Schubert's Great Symphony

Schubert’s name is rarely associated with dramatic music even though he wrote it over the course of his entire career (brief as that was) and harbored great hopes for success in the theater. He composed his first operas and Singspiels (operas with spoken dialogue) in his teens and in 1820 Die Zwillingsbruder (The Twin Brothers) had a run of performances at a prestigious theater in Vienna. His wonderful incidental music for Rosamunde proved more popular than the dreary play it accompanied and its 1823 premiere in Vienna opened with the overture we hear today, which Schubert had earlier composed for an unperformed opera. In addition to short works and various unrealized projects, he completed two major operas: Alfonso und Estrella (1821-22) and Fierabras (1823). The former is a Romantic opera that tells a somewhat incoherent story on a medieval theme of young lovers who triumph over political and personal intrigues. Its brief overture prefigures several themes in the three-act opera.

Alfonso und Estrella is filled with marvelous music but hampered with a poor libretto written by Schubert’s best friend, Franz von Schober. The two worked intensively on the project while traveling together in September 1821 and had reasonable expectations that it would be mounted in Vienna. Word of the project spread and a Dresden paper reported that “the excellent song-writer Schubert is said to be occupied at present with the composition of a grand romantic opera.” When a German opera appeared the next season, however, it was not by Schubert. Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz proved a considerable success, and Schubert must have been encouraged that a German opera could do so well. Weber came to Vienna in mid-February 1822 and became good friends with Schubert. In short order, however, the operatic scene changed radically as an Italian impresario was hired to run the two principal theaters and mania for the operas of Rossini reached new heights, especially after the composer visited in 1822. Schubert pursued some leads to get Alfonso mounted in Dresden or Berlin, but without success. The opera was premiered in Weimar more than twenty years after his death, with Franz Liszt conducting.

CHRISTOPHER H. GIBBS© 2012

PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Israel was in the middle of a fierce and violent war with the militias of the Lebanese Hezbollah when Betty Olivero started working on an assignment project for the New York-based podium 92 Y in July 2006. Deeply touched and marked by the shocking television images of victims, corpses, and mourning people on both side of the border, she chose elegies by mothers, widows, and sisters who had lost their loved ones as a point of reference for her composition.

The title of the composition Neharo't Neharo't, means “Rivers, Rivers” in Hebrew and refers to the rivers and floods of tears which are too often shed by mourning women in disastrous situations. On the other hand, the title contains also an element of hope: the root of the Hebrew word “nahar” (river) resembles the word “nehara,” meaning “ray of light.”

Betty Olivero taped women in mourning, as well as elegies and love songs performed by dedicated professional Israeli singers (Lea Avraham and Ilana Elia), all living in Mediterranean countries. The material was then edited and adapted to a sequence of vocal and instrumental tape soundings, which are heard in the piece at set times, as an addition to the live playing of the soloist and the string orchestra.

The roleplay between the viola’s solo part and the strings (assisted by an accordionist and a percussionist) represents the relationship between the individual and the group to which he belongs. With its multitude of voices, the orchestra serves as a symbol for the group. Thus, every once in a while, one instrument detaches itself from the orchestra for a short time in order to portray its own sound, just like the soloist. The orchestral sound is further influenced by discrete references to Monteverdi’s Lamentos, taken from the Madrigali Guerrieri e Amorosi on the one hand and from the opera L’Orfeo on the other, the latter deals with a man mourning the loss of his wife.

By bringing this dialogue between musical styles, stemming from the past and the present, Betty Olivero emphasizes and accentuates the universal character of the mourning elegies. Neharo't Neharo't is a dedication to all those women and children living in areas of war.

When Schubert was in his mid-twenties, only about five years before his death, he was asked to supply a work for performance, but replied that he had “nothing for full orchestra that [he] could send out into the world with a clear conscience.” His response seems rather curious, given that by this point he had written all but his final symphony, the work performed today. It is consistent, however, with other remarks. Shortly before his death, in a letter to a publisher, Schubert mentioned “three operas, a Mass, and a symphony,” as if all his earlier pieces in those genres did not exist or matter. And in some ways, they did not. The Great C Major Symphony seems to be Schubert’s only acknowledged symphony, the only one he felt was fully mature and intended for the public. He meant that it be judged in comparison with Beethoven, the figure who dominated Viennese musical life and who he revered above all other composers.

Schubert prepared a long time to write his last and longest symphony, and not just by producing six earlier ones (as well as various unfinished symphonies, including the Unfinished). In 1824, after more than a year of serious illness (most likely syphilis), he poured out his heart in an anguished letter to a close friend, lamenting his personal and professional state. Near the end, however, he turned more optimistic as he disclosed his career plans. Having failed in the world of opera, completely dominated by Rossini at the time, he had decided to focus with new determination on the Beethovenian realm of instrumental music. He was writing chamber music in the hopes of paving “way towards a grand symphony in that manner.”

In the summer of 1825, Schubert made the longest and happiest excursion of his life. Together with Johann Michael Vogl, a famous opera singer who was the foremost interpreter of his songs, he went to Steyr, Linz, Gmunden, Salzburg, and Gastein. He informed friends that he was writing a symphony, undoubtedly the grand project for which he had been preparing. This comment led to the legend of a lost Gastein Symphony, although based on manuscript and stylistic evidence the work he was writing is clearly The Great C Major Symphony. (The confusion came in part from Schubert’s later redating the work as 1828 when he made some revisions.)

Friends report that Schubert had a “very special predilection” for the symphony. Certainly the scene of its composition was ideal. In the longest letters he ever wrote, he described the inspiring beauty of the mountains and lakes. Only Beethoven had written a more ambitious symphony before this, the mighty Ninth, whose “Ode to Joy” theme he briefly quotes in his own last movement. Although never performed in public during his lifetime, Schubert probably heard the symphony in a reading by the Conservatory orchestra. The work was not premiered until ten years after his death, when Robert Schumann recovered the work from the composer’s brother and gave it to his friend Felix Mendelssohn to present in Leipzig.

The sights Schubert reveled in during his extended summer trip in the Austrian lakes and mountains resonate with the majestic horn call that opens the first movement introduction (Andante). Schumann stated that “it leads us into regions which, to our best recollections, we had never before explored.” Lush string writing follows and proceeds seamlessly into the movement proper (Allegro, ma non troppo), which has more than a touch of Rossinian lightness. The magnificent slow movement (Andante con moto), in the somber key of A minor, opens with a lovely oboe over one of Schubert’s characteristic “wanderer” accompaniments. The theme is contrasted with a more lyrical one in F major. Schubert later interrupts the movement with a violent outburst of loud, dissonant, agonizing pain, what musicologist Hugh MacDonald calls his “volcanic temper.” Such moments in his late works, usually placed within contexts of extraordinary lyric beauty, may allude in some way to the broken health that intruded so fatefully in Schubert’s life and that would lead to his early death at age thirty-one. The Scherzo (Allegro vivace) reminds us that, in addition to his songs, Schubert was one of the great dance composers of his day. The vigorous opening contrasts with a middle section waltz before the opening is repeated. The finale (Allegro vivace) is a perpetual motion energy that only builds in intensity near the end, concluding what Schumann famously remarked is a piece of “heavenly length.”
CHRISTOPHER H. GIBBS© 2012