(VII) Orchestral music.

Of all the genres in which Schubert worked, the one that interested his friends and supporters least was orchestral music. When Antonio Salieri reportedly said: ‘He is a genius! He can write anything: songs, masses, string quartets …’ it is no accident that he omitted any mention of symphonic music. Along with Salieri, the Schubert circle, with its poets, playwrights, painters and philosophers, was far more involved with the more intimate forms of music-making, especially the lied. Nonetheless, Schubert's interest in composing for orchestra dates back to his mid-teens and dominated his deathbed. He began more symphonies (13) than Beethoven, and completed seven. Schubert's first six symphonies, most of them written for performance by a private orchestra which had grown out of the family string quartet, are apprentice works, full of ingratiating touches and, less frequently, genuine originality. It is worth remembering that at the age when Beethoven finished his First Symphony, Schubert had little over a year to live. Born at just the right moment to inherit the full symphonic flowering of Mozart and Haydn, as well as the intimidating assaults of Beethoven, Schubert took full advantage of his legacy. Although his first essay, an Allegro in D (d2b), calls, unusually, for trombones, his First Symphony (d82) adopts the formal outline and scoring of Haydn's second set of London symphonies: a slow introduction leading to a sonata-form Allegro, a spacious slow movement, a symphonic minuet in the tonic key of the work, and a lighter, scurrying finale that opens softly before a tutti explosion. Mozartian touches can be heard, especially in the slow movement with its echoes of the ‘Prague’ Symphony; but the reappearance of part of the slow introduction immediately before the first movement's recapitulation is an impressive and individual stroke. Although he may already have been familiar with Beethoven's first six symphonies, Schubert rarely betrayed a direct influence in these early works; one obvious exception is the use of the Eroica Symphony's ‘Prometheus’ theme in the opening movement of the First Symphony. From the syncopated, scampering thematic material of the opening Allegro, through the theme-and-variations slow movement and the off-tonic (C minor) minuet to the use of three distinct key centres in the exposition of the finale, the Second Symphony, in B major (d125), displays considerably more nerve and ambition. The Third Symphony (in D, d200) looks back to no.1 in its tonality and its Mozartian patina, although the jaunty themes of the first movement, and the buffo-style finale, have a whiff of Rossini. Schubert's Fourth Symphony (in C minor, d417) betrays no influence of Beethoven's epic Fifth Symphony in the same key, harking instead back to Mozartian chromaticism. In spite of the title of ‘Tragic’ added by Schubert as an afterthought, the dominant moods are those of pathos and agitation rather than tragedy. The groping chromaticism of the slow introduction owes much to the opening of Mozart's ‘Dissonance’ Quartet; but the second group of the main Allegro gravitates to the submediant – a characteristically Schubertian stroke – and the movement ends nonchalantly in the major. Of the two major-mode inner movements, the A Andante includes two troubled sections in the minor, while the minuet, in E major, is disturbingly chromatic. The finale, which also moves to the submediant for the second group, recasts the recapitulation entirely in the major, although the effect is more colouristic than a true resolution of preceding conflicts.

The popularity of Schubert's Symphony no.5 in B (d485) derives on the surface from its amiable themes (the first subject launched exquisitely by an in-tempo four-bar introduction) and transparent, chamber musical textures (the orchestra includes neither clarinets, trumpets nor drums). Its deeper appeal stems from its classical balance of thematic and structural elements. In the first movement Schubert abandons his hitherto usually perfunctory recapitulations for a genuine resolution, adding 16 new bars that prepare for the final cadence. The three remaining movements repeatedly invoke Haydn and, especially, Mozart: the slow movement, for instance, virtually quotes the theme of the minuet finale from Mozart's Violin Sonata in F, k377, while the minuet is clearly indebted to the G minor Symphony k550. Schubert's final youthful symphonic venture, the Sixth Symphony, in C (d589), suggests a composer looking for new directions but not sure where to strike out. There are pre-echoes of the ‘Great’ C major, but also the unmistakable influence of Rossini, one that also permeates the two overtures ‘im italienischen Stile’ composed by Schubert at the same period as the symphony.

Written within just over four years of each other, the first six symphonies portray a gifted apprentice largely content to embellish – with a dash of Rossini and his own more relaxed phrase structure – the exalted legacy of Haydn, Mozart and, to a lesser degree, Beethoven. During the years 1818–22 he strove to evolve a more individual, subjective conception of the four-movement sonata ideal; and his struggles are betrayed by the fact that all of the symphonies he began at this period remained torsos. Sketches for the outer movements of a symphony in D (d615, May 1818) were abandoned, in spite of promising ideas. Some two years later a more ambitious symphonic project, also in D (d708a), suffered the same fate, although extensive piano score sketches for four movements reveal some original ideas, including a daring choice of the key of the tritone (A major) for the second group in the first movement. The following year, 1821, Schubert completed a draft of a symphony in E (d729) that finally makes a decisive break with Haydn and Mozart. Following a bold minor-mode introduction to the first movement, Schubert eschews the repeat of the exposition. Three of the movements employ his characteristic three-key exposition, and the thematic structure is highly unified. Yet Schubert's full scoring (for an orchestra including trombones and four horns) of less than a third of the opening movement betrays his dissatisfaction with a work that was quickly abandoned, although its completion has proved irresistible to conductors and scholars from Weingartner onwards.

For all these promising efforts, nothing really prepares us for the mournful rise and fall of the bass theme that opens the famous ‘Unfinished’ Symphony (d759). Unlike his previous symphonic attempts, Schubert fully orchestrated the first two movements, together with part of the Scherzo (fig.13). Orchestral works in B minor were almost unheard of in 1822; and originality informs every aspect of the work. The startling move to the submediant, G major, is accomplished with shattering swiftness. The soaring cello theme that follows and its syncopated accompaniment, are treated at length in the latter part of the exposition; the development works the opening theme to a pitch of almost hysterical anguish before recalling the syncopated accompaniment in isolation from the cello melody – an effect of indescribable poignancy. At the start of the recapitulation the main theme is withheld in order to enhance the dramatic force of its reappearance in the coda. With its towering climaxes, its subjective, almost confessional, tone and its extreme contrasts between violence and lyrical pathos this movement is unprecedented in the symphonic literature.

In the E major Andante con moto Schubert uses a familiar structural pattern (ABABA) to uniquely poetic ends, from the assuaging opening theme, exquisitely shared between horns, strings and woodwind, through the haunting clarinet and oboe melody over a syncopated accompaniment (shades of the first movement) and the volcanic tutti explosions, to the coda, with its miraculous harmonic sleights-of-hand. Nowadays Schubert's two completed movements are sometimes performed with an orchestral completion of the Scherzo and, as a finale, the imposing B minor Entr'acte from Rosamunde, which makes at least a plausible conclusion.

Having failed to complete four successive symphonies, Schubert might have given up on symphonic ventures. Yet Schubert's travels in Upper Austria in the summer of 1825 seem to have unleashed an astonishing creative energy and optimism that found expression in the ‘Great’ C major Symphony (d944). Few works have such unquenchable rhythmic vitality or seem more expressive of their direct surroundings, from the opening horn call, which returns as a triumphant apotheosis in the coda, to the brisk step of the stoical, marchlike Andante con moto, from the joyous alfresco dance of the vast sonata-form Scherzo, saturated by its opening motif, to the surging triplets of the gargantuan finale. Having found his symphonic voice – a voice at once lyrical, colouristic and expansive – Schubert was understandably eager to undertake more symphonic projects. The so-called Symphony no.10 (d936a) was the principal work to occupy the composer on his deathbed. He lived long enough to sketch a three-movement work in which the last movement was apparently to combine the function of scherzo and finale. The first movement exhibits structural gaps that challenge any projected completion. Like the ‘Unfinished’ of six years earlier, the first movement includes a second group whose lyrical main theme forms the movement's emotional and structural centre – so much so that the development opens with a slowed version of it. The last revisions appear to have been made in the remarkable slow movement (again in B minor!), which has an uncanny foretaste of Mahler. As perhaps the last music Schubert composed, its mingled serenity and sense of loss may have grown out of his acceptance of his own fate. Originally labelled ‘Scherzo’, the third movement soon developed into a kind of contrapuntal rondo, sporting fugato, canon, double counterpoint, and even augmentation, all testimony to Schubert's renewed contrapuntal studies in the last weeks of his life.

Schubert, Franz, §2: Works