Early Romantics Festival, Concert 1

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

Notturno in E‑flat major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, D. 897
Of Schubert’s two great piano trios, the first, in B‑flat, has always been a mystery; we can be reasonably sure only that he composed it before the second, in E‑flat. But the manuscript (which might have been dated or provided other evidence from the paper or handwriting) is lost, and the only clue we have to its creation is an Adagio movement that Schubert apparently composed for the trio and then replaced, leaving the discarded movement as a separate work called Notturno.

The Notturno contains an extended middle section based on an unusual rhythm involving silence on the second beat of a 3/4 bar after a strong downbeat. There is a legend that Schubert got this idea from listening to a work song sung by a group of pile‑drivers while he was on vacation in Gastein in the summer of 1825: the rhythmic silence in each movement presumably marks the unison fall of the sledgehammers. It is a charming story, one that has been used to date the B‑flat trio that Schubert apparently was working on at that time.

Alas for such inventive myths! Recent studies of the paper on which Schubert’s music was written have begun to clarify questions of chronology. Schubert wrote the Notturno on paper of a type that he used between October 1827 and April 1828, more than two years after his Gastein vacation. Since it is not likely that Schubert would have treasured a musical brainstorm for so long before working it into a finished composition, it is far more probable that pile‑drivers had nothing whatsoever to do with this orphaned chamber piece, which remains as another example of Schubert’s prolific lyricism.

Die Forelle for Voice and Piano, D. 550
Schubert set a 1782 poem about a trout by Christian Friedrich Schubart sometime around the spring of 1817 (though the first draft of his music is lost).  Die Forelle is a splendid example of the composer’s ability to turn a smug, moralizing poem into a great song, partly by omitting the final stanza of text (which rather pointedly admonishes young girls to avoid men with rods!), but mostly through the invention of a melody that has the directness of folksong, and of a richly pictorial accompaniment.  As the simple tale unfolds, the subtle changes in harmony and accompaniment for the third verse lift this song far above the level of a series of repeated strophes.  Schubert clearly recognized the “hit” potention of Die Forelle, and he therefore chose to use the tune as the basis of a set of variation in the “Trout” Quintet—which is, in turn, perhaps his single best-loved piece of chamber music.

Der Hirt auf dem Felsen in B-flat major for Soprano, Clarinet and Piano, D. 965
Schubert composed Der Hirt auf dem Felsen in October 1828, just one month before his death at the age of thirty-one. It was conceived as a showpiece for the gifted soprano Anna Milder-Hauptmann, whom he had hoped to persuade to sing in an opera that he intended to write. (She had already performed his music successfully and had toured with Erlkönig.) In the end the opera was never written, and this vocal chamber work was not given to the singer until after the composer's death.

Schubert chose a text by Wilhelm Müller (the author of the poems for Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise) but had some slight adjustments made in the middle portion of the poem by Wilhelmine von Chézy (she had earlier provided the libretto for Weber's Euryanthe and the play Rosamunde, for which Schubert had written incidental music). The close expressive fit of music to words, the graceful vocal lines, and evocative echoes between the voice and clarinet (suggesting the echo that the poet discerns arising from the distant valley) have made Der Hirt auf dem Felsen enormously popular as a pastoral expression of seasonal solitude and subsequent delight in the coming of spring.

                                                                                               
Quintet in A major for Piano and Strings, Opus 114
During the summer of 1819, Schubert took a vacation trip with his friend Johann Michael Vogl to Linz and Steyr, in Upper Austria. Schubert was delighted to discover that his host in Steyr had eight daughters, “almost all pretty,” as he wrote his brother. “You can see that there is plenty to do.”

In addition to being decorative, the girls were also musical, and many evenings were spent performing Schubert’s songs and piano pieces. One particularly favored song, Die Forelle (“The Trout”), composed two years earlier, was so popular at these parlor concerts that when a local amateur cellist of some means, Sylvester Paumgartner, commissioned a quintet from Schubert for the same performing ensemble as Hummel’s Opus 87—piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass—he specifically requested a set of variations on Die Forelle as one of the movements.

The work that resulted has long been Schubert’s most popular chamber composition. It is neither his most dramatic nor his most far‑reaching, but certainly one of his most lovable (and that is saying a lot!). In a letter to his brother during this vacation, Schubert wrote, “The country round Steyr is unimaginably lovely.” The companionship was pleasant, too, and Schubert always delighted in casual music‑making. All of these pleasures, natural and social, seem to have been captured in this frank and open‑hearted score. So much satisfaction did he find in his circumstances and his composing that he produced not the usual four movements, but five.

The triplet figure stated by the piano at the very beginning of the opening Allegro dominates the entire movement, bubbling along as a foil to the lyrical theme presented immediately after in the strings.
The Andante exploits a typically Schubertian indolence—laying out its slow‑movement sonata‑form plan (i.e., one without a development section), in such a way that the second half is simply a repetition of the first half at a different level, calculated to end in the home key. Thus, a tranquil first theme in F major moves, with increasing decoration, to the second in the relatively bright key of D; an immediate restatement in the unexpected key of A‑flat major proceeds in as nearly literal a repetition as possible to bring the second material back in the home key of F.
The Scherzo is vigorous and propulsive, becoming only slightly more relaxed in the Trio.

The fourth movement, based on Die Forelle, is by far the best‑known section of the quintet. Schubert’s original song might conceivably have been a folksong imitation (if one considers only the opening stanzas), but when the poet described the trickery by which the fisherman finally catches the wily trout, the composer wrote a more elaborate, expressively modulatory stanza. For the variation set, however, Schubert chose to use only the version of the tune that might be considered most like folksong. The theme—a simple harmonization of the tune in D major—is presented in strings alone; then the first three variations place it progressively in the treble (piano), a middle voice (viola) and bass (cello), while the other parts add increasingly lavish ornamentation. The fourth variation turns to a stormy D minor, which in turn leads to the most far‑reaching of the variations, beginning in B‑flat and hinting at far harmonic vistas before returning irresistibly to D major for the final Allegretto, which is also the only variation in the entire set to use the familiar piano figure that was so much a part of the original song.

The closing movement is lively and exceedingly simple, once more creating its second half by copying the first half at a pitch level designed to return to the home key of A major at the end. A slightly martial character in the main theme yields finally to the bubbling triplets that had played so important a role in the first two movements as well.

© Steven Ledbetter  (www.stevenledbetter.com)