the great pianist Alfred Brendel:ĭuring Beethoven’s last illness, a collection of Schubert’s songs was placed in his hands, and after examining them, he exclaimed: "Truly, Schubert possesses the divine fire.” Schubert stood with many others for a long while around Beethoven’s deathbed. There was no greater interpreter of the Winterreise songs than Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, as he weaves the many moods of beauty into an epic of sadness, overshadowed by death. Die Winterreise is a world unto itself of melodic beauty, spiritual torment, the bleakness of lost love, and the coldness of the hand of death. His 615 songs represent a flow of unaffected melody, and dark undercurrents of the soul, without compare in the history of music. Schubert, however, was the first, and the greatest, songwriter in history. Had he written nothing else, Schubert would be immortalized. I can honestly say that it has the power to change one’s life, because it, in fact, changed mine. It certainly belongs with the late Beethoven quartets, and also with Mozart’s own G minor String Quintet. She or he must have, first, the innate capacity to switch rapidly between terror and lyricism, often from one bar to the next!įranz Schubert excelled in every musical genre, writing string quartets that can be set beside the greatest of Haydn and Mozart, symphonies that stand comparison with Beethoven, and works for piano that paved the way for Schumann and Chopin.Īt an age when Beethoven had produced merely excellent classical style string quartets, Schubert produced his C Major String Quintet, perhaps the most beautiful piece of chamber music ever composed. It is precisely the close proximity of these two worlds that makes Schubert’s music so great, and which brings us to the prerequisites vital for the interpreter of his music. Lightness and darkness, levity and profundity. Lying within this musical world of color and melodic beauty is a powerful undertow of mystery, of light and dark, of profundity beyond the years of a young genius who lived only until the age of 31.įewer listeners still know the variations on Sei mir gegrüßt, contained within a late Fantasia for Violin and Piano – a prolonged and poignant meditation on one of Schubert’s most affecting melodies.
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