Franz Schubert

1
Chapter 52

• Franz Schubert

2
Lecture Overview

• The Romantic Period in the history of music,
• c1814c1914
• Schuberts life and times in Vienna
• Schubert compared to Beethoven
• History of the song and Schuberts role in its
  development
• Three Schubert songs
• Erlkönig
• Ganymed
• Nähe des Geliebten
• Review

3
Characteristics of Romantic Music

• intense expressivity
• closeness of music to literature
• presence of the personal voice of the composer
• individualism of expression
• expansion and reinterpretation of traditional
  forms
• tendency toward extremes brevity or length

4
Schuberts Life

• 1797 born in Vienna to family of a school
  teacher
• 1803 enters the choir of the court chapel in
  Vienna, studies later with Antonio
  Salieri
• 1815 composes Erlkönig
• 1820 modest operatic success with Die
  Zwillingsbrüder
• 1821 first Schubertiad
• 1822 declining health
• 1823 composes the song cycle Die schöne Müllerin
• 1828 organizes an academy (public concert)
  featuring his music
• 1828 dies in Vienna on 19 November

5
Schuberts Principal Compositions

• songs over 600 for voice and piano including
  the cycles
• Die schöne Müllerin
• Winterreise
• piano sonatas (many incomplete), dances,
  character pieces, fantasies
• chorus masses, motets
• orchestra symphonies (9)
• chamber music string quartets, String Quintet
  in C

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A Schubertiad

• In January 1821 Schuberts friend Franz von
  Schober convened a gathering of the composers
  friends to hear his music and to socialize. This
  was the first Schubertiad, events that continued
  periodically within Schuberts social circle and
  provided the composer with an opportunity to hear
  his music performed. A regular at the
  Schubertiads was the Viennese painter Moritz von
  Schwind, who forty years after Schuberts death
  recalled the Schubertiad depicted here. Schubert
  is at the piano accompanying Johann Michael Vogl
  in the performance of a song.

7
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Schuberts favorite poet for song writing was the
  great German writer Goethe (17491832). Goethes
  gifts went far beyond literature. He was a
  skillful painter and a noted scientist who wrote
  treatises on biology and optics. He made a name
  for himself in the 1770s as a playwright (his
  play Egmont was provided with incidental music in
  1810 by Beethoven), and he later wrote poetry and
  novels that helped to usher in the Romantic
  period in literature. Goethes writings are
  filled with song texts that have been taken up by
  many of greatest composersfrom Schubert to Anton
  Webern

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Franz Schubert, song Erlkönig, 1815
Through-composed form
9
Franz Schubert, song Ganymed, 1817
Through-composed (scena) form
10
Franz Schubert, song Nähe des Geliebten, 1815
Strophic form
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Review Key Terms

• Schubertiad
• Lied (pl., Lieder)
• song cycle
• character piece
• strophic form
• Johann Michael Vogl
• through-composed form
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• scena (type of song)