In honor of Franz Schubert’s birthday, I reserve the right to harp on the arpeggione.
If you’re not familiar with the arpeggione (and who is these days?), it was an instrument invented around 1823. It possessed six strings and was fretted and tuned like a guitar, but was played with a bow, like a cello.
Schubert’s “Arpeggione Sonata,” composed in 1824, didn’t see publication until 1871 – 43 years after the composer’s death in 1828. (Schubert died at the age of 31.) The only substantial work written for the instrument, Schubert’s sonata wasn’t recognized until long after the arpeggione had already slipped into obscurity. These days, Schubert’s sonata is almost always performed on the cello.
Here’s a recording that presents the piece as Schubert originally intended, with Klaus Storck playing a rare surviving specimen, an arpeggione attributed to Anton Mitteis, pupil of the instrument’s inventor, Johann Georg Stauffer. Anton Kontarsky plays a Brodmann fortepiano built in Vienna around 1810.
And here it is in concert, in the form it’s usually heard today, with cellist Mischa Maisky and pianist Martha Argerich.
However it is you prefer your “Arpeggione Sonata,” Schubert’s message transcends the medium.
In case you didn’t happen to see it in the comments under last night’s post, a shared video of a shadow-puppet interpretation of Franz Schubert’s “Erlkönig,” John M Polhamus has one-upped me with his discovery of this one, rendered in sand-art! It’s spooky, more imaginative in concept and execution, and truer to Goethe’s text (well, maybe except for the wolves, which were a nice touch). Thanks, John, for the Halloween chill!
Mozart’s birthday is always a signal to me that we are entering a season of great composer birthdays.
Perhaps it is all coincidence, but for whatever reason, music history has arrayed itself in such a way that larger patterns can be discerned. Autumn is heavy with birthdays of significant American composers (Gershwin, Ives, Hanson, Copland, and Virgil Thomson, to name a few). Revered violinists Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz were born on the same day (February 2), as were venerated pianists Sergei Rachmaninoff and Ferruccio Busoni (April 1). Brahms and Tchaikovsky share a birthdate (May 7). So do two of the most prominent film composers, Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin (May 10). After 34 years in radio, these natal serendipities are etched in my memory like tablets carved on Mount Sinai.
Nonetheless, even as I anticipated the birthday of Franz Schubert (January 31), in my eagerness to pay tribute to Mario Lanza on the occasion of his centenary, I inadvertently let it slip by. Please forgive me, Schwammerl. Today, on the anniversary of the birth of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), I hope to make amends.
Mendelssohn, of course, was one of the most astonishing of musical prodigies. He composed his earliest masterpieces, the overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and the Octet for Strings in E-flat major, at the ages of 16 and 17 respectively. This is some of the “youngest” music in the entire repertoire. In their precocity and polish, both pieces are on a par with anything written by the teenaged Mozart.
Of course, by then, Mendelssohn had already generated piles of manuscripts – dozens of works, including three piano quartets, a violin sonata, a piano sonata, a singspiel, songs and “Songs without Words,” twelve symphonies for strings, and his first symphony for full orchestra.
And he would go on to write his “Italian” Symphony, his “Scottish” Symphony, the “Hebrides Overture,” the Violin Concerto in E minor, and the oratorio “Elijah,” all of which are still played in heavy rotation, both on radio and in the concert hall.
As a conductor, there’s no question he was one of the most influential musicians in Europe, if not the world. For twelve years, he directed the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, many of whose players went on to distinction in their own right. His performances were especially admired for their precision. He also laid the groundwork for modern concerts in developing a musical “canon.”
He gave important premieres of music by his contemporaries, while also reviving works of Mozart, Beethoven, and of course Johann Sebastian Bach. It was Mendelssohn who famously dusted off the “St. Matthew Passion,” reinvigorating Bach’s reputation.
Another composer who benefited from Mendelssohn’s advocacy was Franz Schubert. In 1838, ten year’s after Schubert’s death, his brother, Ferdinand, shared an unpublished manuscript with Robert Schumann, during one of the latter’s visits to Vienna. Schumann returned to Leipzig with a copy of the piece, a Symphony in C major. Mendelssohn gave the symphony its first public performance in 1839.
Schumann reviewed the concert in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, famously praising the work for its “heavenly length.” For this reason, and to distinguish it from an earlier, shorter Schubert symphony composed in the same key, it is usually identified as the “Great” C major.
Standing only five-foot-one, Schubert himself bore the nickname “Schwammerl” (“Little Mushroom”), bestowed upon him by his friends. Even a minute fungus, it would seem, is more than capable of creating something “Great.”
Happy birthday, Felix Mendelssohn, and happy belated birthday, Franz Schubert.
Mendelssohn, “Hebrides Overture”
His first masterpiece, the Octet in E-flat major, composed at the age of 16:
Live performance of Leonard Bernstein conducting Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 “Great”
It’s foolish to attempt to play something like the Schubert Octet all by yourself. Many have tried – mad dreamers! – only to come up looking ridiculous. Not even the gloss of extraneous percussion instruments or transposition to the banjo can disguise the bald fact of the matter – that to really enjoy this work as Franz Schubert intended, you can’t do better than eight superb musicians from the Marlboro Music Festival.
On the next “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear Schubert’s Octet in F major, D. 803, performed in its entirety, by violinists Joseph Genualdi and Felix Galimir, violist Steven Tenenbom, cellist Peter Wiley, double-bassist Peter Lloyd, clarinetist Shannon Scott, bassoonist Alexander Heller, and hornist David Jolley. Marlboro musicians toured the piece, alongside Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” in 1987.
Tune in for this expansive masterwork a little earlier than usual – there’s too much melody and charm to be confined within a single hour – this Wednesday evening at 5:50 EST. It pays to be a team player. One can’t outscore the Octet, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page
Franz Schubert’s birthday. A day to vacillate between smiles and tears. Is there any other composer whose music so perfectly conveys the delicacy and transience of feelings?
Listening to Schubert, you can be in one place and suddenly find you’re in another, and you’re not quite sure how you got there. Wisps of cloud emerge, imperceptibly, unfurl like gossamer, veiling the sun. You feel them brush across your heart. The ache! But the sun peers through again, and the heart is warm, if not entirely settled.
Is it possible to describe the effect of Schubert’s music without going purple?
The Piano Sonata in B-flat major. The String Quintet in C. The Fantasia in F minor for piano four-hands. The “Unfinished” Symphony. The “Arpeggione” Sonata.
To define is to limit. It is the language of poetry and yearning.
