Franz Schubert is not considered a heavyweight with regard to the development of symphonic music. In fact, during his own lifetime his symphonies were hardly ever performed. The crowning glory of his oeuvre – the Great C-major Symphony – even had to wait until 1839 to receive its première, over 10 years after the death of the composer. Robert Schumann, who was the one to dust off this symphony, said the following of Schubert on that occasion: “The imaginative artist, whose paintbrush was drenched as much in moonbeams as in sunbeams, and who following Beethoven’s nine muses might well have borne us a tenth”. Though this remark mirrors Schumann’s admiration for Schubert as a symphonic composer, it also places his oeuvre in Beethoven’s shadow; a rather uncomfortable position for many a composer.
We would do well to realize that Schubert and Beethoven were contemporaries. Although Beethoven was, of course, 27 years older, both composers breathed the same Viennese air for at least part of their creative lives. By the time Schubert had completed his Symphony No. 1 in 1813, Beethoven had just blotted the last double bar of his Symphony No. 8. The six symphonies written by Schubert in the following years were all finished before Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, apart from the Great C-major Symphony. The latter was written between 1825 and 1826, two years after Beethoven completed his last symphony.
Schubert wrote a total of 13 symphonies and symphonic fragments, of which he only actually completed seven. He wrote symphonies throughout his entire lifespan, proving that he too considered this to be the most important musical genre. The “highest and most brightly gleaming summit of the more recent instrumental music” – as the symphony was described in 1806 by E.T.A. Hoffmann – deserved this top position. After all, a composer of this genre was faced with the difficult task of “uniting all customary orchestral instruments, whilst expressing their characteristic peculiarities, in the performance of such a drama and thus […] getting each individual instrument to work only to the benefit of the entire orchestra”. Subsequently, Hoffmann names Mozart, Haydn and specifically Beethoven as the most important composers of this “opera of the instruments”.
Schubert must have come into contact with Beethoven’s symphonies at still an early age. In 1808, he was admitted to the “Königlich und Kaiserlich Stadtkonvikt”, where students not only received excellent academic schooling, but were also trained to almost the level of professional musicians. The Konvikt had its own orchestra, which performed symphonic works after supper on a daily basis. The music stands were filled with works by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, as well as those of now almost forgotten composers, such as Krommer, Kozeluch, Cherubini, and Méhul. As demonstrated in a statement from his friend Josef von Spaun, Schubert played the violin in the orchestra: “I was the leader of the second violins, and young Schubert stood behind me, playing from the same score. Presently, it became clear to me that the little musician far surpassed me in his sense of timing. This awakened my interest in him, and I noticed that the otherwise rather silent and indifferent lad would always dive headlong into the ideas behind the beautiful symphonies that we played”. This training enabled the young Schubert to develop his musical taste. Thus, for instance, he loathed the music written by the highly popular Krommer: “Schubert immediately reacted with indignation when such a work was programmed, and would repeat during performance: ‘Oh, how feeble!’,” Spaun wrote. “He just could not understand how people could perform such rubbish, as he called it: after all, Haydn had surely written more than enough symphonies”.
But none of this deterred Schubert from making his first attempts in the field of orchestral music. At first, he just wrote overtures, but in 1813 his official Symphony No.1 saw the light of day, composed as a farewell present to his friends at the Viennese Stadtkonvikt.
During the years that followed, Schubert gradually gained a reputation as a composer. There was increasing interest especially in his lieder and chamber music; also, his volumes of waltzes and German dances were in great demand. On the other hand, his publishers did not see the point of publishing his symphonies. This was most certainly due to the state of music in Vienna. Contrary to cities such as Mannheim, Paris and London, Vienna did not play a major role in the development of orchestral music. The city did not have a sizeable professional orchestra. Apart from the small Hofmusikkapelle, there were only a few minor theatre and opera orchestras. Many aristocratic music-lovers had been forced to let their court musicians go after a succession of wars and economic crises; and as a result, orchestral music had become mainly the domain of the many (semi-)amateur orchestras. Not only was Beethoven the most important composer in Vienna, he was also a celebrated virtuoso pianist, who performed regularly in the salons of the aristocracy. He had the necessary status and connections to gather at times the best professional musicians for his concerts, supplemented by talented amateurs. However, Schubert did not have such status and therefore he had to rely mainly on amateur orchestras in order to get his symphonies performed.
One of those orchestras was the ensemble ensuing from a string quartet formed around the Schubert family, which met regularly in the house of Schubert’s father. In his Musikalische Skizzen aus Alt-Wien (= musical sketches from olden Vienna), Leopold von Sonnleithner mentions 35 of these small orchestras, and writes specifically about this ensemble as follows: “Here, Haydn’s symphonies were played through in arrangements for string quartet, performed in double strength. Two evenings per week were set aside for this kind of gathering. It soon became apparent that Schubert senior’s residence was too small; however, the merchant Franz Frischling was kind enough to make available his residence in the Dorotheergasse 1105. There, the skilled violinist Josef Prohaska directed a small orchestra”.
Towards the end of 1815, the musicians were again forced to move; this time, because the audience flocking in was beginning to overflow the space available. Subsequently, new accommodation was found in the house of violinist Otto Hartwig.
Schubert completed his Symphony No. 4 on April 27, 1816. It was probably performed by Hartwig’s ensemble, despite the ‘large’ size of the orchestra required, which included four horns. For a long time, the title Tragische (= tragic) was misleading. People even began to suspect Schubert of making a joke. But as was the case in Brahms’ Tragische Overture, or Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, the term should once again be interpreted as “in the spirit of a Greek tragedy”: an instrumental drama, to quote E.T.A. Hoffmann. In this symphony, the existent tension between the various keys employed by Schubert is especially remarkable. According to the theoretician Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, the key of C minor represents “a declaration of love and, at the same time, a lamentation of impossible love. All pining, yearning, sighing of the love-drunk soul is contained within this key”. In the slow introduction to the first movement, the wrenching chromaticism immediately arrests the attention. In the contiguous Allegro vivace, Schubert makes a sudden shift from E-flat major to E major, and shortly afterwards to C major: more or less unheard of in the nineteenth century! The Andante is written in A-flat major, a key Schubert was fond of using, and designated by Schubart as “the grave tonality”: “Death, the grave, decomposition, judgement, and eternal rest are all encompassed within its scope”.
The chromaticism in the minuet – that has the character of an unruly scherzo here – also repeatedly puts the listener on the wrong track. The restlessly driving final movement modulates to C major, and the symphony concludes with a significant bar of rest, following three great blows.
Just like Beethoven, who was capable of composing two such completely different symphonies as the Fifth and the Sixth almost simultaneously, Schubert also created his Symphony No. 4 and No. 5 in quick succession. And again like Beethoven, Schubert’s successive symphonies could not have been more different. His Symphony No. 5 was completed on October 3, 1816 and also performed during a concert in Otto Hartwig’s residence. From the orchestral parts that remain, we can deduce that the orchestra consisted of six first and six second violins, six violas, two cellos and two double-basses. Furthermore, Schubert outlined a modest wind section, with just one flute, two oboes, two bassoons and two horns.
The Symphony No. 5 does not contain any major drama, Sturm und Drang or passionate major-minor contrasts. In this symphony, it appears that Schubert used the charming, subtle and elegant side of Mozart as a source of inspiration, thereby putting pen to paper to create one of his most insouciant works. Nevertheless, this symphony remains a surprise from the first to the last bar, but the surprise lies mainly in the details. For instance, who before Schubert had ever come up with the idea of replacing the slow introduction with a four-bar motif, consisting of chords in the winds followed by a descending run in the strings, to lead into the first theme?
Nevertheless, Schubert’s early symphonies can hardly be called revolutionary, as were those written by Beethoven. Motivated by the technical possibilities and undoubtedly also by the taste of the musicians in the amateur orchestras for which he composed his works, Schubert drew his conclusions from the Classical style of Haydn and Mozart, and continued to build on this foundation. Therefore, it is even more astounding that he would later take an enormous step as a symphonic composer, creating a completely new ‘romantic’ sound in his Symphony in B minor, the Unvollendete (= unfinished), which dates from 1822.

Ronald Vermeulen

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