At the same age Beethoven had only just begun to work on his First Symphony. It's important to remember that Schubert completed his Ninth Symphony – the last he completed - when he was 29. They may have lived and worked alongside each other but they were rather different composers. "Some claim that Schubert is overshadowed by Beethoven, but I would have to object. The contribution of the symphonies to that verdict is much contested.īrian Newbould, the Schubert scholar, offers the following thumbnail assessment. If, as Goethe famously remarked, "Genius is industry", then Schubert (notwithstanding his other attributes) was a genius. In a career that lasted, even at a most generous estimate, only 18 years, he produced more than 1000 works. Perhaps posterity's problem with Schubert is his sheer prodigality. If the Unfinished and the Great are accorded a paragraph (or even two) in symphonic histories, the rest are usually allowed little more than a footnote. Even so, they remain for most observers diminished by the long totemic shadow cast by Beethoven across the 19th century or obscured in the murky period between the great master's death and the 'rebirth' of the symphony under Brahms and Bruckner. Schubert's symphonies, though, have been quietly enjoying greater attention in recent years from pundits, practitioners and public alike. He might also have added, with equal frustration, that his symphonies are similarly remarkable for the way in which they have managed to elude germane critical consideration for much of the 150 years and more since they were written. But closer scrutiny of them, however contentious a proposition, brings to mind Ernst Hilmar's telling observation that "Schubert is remarkable in the way in which he manages to elude his biographers". As such, they occupy an unenviable position in which the confusion of history has tended to cloud their merits and obfuscate their true value. There is, of course, an alternative reading of the oeuvre an analysis that sees Schubert's symphonies as uniquely a product of the wholly unsystematic and largely serendipitous shift between the musical periods we've come to know as the Classical and the Romantic eras. Thus Schubert, a veritable demigod when it comes to Lieder, remains a mere earthbound mortal in relation to the symphony.
The rest of Schubert's symphonies, popular prejudice has concluded, are at best imperfect and inconsequential, at worst juvenile and derivative. Pressed further, they might shamefacedly allow another begrudging inch to the flawed because ambiguous experiment that has acquired the nickname of the Unfinished. Some who hold to this view with staunch obstinacy will occasionally allow that aspects of the Great C major Symphony perhaps offer indications of an innovative and forward-looking symphonic imagination at work. While the definition of 'authenticity' has incrementally revealed itself to be much more elastic than originally imagined - perhaps even intended - and as the practice of period-instrument performance in recent years has begun to make ever deeper and more incisive incursions into the 19th century, the received wisdom about Schubert's contribution to the development of the symphony has stubbornly continued to maintain that he didn't in fact contribute much to it, if indeed, anything at all. In a great many respects the debate about Schubert's symphonies is only just getting under way. To find the perfect subscription for you, simply visit: .uk/subscribe
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