String Quintet in C major, D. 956 – Franz Schubert
a monument of Western culture, it’d be
Sant’Agnese fuori le Mura in Rome,
quartets, I couldn’t not next introduce
their very gold standard
written in 1828, it was composed at
the very height of the Romantic
Period, just a little ahead of Chopin,
1810 – 1849, his other significant
counterpart, apart from the ageing
Beethoven, 1770 – 1827, who still
towered above all, despite his
demise, and was universally
admired
but had Schubert lived longer than
his 31 years, I suspect he might’ve
been Beethoven’s equal, Schubert
died even earlier than Mozart did,
at 35, but of something that wasn’t
spoken of until much later, which
is why we haven’t heard about the
loss of this other musical giant
quite as grievously as we have
about his somewhat more senior
counterpart
but listen
it’s even hard to tell him apart from
Beethoven, the passion, the urgency,
the drama, even composing against
the beat, a signature trait in
Beethoven, like Alfred Hitchcock
showing up in his own movies, or
Woody Allen, always introducing a
work of art
a few things
though the frame is immaculately
Classical, tonality, tempo, and
recapitulation are not at all
unobserved, the mood has changed
from courteous, deferential, and
respectful, to urgent, confessional,
and private, the walls are there, but
the furniture has changed, thanks
and to the times
note that Elizabeth Barrett Browning
then, unfettered love poems to her
famous poet, who was remaining
nevertheless, in his own work, more
emotionally punctilious
I noted as well that the tempo in the
second movement, one of the most
beautiful adagios ever, surely,
lurches into an intemperate rebellion,
a second rhythm, up against the earlier
mournful resignation of the poignant
lament – note, in passing, that its
stress of the dominant note is on the
last beat not the first, like a weight
that becomes, at every inching
forward, intolerable, a very path to a
personal Calvary – before returning
to that very fateful, though luminous,
initial, stricken dirge
the next movement, the scherzo, does
the reverse, fast, then slow, then fast
again, to give the work in its entirety
eight rather than the four traditional
tempi
the piece now has episodes, rather
than merely a clockwork display,
drama has replaced the dance
entirely as the subtext for music
Schubert died two weeks after its
publication, for your info, I think
his soul had been talking
R ! chard
psst: there’s a magical film I associate
production, about several elderly
ladies who get stuck in the
wilderness after their tour bus
breaks down in the middle of
nowhere
you’ll never forget it
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