Heavenly length?

Had a rehearsal play through of Schubert 9 last week.  It is a piece which excites strong opinions.  But one thing that all orchestral players agree on is that it is one of the most exhausting pieces in the entire repertoire.  It is not long as a Mahler symphony, but in Mahler there are generally places to take a break, whereas the Schubert is inexorable and there is nowhere to relax.  The first three movements are difficult enough in this respect, but the finale - over 1000 bars - is in a class of its own.  Thankfully we did it without all the repeats.  I do remember playing in a performance years ago with all of the repeats - it very nearly finished me off.

As far as is known Schubert never heard the work performed - indeed there seems not to have been a performance in his lifetime, although there may have been a private informal run through.  Schumann admired what he call the symphony's "heavenly length" but I am of the view that had Schubert heard the symphony in performance he would have made some small excisions here and there just to cut out some of the repetition.

But what a symphony it is.  In many ways it is more modern and forward looking than Beethoven's 9th symphony , which is more or less its contemporary.  So much of it looks forward to the world of the next generation. Heard out of context parts of the trio are pure Dvorak, while the slow alternating chords near the end of the slow movement are highly characteristic of Brahms.  Incidentally it was Brahms who was responsible for the confusion over the numbering of the symphony.  He believed that unfinished works should be numbered after finished works, so attached the number 7 to the symphony, on the basis it was the only symphony Schubert finished after no 6.  The "unfinished" was no 8.  So the parts we were playing from were headed symphony no 7.  The absurdity of this symphony being numbered before the earlier unfinished symphony was gradually appreciated and so the symphony became no 9.  The unfinished remained no 8.  And no 7?  Well there is another unfinished symphony which became no 7.  This is much more fragmentary - for most of the piece we only have a first violin line so it is not really performable, although there have been realisations of it.  But it plugs in the gap in the numbering very conveniently.

The other composer whose music seems pre-echoed in the symphony is Bruckner.  Some of the harmonic daring , particularly in the first movement, seems to foreshadow much of what can be found in Bruckner - and of course the sheer scale of Schubert 9 was not really matched until Bruckner's symphonies a generation later.  But there is a direct connection between the two composers.  Right towards the end of his life Schubert felt the need to improve his counterpoint skills and arranged some lessons with Simon Sechter, who was one of the leading teachers of the day.  We don't know exactly what happened in those lessons, indeed if they every really took place, but it is astonishing that Schubert felt he needed lessons.  The link is that Sechter was one of Bruckner's main teachers - we know for certain that Bruckner went through an intensive course of harmony and counterpoint with Sechter.

Schubert 9 is of course the work of a young man, even though it is a "late" work.   I can remember discussing with one of my lecturers at university what Schubert's music might have developed into had he lived longer. After all he would only have been in his mid 60s when Tristan und Isolde was written.   One senses that had he lived Schubert would have got to the harmonic language of Tristan well before Wagner.

Favourite historic recording. Harry Plunket Green Hurdy Gurdy Man - Schubert Der Leiermann - W...

This is simply one of the most moving recordings I know.  Plunket Green was an important concert singer - most famous for taking part in the first performance of The Dream of Gerontius - and an influential teacher and writer on singing.

He was born in 1865, so he was almost 70 when he recorded this - the last song of Winterreise.  Much of the voice has gone but there is enough left to support the superb insight into the way that the words and music work as one.  Somehow the fact that this is in English (albeit with an unmistakable Irish accent) makes it all the more vivid.

Winterreise is a young man's journey, ending up in despair as he meets the hurdy gurdy man.  Plunkett Green seems here to become the hurdy gurdy man himself.

I got to know Winterreise at University and one of my guides was Richard Capel's book on Schubert's songs.  This would now be regarded as a very old fashioned book with too much description and not enough analysis, but I think that it still has valuable things to say, and certainly at the time I found it a very good companion.   The commentary on this song has stayed in my memory for what must now be the best part of 40 years.

A wonder is reserved for the last page of the ' Winterreise.' 
Given a thousand guesses, no one could have said that the 
last song would be at all like this. Miiller must be given his 
due. Der Leiermann was an inspired ending. The madman 
meets a beggar, links with him his fortune ; and the two 
disappear into the snowy landscape. Schubert must be 
given his due. He realized the beauty of the proffered subject. 
No one else would have taken it quite like this. Almost 
anyone else would have overdone it. We say that such a 
man was worthy of any gift. How this one was compensated 
in the acceptance ! The result is pure poetry. The lamenta- 
tions of seventy pages have died away. We may read any- 
thing or nothing much into the cleared scene. All that 
happens is the drone and tinkling of the hurdy-gurdy. The 
bass A and its fifth sound throughout the piece (a device 
here renewed from Schubert's use of it in the Pastoral Melody 
in ' Rosamunde '). The hurdy-gurdy's two-bar tune enters 
intermittently between the wanderer's half -numb sentences, 
which strike us strangely after all that has gone before. 
Only near the end is there a glimmer of warmth. 

An almost toneless song. But what a task to set a singer 
at the end of an hour and half ! Der Leiermann has had 
unforgettable interpreters, like George Henschel and Plunket 
Greene. The ' Winterreise ' as a whole awaits one. No 
one in our time has had quite all the qualities of heart, head, 
and voice. A fine voice is wanted to hold the attention for 
so long, but the most musical tone will pall here if it is not 
the servant of the imagination. The singer must have 
sympathy with the passionate temper. For the dry of heart, 
the ' Winterreise ' might as well not exist

That is fine writing and an ideal introduction to this recording

Keep it simple

In my previous post I mentioned that I was slightly inclined as a student to look down on the Magic Flute because it seemed so much simpler than the Da Ponte operas. It was only with the wisdom (?) of age that I have come to see that simplicity is no bar to musical greatness.

As I was thinking about this another , even better, example came to mind,

I still remember my first encounter with Schubert's Schwanengesang, especially the late Heine songs.  They made a tremendous impression on me.  But I also remember the sense of anticlimax after the end of Der Doppelgänger -  and surely the C major chord 5 bars from the end is the most chilling moment in all music - when I heard the opening "rum-ti-tum" chords of Taubenpost.   It seemed if not a move from the sublime to the ridiculous at one from profundity to triviality.

Now I see things very differently.  Taubenpost is a truly wonderful song - different in character and mood of course but still at an exalted level of inspiration.  I appreciate now as I didn't then that it takes genius to achieve a true level of simplicity.  

Here is Gerhard Husch showing how it should be done. I chose his performance not only because of its excellence but also as a memento of the fact that he came to talk to us in my first year at University (1974).