Romantic Splendor: Schumann & Schubert
What to listen for
Cello Concerto: all three movements of the concerto are linked – played without pause – a compositional innovation of Schumann’s as he looked for ways to unify multi-movement works. The central movement’s format is similar to that of an aria, with the cellist “singing” the melodies.
Symphony No. 9 in C major, “The Great”: Don’t try to count all the melodies – there are many, all of them memorable, whether they showcase Schubert’s unparalleled ability to write lyrical themes (Schubert also composed more than 600 songs, further demonstrating his gift for melodic invention) or up-tempo, playfully rhythmic ditties.
Listening Guide
If you enjoyed Schumann’s Cello Concerto, you might also like his concerto for piano – also in A minor, like the cello concerto – and his Violin Concerto. The piano concerto parallels Schumann’s affinity for passionate themes, along with his musical explorations of intimate, vulnerable emotional arenas, while the Violin Concerto reiterates Schumann’s gift for communicating and transforming melancholy into exquisite musical interludes.
All of Schubert’s music reflects his unparalleled ability to generate beautiful and musically interesting, distinct melodies, so if melody is what you love most in music, anything Schubert wrote will likely satisfy you. The “Unfinished” Symphony No. 8 in B minor is no exception, and its two movements will leave you wishing he’d written a third.
Other works by these composers
Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor; “Rhenish” Symphony; Fantasiestück, Op. 73
Schubert: Symphony No. 8 in B minor, “Unfinished”; Symphony No. 6 in C major, “The Little”
Robert Schumann: Cello Concerto in A minor, Op.129
Composer: born June 8, 1810, Zwickau, Saxony; died July 29, 1856, Endenich
Work composed: 1850
World premiere: The premiere took place on April 23, 1860, almost four years after Schumann’s death. Concertmaster Karl Franzen led the Leipzig Conservatory with cellist Ludwig Ebert.
Instrumentation: solo cello, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings
Estimated duration: 26 minutes
Over the course of his life, Robert Schumann experienced several periods of heightened creativity and productivity, during which he wrote music with amazing speed. Schumann enjoyed his final creative burst in 1850, when he moved to Düsseldorf to take a job as conductor of the Düsseldorf Music Society. In a matter of months he had written the Rhenish Symphony, several chamber works and overtures, and the Cello Concerto, which he completed in two weeks.
Schumann began his tenure at Düsseldorf happily enough, but his chronic depression returned in 1852, accompanied by auditory hallucinations and extreme sensitivity to high-pitched sounds. These physical symptoms were likely caused by tertiary syphilis – Schumann had been diagnosed with syphilis in 1831 – which can cause debilitating neurological problems. Although a noted music critic and composer, Schumann was not an equally gifted conductor, and this lack of skill, coupled with his increased physical and mental instability, prevented him from fulfilling his conducting duties for the ensemble. In 1854, after a failed suicide attempt, Schumann voluntarily committed himself to an insane asylum in Endenich, where he died two years later.
One of Schumann’s most significant innovations as a composer was his interest in fusing the movements of large-format works such as symphonies and concertos. To that end, several of Schumann’s compositions, including the Cello Concerto, feature movements played without pause, as a unifying device. The solo cello introduces the long primary theme of the first movement, a darkly passionate melody that explores the lowest notes in the cello’s range. The cello transitions to the second movement, with a new melody, more austere than those of the first movement. Performed against the barest suggestion of orchestral accompaniment, this theme recalls the clarity and exquisitely exposed lines of a Mozart aria. The cellist sings rather than plays this delicate melody, sometimes in an intimate duet with the principal cello of the orchestra. A brief reprise of the primary theme of the first movement acts as a transition to the final movement, in which the orchestra and the soloist bounce a vigorous rhythmic tune between them. During the solo passages, the cello executes the most virtuosic and extroverted passages in the concerto. Interestingly, Schumann deplored virtuosity for its own sake; he once commented, “I cannot write a concerto for the virtuosos; I must try for something else.” In this concerto, the virtuosity required is in service to Schumann’s music, rather than the other way around. In a 2016 video preview of the concerto, cellist Alicia Weilerstein wryly observed, “In fact, the virtuoso parts are a bit thankless because they are much more difficult than they actually sound.”
Pablo Casals famously declared Schumann’s Cello Concerto “one of the finest works one can hear – from beginning to end the music is sublime.”
Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 9 in C major, “The Great,” D. 944
Composer: born January 31, 1797, Vienna; died November 19, 1828, Vienna
Work composed: Schubert began working on his final symphony in 1825 and completed it in 1828.
World premiere: Felix Mendelssohn led the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra on March 21, 1839.
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, and strings
Estimated duration: 50 minutes
“All must recognize that it reveals to us something more than beautiful song, mere joy and sorrow, such as music has always expressed in a hundred ways; it leads us into regions which – to our best recollection – we had never before explored.” – Robert Schumann on Franz Schubert’s Ninth Symphony
In 1826, while Franz Schubert completed songs, piano sonatas and string quartets, he also spent time writing what would become his final symphony. Schubert received no commission from an orchestra or patron to write this large work, which suggests no external impetus for its composition. Schubert’s admiration for Ludwig von Beethoven’s symphonies is well documented, however, and Schubert’s earlier symphonies demonstrate his eagerness to contribute to the genre. A letter Schubert wrote in 1824 discusses his plan to “to pave my way towards a grand symphony” through the composition of chamber works. Perhaps by 1826 he felt himself equal to the task.
In October 1826, Schubert sent a partially completed score of the symphony to Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society for Friends of Music). In his accompanying letter to the Society, Schubert wrote, “Convinced of the Austrian Musical Society’s noble intention to support an artistic endeavor as far as possible, I venture, as a native artist, to dedicate to them this, my Symphony, and to commend it most politely to their protection.” The Society paid Schubert for receipt of the manuscript but, atypically, did not guarantee a public performance. One month after Schubert’s death, the Gesellschaft played a memorial concert in Schubert’s honor, choosing his other C major symphony, nicknamed “The Little,” as its centerpiece. Why not perform Schubert’s last symphony at his memorial? Possibly “The Great” was too challenging for the Gesellschaft orchestra to mount on short notice, or perhaps its forward-looking innovations were not to the Society’s taste.
Individual movements of “The Great” were performed in Vienna in the 1830s, but it might have languished in obscurity far longer had Robert Schumann not discovered the unpublished manuscript among Schubert’s papers. Felix Mendelssohn subsequently conducted “The Great” in Leipzig in 1839, but he could not convince other ensembles to program it. One famous story details Mendelssohn’s efforts with a London orchestra. During a rehearsal of the finale, the musicians burst into derisive laughter at an “endless” series of triplets and refused to continue; “The Great” was cancelled. Today, Schubert’s final symphony is frequently programmed around the globe; along with the “Unfinished,” it is Schubert’s most popular symphony.
The horns begin with a simple statement that recurs throughout the Allegro and alternates with countermelodies for strings, oboes, and bassoons. This profusion of melodies might overwhelm some composers, but Schubert handles all of his material with self-assured dexterity. In the Andante, Schubert recalls the folk-like oboe/bassoon melody of the first movement with a plaintive tune for solo oboe. As in the Allegro, Schubert offers one lovely melody after another, albeit in a more pensive, wistful mood. The Scherzo takes its cue directly from Beethoven: its seven minutes are fueled by a constant driving pulse, now insistent, now more relaxed, but always propelling the music forward. The ten-minute Finale contains more energy than the three previous movements combined. After Schubert’s failure to complete the B minor Symphony (“The Unfinished”), he doubted his ability to compose another, much less a symphony of this scope. The closing Allegro vivace of Symphony No. 9 is Schubert’s triumphant self-vindication, with its abundance of energetic, joyful melodies.
© Elizabeth Schwartz. All rights reserved.