Spring Symphonies, No 75, Schubert: Symphony No 9, D944 "The Great"

Schubert: Symphony No 9 “The Great”, D944

Schubert symphonies can be confusing. This symphony in Deutchs catalogue of his works is known as D944.  In England we tend now call it No 9.  In some places this symphony is still referred to as No 7 and in other places (the Berlin Philharmonic concert archive for example) it’s called No 8.  

It is also called the “Great Symphony in C Major” to distinguish it from the earlier symphony D589, know as the Little C Major symphony - which we now know as No 6 which is shorter.  The reasons for this number shifting is that we know of more Schubert symphonies now than we did 100 years ago. As the list has grown scholars have revised the number assigned to the symphonies - but currency has been slow.

More than any work in this survey I feel the need to go into detail in this symphony. Mostly because in these details the work reveals itself because it's the details of the mystic transitions emotional eddies and currents and the full force of the work gradually appears. As we get to know it better.  So what follows is longer than other introductions with apologies.

Why is it still called “great”?

It’s greatness may not be a presumed reputation as we will see its path to greatness was long and even from its earliest times fraught with problems.

I have come to realise in the months writing this piece that it is a great symphony. It is also a long symphony, very long in some performances: but as we know that length doesn’t equate with excellence either.  

It may be that as it was revered because, until relatively recently, it was thought to be his last symphony that adds to its import.  There’s still a whiff of something special about Ninth symphonies - all of which is probably due to the arc described by Beethoven’s symphonies.  We regarded the last symphony as some great summative work.  Though I think we can eliminate the mystic of “Ninth” symphonies can be laid to rest now we know realised Tenth symphonies by Schubert, Mahler and Beethoven.  And the final symphonies of so many composers are not necessarily summative.

So we might ask is it great because of the company it keeps? Amongst it’s siblings there is probably some argument.  The Sixth is a fine work but not a great work in my view - leaning more to his middle period symphonies.  The seventh is all in parts and hardly known, and under known when the Great was in circulation.  The Eighth, “The Unfinished” is an incomplete work in a symphonic sense - but surely it is a great symphony and a very popular one too.

Professor Brain Newbould in A Guide to the Symphony - Oxford, 1995 puts the symphony in a triumvirate with Beethoven’s Ninth and Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique - all contemporaneous. He may be right - Schubert’s work it is like either of them - but it is probably the last great classical symphony of that age.  I think it comfortably holds its own with those two pieces - they may be great for their individuality.

Another author has Schubert’s Ninth as “the last classical symphony” - which maybe right but it represents a major diversion in the sophistication of an already complex and highly charged genre.  One can step from the mesmeric qualities of this symphony from 1825/26 to Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony of four years later and not smell any Romantic sensibilities. It is, however, a landmark in symphonic terms because it exists at all.  

Place

The list of early 19th century symphonies looks one sided between Beethoven’s Eighth in 1812 and Berlioz’s Symphonie in 1830.  Aside from Beethoven’s Ninth (1824) and Mendelssohn’s First (1824)  the only other composer producing symphonies that we would now note is Schubert. Fans of Ries, Czerny, Vorisek will complain I’m missing great art - but their names . 

We need to remember that Schubert’s symphonies did not pop into the public sphere one by one with publication not far behind their premieres.  None of his symphonies were published in his lifetime.  The manuscript was assumed to be from 1827/28 for some time and thus it was thought to be Schubert’s last symphonic thought. Closer examination of papers revealed that not to be the case.  A later unfinished Tenth was found by Professor Brian Newbould.  This English scholar has done so much to unravel the mysteries of Schubert’s works and the process of their creation. The Great symphony was mentioned by Schubert in 1824, largely written in 1825 and ready for a performance (which didn’t happen in any public sense) in 1826.  Schumann discovered the work on a visit to Schubert’s brother amongst stacks of music the late composer had left.  There are suggestions in the archive that people tried to perform the work thereafter.  Its premiere was in 1839 just over ten years after Schubert’s death.  Schumann and Mendelssohn who instigated that first performance in March 1839 recognising its potential even though the players thought it was profoundly difficult for to play.

The symphony took a long time to catch hold.  Mendelssohn made an attempt to put it on in London but his players laughed at it.  The violinists were so amused by the finale’s repetitions that Mendelssohn withdrew it from performance in a rage. Schubert’s  Ninth symphony only saw the light of day in the UK in 1856 at the Crystal Palace.  The Paris premiere was in 1851 but it was America’s great orchestras which picked in up with greater alacrity and enthusiasm.  In the public space of that later period - a classical symphony in a romantic time.  It was first heard in the company of it’s great predecessors and contemporaries but also the symphonies of a time after Schumann, in the period of premieres by Raff, Bizet and Liszt. 

Schubert the evergreen songwriter leapfrogged the output of Mendelssohn  and Schumann.  A symphony before it’s time was suddenly out of historical context.

Character

I think if we look within the work we see why it has had such a reputation of its concert life time.  

• It is substantial and complete: all four movements are long and for some hard work to play.  Time gets distorted with so many repeats, but it moves with energy.  Charles Rosen points out that Schubert achieves more with less material in the Great than the much denser Unfinished symphony.  He concludes the Great is more classical than it’s predecessor or to put in the context of when it was first heard - the Great is less romantic a symphony than the unfinished, but it is certainly not without the familiar strophes of romanticism within it’s classical garb.
• the material is never quite what it seems - a sophisticated game of cat and mouse leads the listener in one direction only to surprise them by ending up in another place
• it pushes the notion of the contemporary orchestra and what it can do - strings are challenged, brass are used with great subtlety and beauty.
• it has a fabulous internal drama borne from iterative complexity, steep dynamic changes and Schubert’s masterful approach to tension and release.
• it is - for it’s time - audacious - its style is classical and not Beethovenian.  But it uses the full range of orchestra effects to undermine the idea of repetition for the sake of form.
• and finally it has a longevity, whatever may have been thought of it in the 19th century. It has been chosen by great conductors throughout its history and happily is now still a treat on concert programmes.

Performance and Recordings

I still feel that Schubert’s Ninth enjoys a greater reputation than it’s concert hall appearances in current programmes would suggest.  And as a fan I think this is because it is under-appreciated and not because it’s over-rated.  There aren’t many works which are revered nowadays but seldom played.  Perhaps it’s slipped off the radar of younger music enthusiasts because fewer still advocates on the platform and/or amongst concert planners.  

This chequered history is borne out from the UK Proms archive.  The Proms archive shows that this symphony lags slightly behind the Unfinished in the total number of performances since 1895.  The Ninth entered into the archive in 1895 (70 years after it was written!) and has had 84 Proms performances to 2018.  Recently it has scarcely shown its face at the worlds biggest classical music festival with only five performances in this millennium.  The conductors who have chosen to programme it  - Mena, Haitink, Norrington, Welser-Möst and Noseda - are eminently musical.  I’d say that the work is not, it seems, for the cool kids.  

In contrast, the Unfinished Symphony has had 114 performances at the Proms.  It had a precipitous ascent up the performance table with 4 performances in the first season and pops up as a filler in programmes thereafter.

It may be that Schubert is no longer in vogue - which is a shame bordering on a crime.  Some would argue that the bigger crime is that Schubert’s other symphonies have fared worse at the Proms.

That said in the middle of the last century this great symphony was championed by some great artists and Youtube bares this out nicely.  The earliest recording I can find there is Leo Blech in 1927 (b. 1871).  The great triumvirate of English post war conductors Beecham, Barbirolli and Boult are present on Youtube with live recordings suggesting Britain got to know and love this symphony. There are four extant recordings on by Furtwangler, four by Giulini, three by Toscanini, five by Bohm and three by Karajan.  Intriguingly it was picked up also by conductors with a more modern catalogue - Sinopoli, Gielen and Boulez (New York 1976).  And about the same time those interested in historically informed performance took the symphony for a spin - not I would say with much chance of sorting the classical/romantic distinction.   

The 1955 record collectors bible “The Record Guide” were invited to choose between Krips and Toscanini - as usual highlighted by their polarised view of the pacing of the symphony, Krips (with the Concertgebouw Orchestra) gets their choice.  Much the same analysis was proffered in the 1962  Krips and Munch (the latter now available as a hi definition recording) were the alternatives offered whilst oddly Jochum, Klemperer and Boult all overlooked.  Karajan came out with a recording made in 1968 which was abrasive enough to be described as “a failure” in his Gramophone obit.  Fortunately his 1977 recording restored his reputation - though there’s much to admire in his 1946 recording in Vienna not least the characterful playing in the ruins of war.

Latterly we have had superb versions in a less weighty mood, and slowly the historically informed performances have show a way to get a Schubertian score to sound strong and characterful without mimicking a late Beethovenian symphony.  Moreover scholars have resolved some the trickier bits of Schubert’s manuscript. Abbado was one of the first to benefit from the improved Schubert scholarship: his Schubert recordings endure but for me, they don’t enthral.  Another set to push things a little further was Minkowski who used original instruments in his set of live recordings which catches the vitality and humour in these scores.  The recordings on YouTube are legion and range from deeply traditional approaches to something a deal more joyous.  My touchstones are the level of interplay between the musical groups and that depth from the conductor that moves beyond the bare (sometimes threadbare) melodic and rhythmical units of this work.  Dynamics and accents are everything as Karajan found to his costs.  Ultimately I suspect most of these modern versions of informed scholarship tend towards Toscanini’s readings of fire and finesse in equal measure so in one sense not much has changed since the Italian’s reading of 1948.

Commentary

So why have I included it in my collection?  It has a magnificence and bravura about it to be sure, and a fascinating anti-musical quality - ask any violinist who has played it.  But it has some wonderful hidden treasures beyond its bold obvious features.  The more one looks at it the more marvellous it becomes.  I can find more subtle, magical moments in this symphony than most - there’s a game Schubert plays of immediacy which hides he’s longer term planning and his subtle inter-relationships.  In all aspects of this symphony - the scoring, harmony, melody and rhythm rewards familiarity.  Examination does not unpick Schubert’s mercurial impulses but it does reward the listener with a glimpse how the work is built of parts which appear in disguise in it’s textures.  There is a buzz each time one recognises them. 

It’s not without its difficulties on all fronts. Tovey in the 1930s was somewhat less tolerant of Schubert’s scoring than we are now.  He did point out the reworking Schubert had done to perfect this work.  We now know the step between good and great in the compositional process is often comes late in the compositional process for many composers. Tovey clearly felt there was more that could be done.

More than any work in this survey I feel a need to go into detail in this symphony.  Not just in the music, but it’s creation, reputation and our current indifference.  The work reveals itself gradually like any masterpiece - it’s transitions become wondrous, the emotional eddies and currents seem to be conjured from nowhere and the full delight and vigour of the work amplifies with each audition.

Walking through Schubert 9

The introduction to this symphony is beautifully woven - a seemingly straightforward series of themes with deep potential and complex inter-relationships. The work starts with a horn call which offers a variation on itself and then yields to a string and woodwind response.  The horns are mild mannered and suggestive but not demanding, this is not a fanfare and it is not the traditional loud entrance to quieten the crowd and grab the attention - it almost beckons us to come in, sit down and attend.  The elegance of Schubert’s creations is perhaps a surprise for those looking for something more like Beethoven.  The art of this opening section - marked Andante - unfolds in two ways which in the end characterise the entire symphony.  The first is the delicacy of interplay of the parts seemingly simple The treasures are hinted at, or hidden away, and come to full light in the music we are yet to hear.  When one listens closely and over time these interconnections also add drama.  The second aspect is how from the relaxed simple circumstances the music can slowly builds up speed and weight until theres an eruption of disproportionate and unexpected power.  It is one of the first surprises of this symphony that it in five pages Schubert weaves delicate lines with a silken touch which so quickly becomes incendiary.  After four variations on the opening material blossoms.  His elaboration always leans forward with it’s 2+2+1 pattern, but as he adds more instruments, faster moving phrases and, more, heavier dynamic markings.  By the end of this introduction we are on the edge of our seats coming into the first movement proper.  This is more unexpectedly dramatic than anything we hear in Beethoven or late Haydn, but less neat than Mozart.  

Schubert leaves us wondering too about the speed of the introduction - Klemperer’s observation “Andante means ‘going‘ and Papagano is ‘going’ quickly…” comes to mind.  The introduction might sound fine if it is slow, but if it’s too slow an Andante and we get into a mess in the coda of this movement - more on that when we get to the end.

The first movement is marked Allergo ma non troppo.  The simple movements based on singable melodies in his earlier symphonies are put aside to be replaced with what seems to be a collection of rather angular collection of notes: there’s hardly a tune at all. So often in this symphony we move from what seems a complex, rich and - for want of a better word - romantic sound to something more simple - even banal at first hearing.

It is the start also of what we might call the violinist’s “problem” which pervades all of the symphony.  In the first performances of this work there was laughter amongst the players when faced with Schubert’s writing for the violins.  They face pages and pages of unvarying figures which over the course of a 50 minute symphony look like an act of cruelty by Schubert.  William McNaught in the 1949 Penguin book “The Symphony” was minded to list the acres of repetition to be delivered by the players.  For the listener this is much less effort but it does make a huge difference to the work.  This repetitive framework - used by many modern composers - is a vital structural component.  

Schubert’s first movement pulses, ebbs and flows and much is achieved through a fragmentation of themes and their interplay.  It is a classic sonata form but achieved by tremendous control of the energy in these cells of music.  Schubert deploys additional weight into the orchestra with three trombones - not just for weight in climaxes but part of a lush and deep orchestral sound. I can only commend the listening with special attention to their contribution - there is nothing as singular in Beethoven or Brahms like this.  The critics and analysts were blown away by the quiet use of the trombones in the transitions - especially coming out of the first movement development.  With an orchestra of classical proportions and the right instruments one can see and hear how subtle their other contributions can be. 

Watch Marc Minkowski conduct this music (link below) to see and hear those trombones ground the music.  In that video you can also see that the music is a game of cat and mouse for conductor and players. Schubert teases the listener with a waiting game, edgily constructing tension and  a series of dramatic release points. Schubert never stops - his music is always busy.  There is much dodging, weaving and edginess too.  There are moments when we seem on the verge of music of a more modern era than the Mendelssohn and Schumann that followed.

Towards the end we encounter the tempo problem - the coda grandly repeats the opening figures of the introduction but this involves some inelegance moving from the Allegro back to Andante.  Michael Gielen deploys a more orderly conclusion by matching the introductions tempo to the Allegro more closely and seamlessly moving through to the coda.  I’m happy with either - I wonder what Tovey would have said…

The stately dance which follows is hardly a slow movement at all.  Schubert’s second movement is marked Andante but a mix of elegance and grace of a classical slow movement and something more disruptive. It is sweet - almost cloying at times but Schubert surprises us.  It has a purposeful intent which muscles its way in.  In Beethoven’s Fourth symphony the slow movement builds and plummets into a dark and noisy place for a magnificent and disquieting effect.  Schubert is less pointed and less interested in the single dramatic event.  He moves your view point round and round until this mesmeric routine becomes much less secure for the listener.  Then he allows the subtlest change to become a breakwater for the tension he’s been acculmulating.  And following the score one sees countless simple things on the page which have a profound effect on the ear.  

McNaught points to the alternation March and Song in this movement.  The subtle transition back to the March led by the horn seemingly from a different world.  Tovey has them “tolling like a bell haunted by a human soul” - it is strangely eerie.  But in this worldly realm there are also reminiscences of a figure from the trombone led transition in the first movement.  Schubert is always attentive to the distribution of the tunes in the wind voices and the strings weaving their path supporting all.  There are some regular powerful dynamic interjections too which make this less of the elegant ballet than one might think.  There is high theatre too with a martial air at the end of the repeat of the march the brass build an astonishingly insistent climax which dissolves abruptly in one bar of silence.  And the more often you hear it, the more chilling it gets.  The second transition to the March has trombones and horns in slow chords - a mystical interlude as the preceding song had become most animated. The final version of the march - in effect a coda - shows just how many more tricks Schubert has up his sleeve even down to a sneaky digression in the last ten bars.  Much as I love the middle movements of Beethoven, this is much more intriguing.  It seems repetitious but endlessly different.

The third movement is a scherzo, Allegro vivace, and Trio (unmarked) of many repeats. The scherzo is less an ancestor of the Mozart but more Beethovenian.  But it has an air of wit - perhaps a country dance performed in boots and braces by the leads and tutu and slippers by their followers all done in a village square with wind band and string players vying for to be heard.  I dare say many of us find it amusing and simplistic in its bluff contrasts at first.  On repetition I also find it slightly sinister at times, this is another aspect of Schubert not obvious on the surface.  His darkness is prevalent in his songs but also present in his late symphonies.  It is a huge movement and full of busy-ness with calls and responses sometimes playful, sometimes emphatic and sometimes dark. Bernstein turned the declamations into rhetoric with unmarked shaping a nuance lifted from Bruno Walter.  Klemperer plays it simple, four square whilst Beecham, Toscanini and Monteux take it at quite a lick.  The fast route over this terrain needs some attention if the strings aren’t to sound indistinct though.

The Trio is another opportunity for wonderfully characterised tunes which are inclined towards earthy, folksy music: a base and starting point his magic.  Truscott points out - helpfully - that is both fast and slow and although change happens in the context of a “fast” movement - it does so gradually.  Schubert offers a sophisticated combination of the ground breaking innovator and something more domestic.  Some will find it sentimental as this Trio theme rocks back and forth.  Tovey thought very highly of the continuous melody.  It would make a glorious song if the choir in the village square had the breath for it.  My initial thoughts on this movement where about ambiguity and wit, but these have turned into admiration at the composer’s drive and meticulous voicing. Beethoven would not have been so restrained or so stylish as Schubert and Mahler should have taken note of his delicacy of touch and daring sparsity of material. 

The scherzo is repeated - though as usual - not all of the repeats are reprised in some hands.

The finale is a movement which seems longer than it is.  It begins with a Beethovenian summons, a rushed call, not quite an alarm call, something more akin to ‘on your marks’.  What follows doesn’t seem to me to be very classical in spirit.  The music rushes off with no preparation or further introduction. A wild chase begins and endures for over a 1000 bars. There is, in this torrent, no clear view of where this tumbling, careering, clowning movement is going for the new listener.  It last eleven minutes long.  There’s a sinewy quality to the woodwind response which seems all of a piece and then we are returned to the beginning again. Dramatic chords as with other movements given extra heft by the brass both underscoring the mood and punctuating it.  The to- and fro- starts with the winds chanting a simple melody over one of those long passages of string repetitions.  This soon starts to sound substantial in repeat but the strings usher in something darker and grander and with a deal more pace and punch to it.  This circus leads to a climax with exquisite trombone writing and then the music subsides.  

At this stage one might say there’s a very clear sense of direction with the music, but no sense of the nature of the final destination.

The mystery is compound and the listener disconcerted, after shivering dark string notes, Schubert gives us a phrase which seems straight out of Beethoven’s Ninth.  Some have suggested that this may mean very little.  I’d counter that idea.   Schubert was devoted to Beethoven and had been one of his pall bearers - no reference to Beethoven by Schubert would have been accidental. This is an interlude in the movements progress but the same feeling of travel without arrival applies.  The tensions in the movement and symphony have been accrued though drama and often unexpected release of momentum.  It feels like claustrophobia at times - small and incrinemntal, versus big but seemingly conclusive.  

We feel that as we get to know this transitions as staging posts to the full picture. The trombones swing in after a climax of fiendish simplicity - by which I mean it’s easy to hear what Schubert is doing, it’s more difficult to explain why it is having a disproportionately dramatic effect.  Multiple auditions will get you there.  This is Schubert’s way - locally it looks small, develop a view of the entire symphony and it seems immense.

A drum roll leads us back to a softer world, where we drift, at last, from development into recapitulation.  Furtwangler picks up pace and dynamics now and who can blame him.  But the emphasis Schubert is now weaving into the familiar material is enough without that I think.   We soon might be singing along with Schubert’s woodwind lines (as the conductor checks for signs of string mutiny).  The coda blossoms and then in a white heat breaks out into the most emphatic tutti we’ve heard so far.  Chords boom out from low strings, the winds sing high and brass shine.  The final pages are replete with scurrying strings and heavy booted chords.  This sudden end which is delivered with easy confidence rather marks the point that this is not a last great utterance delivered with reverence.  It is a life-enhancing ride through the wonderful mind of a great classical composer.

It has taken me time to absorb this symphony and as I said at the beginning of the commentary it is hard to sum up all it is wonders and felicities.  It is though a fascinating rewarding and truly remarkable work - which without breaking any rules seems to be as topsy turvy as any of the rule breakers.  By the time it was premiered by Mendelssohn, audiences across Europe had heard Berlioz’s disruptive reassessment of a symphony as well as the first operas by Verdi and Wagner.  So it sort of stands alone - a classical product in a romantic period but absolutely of a singular sensibility.

In my head I have one other indulgent thought in this work.  Having said it stands alone it was soon I think to have a cousin. I find much of Schubert’s magic in the Second symphony of Robert Schumann.  Schumann was more free ranging, more melodious and yet looks back to some of the devices Schubert used. Schumann’s first and fourth symphonies were composed in a blizzard of creative output for Schumann in 1841.  Schumann’s Second in C major symphony was begun in 1845, seven years after the rediscovery, time perhaps for him to reflect on the the Schubertian model. 

The powerful effects of Schubert’s other works comes down I think to a deeply personal connection which is so strong it is sometimes unbearable especially where words drive him.  Schubert’s Great C major symphony has none of Beethoven’s final symphonic statement and transcendental mission.  Schubert is a tremendously detailed and disciplined but his last complete symphony is a long entertaining, wordless letter to us all.  I would urge you to savour it - it just keeps on rewarding especially if you keep and ear out from the trombones.

Here’s Marc Minkowski who conducts with humour, grace… and stamina.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLvyitS_lRU