Schubert's chamber music: before and after Beethoven

Abstract

Secretly, in my heart of hearts, I still hope to be able to make something of myself, but who can do anything after Beethoven? Schubert to Josef von Spaun (SMF128) Schubert was not born into a family of professional musicians, as were Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. As a result, he was never expected to become a virtuoso, never wrote a full-fledged concerto, and showed relatively little interest in composing for virtuosos. Instead his family made music together; and for much of his life Schubert's compositions (songs, dances, four-hand piano music, but also most of his chamber and orchestral music) were written for Liebhaber, lovers of music, amateurs. When, near the end of his life, he was asked by the publisher of his E flat Piano Trio, Op. 100 (D929), to name a dedicatee, his response was: “This work is dedicated to nobody, save those who find pleasure in it” ( SDB 796). Nor did he consort with the best musicians of his day, those at the cutting edge of contemporary music (i.e. the players promoting the music of Beethoven) until relatively late in his career. When he did, the result was a series of masterpieces: his last three string quartets, the Octet, the Piano Trios in B flat and E flat, and the String Quintet in C Major, to name only the chamber works of his last five years (1824–28). But these impressive compositions rest on a considerable body of earlier chamber music, and to understand the mature Schubert, it is vital to recognize that before he wrote his first large group of successful songs (1814–16) he had already completed at least twelve string quartets and a string quintet. A case can be made that Schubert, the master of the Lied, was as indebted to his experience with instrumental music as was Mozart, the master of opera, to his experience writing instrumental compositions.

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