 | No. 166 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast166 |
pcast166- Playlist
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We close
our September look at ninth symphonies with Schubert’s “Great C Major”
Symphony.
The
Schubert symphony catalog suggests there are about a dozen or so works that
were either published as symphonies, or were composed and never made it past
sketch form. Through the years, the numbering on Schubert's symphonies has
repeatedly shifted because of discrepancies between Schubert's notations on his
scores and the evidence from research into printing practices and paper
production during his lifetime; so it is not uncommon to encounter references
to the Great C Major as the seventh rather than the ninth.
According
to franzpeterschubert.com,
the Great C Major Symphony (some will argue his greatest composition) was never
heard by the composer, because the Viennese musicians considered it unplayable.
After Schubert's death, his older brother Ferdinand showed the manuscript of
the symphony to Schumann, who became a champion for the unknown work.
Again, orchestras in Vienna and Paris claimed the work was too long and
unwieldy even to tackle in rehearsal. Schumann therefore took it to his friend Mendelssohn,
who was the conductor of the famed Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, and
Mendelssohn agreed to perform the work with his own orchestra. When, however,
he attempted to perform it in London in 1844, despite extensive cuts the
musicians refused.
Schubert
profoundly revered Beethoven, and perhaps his greatest tribute to Beethoven was
his resolve to write a grand symphony with the breadth and profundity of his
predecessor's; and his Symphony No. 9 was the result. Today its length and the
physical as well as musical hurdles it poses for musicians are no longer novel;
but it remains immensely challenging in performance. Schubert was particularly
gifted at writing beautiful lines for the French horn, and it is the French
horn's majestic motive from the slow introduction that becomes the recurring
theme of the first movement. Well after Schubert's death, the theme's grandeur
and sense of space, together with the sheer length of the Symphony, helped to
earn it the nickname the "Great C Major"
In fact,
the nickname was first applied by a music publisher to distinguish the work
from Schubert's shorter and less ambitious 6th Symphony, the "Little
C Major." But the name aptly describes both Schubert's evident intent in
writing the work, and the stature of the final composition.
Today’s
performance is taken from a Schubert cycle featuring Riccardo Muti conducting
the Vienna Philharmonic - the descendent of the orchestra that refused to
perform the work in public in Schubert’s lifetime. This Schubert cycle includes
excerpts from the incidental music to the play Rosamunde, which I have added as
filler to today’s montage.
The
premiere performance of Rosamunde took place on December 20, 1823 at the
Theater an der Wien. After only one more performance, it disappeared forever
from the repertoire of the theatre. The press was quite critical of the text of
Rosamunde, subjecting it to such scathing comments as this: 'an inutterably
insipid work'. As regards the composer, at least, we read: 'Herr Schubert's
composition shows originality, but unfortunately bizarrerie as well. The young
man is in the process of developing; we hope that it goes well ..'. The
overture was a rehash of his music for the melodrama Die Zauberharfe, which
explains why we see that name associated with the work on record jackets…
I think you will love this music too.
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