A lost paradise of purity: the late masterpieces of Schubert

A lost paradise of purity: the late masterpieces of Schubert(standpointmag.co.uk)

44 points by wyndham 5 years ago | 24 comments

bjoli 5 years ago |

His best works are written in what I have always imagined as some sort of feverish spurts when the syphilis was in remission to just get them out of him for the afterworld. The late symphonies, the septet, Winterreise. All amazing works.

I listen to a lot of music, but some works I go back to more than others. The big C major quintet (the string quartet with an extra cello one) is in my opinion the greatest piece of chamber music ever written, and I don't even like string music.

The recording with the Emerson quartet and Rostropovich is probably my favourite.

Another work I always return to are Petterssons 7th symphony, preferably the recording with the orchestra I work in. Norrköpings Symphony orchestra together with Leif Segerstam. Way before my time, but wow what a symphony. I never understood why Pettersson is never mentioned among other Scandinavian composers such as Nielsen or Sibelius. His seventh symphony deserves to be played world wide.

siglesias 5 years ago | |

The lyricism and agony of Death and the Maiden (D810), particularly in the Andante, gut me every time. Personally my favorite chamber work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0Y3gHKywTQ

eth0up 5 years ago | | |

If you have friends whom you intend sharing this with, be sure to do so before they're exposed to Polanski's 'Death and the Maiden', which may indelibly alter their interpretation. Thankfully he didn't use andantino.

tome 5 years ago | |

> The big C major quintet (the string quartet with an extra cello one) is in my opinion the greatest piece of chamber music ever written, and I don't even like string music.

> The recording with the Emerson quartet and Rostropovich is probably my favourite.

Wow, I know "me too!" is not approved of on Hacker News, but I'm very glad to share this opinion with some otherwise unknown to me internet commenter :D

yCombLinks 5 years ago | |

D. 956 if anyone is looking for the the quintet

zaroth 5 years ago | |

This one?

https://youtu.be/r1CTu1HOgWg

Mediterraneo10 5 years ago |

It is interesting that the author here has to describe what emotional effect Schubert might have intended with his use of keys; when writers today do this, to me it suggests that contemporary readers might not hear this angst themselves. Not only did later Romanticism and Debussy stretch tonality to a point where listeners became more comfortable with hitherto dissonant keys, and so they do not hear things the way Schubert’s listeners would have, but modern pop music is very constrained in its use of modulation so society has lost much of the grammar of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music.

akdor1154 5 years ago | |

I don't even understand the article's claim to dissonance - is it the dissonance you'd hear from e.g playing on B on a just intonation C piano? Or is it a 'dissonance' in the sense of a modulation to a non-diatonic key? Or is it just some expectation that the audience associates moods with different keys? (So assuming the audience can be expected to have at least subconscious absolute pitch, seems unlikely)

TheOtherHobbes 5 years ago | | |

None of the above. It's dissonance as a language - traditional expectations of how the harmony develops being stretched, subverted, warped, and so on. For emotional effect.

There isn't really a modern equivalent, which is more or less the point. Not even jazz, which is distantly related.

But you can get a remote sense from something like Damien Hirst's Verity Statue, which starts from some familiar expectations of public sculpture and subverts and undermines them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jrvX2ZrDvk

The difference is Hirst evokes horror and a Capitalist Gothic aesthetic.

Schubert is superficially more reassuring now. But at the time he was influenced by what used to be called the Sublime - which doesn't just mean excellent as it does today, but used to mean a complex state of emotion and experience that was so intense and rich it was overwhelming.

That's what's buried in Schubert's use of harmony and dissonance.

telesilla 5 years ago | |

Pianos actually sounded differently back then, different keys were genuinely distinct.

https://wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html

"When equal temperament became the dominant tuning after 1917, the aural quality of every key became the same, and therefore these affective characteristics are mostly lost to us"

wirrbel 5 years ago | | |

Some of the stuff that is nowadays attributed to temperament is actually related to certain instrumentation being preferably set in specific keys that were easy to play with the available instruments.

Also competing tunings on various instruments mean that the situation was never a "fix" target.

I am not saying tunings don't play a role, in fact you can hear that John Frusciante sometimes has played with slightly detuned guitar strings for effect. But it its also not so simple as such compilations of key - and - purpose might make you want to believe.

jancsika 5 years ago | |

> but modern pop music is very constrained in its use of modulation so society has lost much of the grammar of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music.

Just to give a sense of context, try this exercise:

1. Pick any modern pop song.

2. Write down every seemingly superficial aspect of the song you hear: vocoder overuse, why an cheesy electric guitar sound accompanies a certain lyric, whether a given sound is employed for irony's sake, which sounds or lyrics are allusions to other songs, etc.

3. Continue until you literally cannot think of anything else significant in the music.

If you're exhaustive you should come up with dozens of bullet points for even a short song.

Now realize that wrt Schubert, you've mentioned a single such bullet.

That is to say-- we're all missing most of the grammar of those bygone eras.

klmadfejno 5 years ago | | |

I read this a few times and can't parse out what you're saying. Pop music has a lot of gimmicks? ok sure, but what is the bullet for schubert? What is the grammar?

gHeadphone 5 years ago |

Incredible to think he died at 31, and composed more than 1,500 works, many of which are adored today. He makes me want to work harder every day.

copperwater69 5 years ago | |

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Franz_...

Woah Man on a mission

8bitsrule 5 years ago |

Undoubtedly Schubert's illness had some effect on his mood, if not on his productivity. Whatever it was that led his writing to mature beyond his earlier work, it certainly did that.

I don't plan to start looking for more agony in his later works than his earlier ones. The 'Unfinished', written in the fall of 1822 (he moved into his parent's home, unable to leave until the following spring) has none. Similarly for the Rosamunde music, written before the Dec. 1823 premiere.

Then there's the Great Symphony, written 1825-26. Everywhere countless ideas and themes; In 1840 Schumann said of it "this work reveals life in every fiber, color down to the finest shading, significance everywhere, the most acute expression of individual detail ..." To what should we attribute the frightful 'battle' in the Andante? This isn't program music.

In the late chamber works, yes, I feel some deep regret - and anger. A great tragedy - but - his disease certainly was not his master.

dang 5 years ago |

There was a great thread going when this article was posted a few days ago, which was strangled by inappropriate flags. I'm going to move those comments here to give them a second chance.

Flaggers: please don't flag submissions that don't break the site guidelines! This article is obviously on-topic (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). If it isn't your cup of tea, there are plenty of other things to read. If you run out, the 'past' link at the top will take you to arbitrary amounts of reading material that you missed.

mitchelldeacon9 5 years ago |

> the Andantino of D959 is on a different plane of alienation. It is all the more aberrant in a work which is generally so warm-hearted and affirmatory... “desolate grace behind which madness lies.”

Schubert's Sonata D959 Andantino was also featured in a remarkable film, "La Pianiste" (2001), which explores many of the same themes described in the article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Piano_Teacher_(film)

jlarcombe 5 years ago |

I'm sure everyone interested has already heard it, but I strongly recommend the wonderful recording of the last piano sonatas by Krystian Zimerman on Deutsche Grammaphon. He plays on a customised piano with an action closer to that of the instruments of Schubert's day, and the effects he achieves are startling and spectacularly beautiful.

j7ake 5 years ago |

My favorite Schubert piece is his late piano Sonata No 21 first movement in B flat major (D960). Especially the opening theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOUNRRAFozA&ab_channel=Murra...

His three late Sonatas are extremely long though, almost 45 minutes each. I haven't had the time to actually listen to all three in one go.

tonystride 5 years ago |

I just purchased spiral bound Henle edition of his Impromptus. Not sure how I've gone this long without doing a Schubert deep dive but I'm certainly looking forward to it!

billfruit 5 years ago |

I have not listened very much of Schubert, but I cant help notice the ebullient joyful, playful exuberance of much of it, even his "Tragic" symphony, considering his life was sadly shortened due to disease.