Franz Schubert’s birthday. A day to vacillate between smiles and tears. Is there any other composer whose music so perfectly reflects the delicacy and transience of feelings? It is the language of poetry and yearning.
Personally, I prefer my Schubert bittersweet. Nevertheless, this week on “Sweetness and Light,” most of the music will be of an extroverted, even buoyant character. Okay, maybe it’s impossible for me get through the hour without a touch of emotional ambiguity. I’ll sneak in one of my favorite lieder around the midpoint. Otherwise, it’s a potpourri of ballet music, transcriptions, and some high-spirited marches for piano four-hands.
It’s sherbet for Schubert on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!
Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:
https://kwax.uoregon.edu/
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IMAGE: Always refreshing: orange Schubert
Tag: Franz Schubert
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Schubert’s Unfinished Joke Laughter and Tears
More classical music stand-up for a club full of crickets:
“I started a post today for Franz Schubert’s birthday. That’s right. But I left it Unfinished.”
Thank you very much. I’ll be here all week.
Ely Ameling sings Schubert’s “Lachen und Weinen” (“Laughter and Tears”)
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Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony A Birthday Tribute
I’ve had a busy day today, but on Franz Schubert’s birthday, I suppose it’s only fitting that I should leave this post “Unfinished.”
Instead, Casper will do the heavy lifting – by which I mean the friendly ghost, not Caspar David Friedrich.
Happy birthday, Herr Schubert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8z7U46e-2k
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Mr. Peabody, Schubert, & Missed Music
Anybody else remember when Mr. Peabody and Sherman used the Wayback Machine to visit Franz Schubert?
A fun conceit, but Jay Ward and company really missed the boat by not actually using any of Schubert’s music. It would have been a lot more fun had Sherman sung “Standchen,” D. 889 (a.k.a. “Serenade”):
Listen, listen to the lark in the ethereal blue!
And Phoebus, newly awakened,
Leading his horses to drink the dew
That covers the calyces of the flowers;
The buds of the marigolds are beginning to open
Up their little golden eyes;
With everything that is charming there,
Oh sweet maid, get up!
Get up! Get up!Not the more famous “Serenade,” but all the more appropriate, since Schubert remarks afterward that he’s just been at work on a NEW serenade.
Schubert’s OTHER “Serenade” (from the song cycle “Schwanengesang,” D.957)
Softly my songs plead
through the night to you;
down into the silent grove,
beloved, come to me!Slender treetops whisper and rustle
in the moonlight;
my darling, do not fear
that the hostile betrayer will overhear us.Do you not hear the nightingales call?
Ah, they are imploring you;
with their sweet, plaintive songs
they are imploring for me.They understand the heart’s yearning,
they know the pain of love;
with their silvery notes
they touch every tender heart.Let your heart, too, be moved,
beloved, hear me!
Trembling, I await you!
Come, make me happy!Even “The Smurfs” used the “Unfinished” Symphony.
At least the segment gave kids an awareness of the composer, if not his decadent milieu.
Happy birthday, Franz Schubert.
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Schubert’s Unfinished Symphonies Revealed
Franz Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony is not his only unfinished symphony.
Schubert began thirteen symphonies, of which nine are generally numbered; but of these, he only completed seven. And regarding the canonical nine, there has been some discrepancy over the centuries as to the actual sequence of their composition.
Schubert began his famous “Unfinished” Symphony (now widely accepted as No. 8 ) in 1822. It consists of two complete movements. Despite the fact that Schubert would live another six years, for whatever reason, he never finished the other two. There’s a nearly-completed scherzo that exists in short score, with only two pages in the composer’s orchestration. (Another fragment was discovered in an attic in Vienna only in 2017.) It’s been speculated that material originally intended for the last movement may have wound up in another piece, or that Schubert was distracted by work on the “Wanderer Fantasy,” or that the symphony ultimately held bad associations for him, since it coincided with his having contracted syphilis.
But Schubert wasn’t exactly the kind of guy to fall into crippling despondency.
The symphony was given its first performance on December 17, 1865 – 37 years after the composer’s death. A characteristic Schubertian blend of geniality and passion, the piece was immediately recognized as one of his most beautiful orchestral works. It is sometimes referred to as the first Romantic symphony. It certainly is a moody one.
There have been a number of attempts to complete the symphony over the years. Like Michelangelo’s abandoned “Pietà,” it continues to fascinate, despite – or perhaps because of – its orphan status. The music is some of Schubert’s most famous. It has been used in numerous movies and cartoons and as the basis for other composers’ compositions.
Just don’t get the idea that Schubert never finished anything. He may have died at 31, but in a career that spanned less than 20 years, he managed to complete about 1500 works, including symphonies, overtures, incidental music, quartets, quintets, an octet, twenty piano sonatas, operas, masses, some fifty additional choral works, and about 600 songs.
Then, this was before Facebook.
Happy birthday, Franz Schubert.
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