Listening to Franz Schubert’s Symphony #3 recently–for the first time in many years–it struck me just how amazing he was as a composer. Oh, the symphony itself is almost a template of the “perfect” Classical Period symphony, after the more mature works of Haydn and Mozart, and is absolutely wonderful in and of itself, but that’s not what slapped me upside the head with awe. No, it’s that he was so bang on the money with the Classical Period form and ethos in the symphony, and yet his lieder–written before there was a Romantic Period–are such perfect examples of Romantic Period music in technique and ethos. While it can be said of Beethoven that he spanned both the Classical and Romantic periods (and in some ways that he spawned the Romantic period), Schubert simply lived and composed music fit for each simultaneously.
Still, while his instrumental music is (mostly) Classical–and very good examples of that genre–it is his lieder that demonstrate his rightful place among the greatest of luminaries of classical music. Sad that he–like Mozart–lived such a short life. Had he lived to the age Brahms lived, what wonders might we have as a legacy from his creative hand and ear, given the wonders he left at the young age of 31? Ah, for a peek at an alternate universe where the mind that composed the insightful Die Winterreise, which dealt with the memories of an old man, had actually lived to the ripe old age he depicted with such songs as Der Lindenbaum, begun at the “ripe old” age of 26(?) and “corrected” by him shortly before his death. Still, as a certifiable Olde Pharte, now, I can attest that Schubert captured Müller’s lyrics, which themselves capture the sense of the retrospective of old(er) age well (and Müller himself died at age 33!).
Ah, well, I ramble.
Still, it’s a wonder to re-realize that my favorite composer of song had depths far beyond the listening area I generally grant his work. Delightful! I should never have let so loong a time elapse between hearings of his instrumental works.
Oh, links? Nah. Go find your own fav Schubertian works. 🙂 I’ve posted several of his lieder (sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, of course) here in the past, but you deserve the joy of discovering his beautiful music in your own way.