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About the Music

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Octet in F Major, D. 803
Instrumentation: Scored for clarinet, bassoon, horn, two violins, viola, and double bass
Composed: 1824
Duration: 1 hour

A theatrical failure, at least in part, was responsible for the gem you will hear today. For all Schubert’s natural ability, writing for the stage produced constant musical disappointment. Like his musical idol, Beethoven, Schubert also tried his hand at writing for the stage. And as with his idol, each of these attempts proved unsuccessful. Beethoven stubbornly worked and reworked a single opera, to little avail, while Schubert failed with some twenty different works! The 1823 production of the play Rosemunde, for which Schubert had written the incidental music, was the last straw. Although the work’s failure was due to the poor quality of the play, and not Schubert’s music, the experience confirmed what Schubert had long suspected about writing for the stage.

It was shortly after this recent failure, that Schubert received a commission from Count Ferdinand Troyer for a companion piece to Beethoven’s popular Septet (performed by ProMusica several seasons back). Though he was a nobleman, Count Troyer was also a gifted clarinetist, well-known in Vienna. Schubert met the Count and the noted violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, the latter of whom worked closely with Beethoven, at the home of friends. Coming on the heels of his Rosamunde disappointment, the timing proved fortuitous, and as a consequence of these new associates, Schubert abandoned the stage and threw himself into the world of chamber music. In the span of just a few months, between February and March 1824, Schubert dispatched three of his most brilliant chamber works, string quartets in A minor and D minor (“Death and the Maiden”) and an octet. Among those playing the Octet’s private premiere, which took place at the Count’s estate, were Troyer himself, Schuppanzigh, and the cellist Joseph Linke, another musician closely bound up with Beethoven’s chamber music. Sadly, the work was only performed one other time during Schubert’s all-too-brief lifetime, in 1827 (the last of the composer’s thirty-one years), at a concert given by Schuppanzigh in the Hall of the Musikverein.

What Troyer had in mind was a composition similar in nature to Beethoven’s Septet of 1800, so it is unsurprising how similar in design Schubert’s complimentary work turned out. Schubert did add a single violin to the mix, but the number of movements remained identical to Beethoven’s six-movement score (albeit the minuet and Scherzo have changed places). Additionally, the outer movements of both compositions open with slow introductions, and each work contains a set of variations and an expansive slow movement. Naturally, there were also substantial differences, both within and outside of the physical score. Beethoven’s Septet experienced great popularity and was published within two years after its completion. Schubert’s Octet had to wait over a quarter-century for its publication, and even then, it was released in incomplete form; absent were both the Minuet and the breathtaking Theme and Variations. It was only with its subsequent publication in 1875 that the Octet appeared in its entirety.

There are two other significant differences among the compositions. The most obvious is length—the Beethoven lasts approximately forty minutes, while Schubert’s score requires a good hour to perform. Second are their respective natures. Beethoven’s music is steeped in the Classical world of his forebearers. It is light fare, meant to appeal to the masses. It succeeded so well, overshadowing many of his other scores, that Beethoven is reported to have regretted composing the work at all! But it is Schubert’s composition that feels most like the man behind the pen and manuscript paper. Of all the composers associated with Vienna, Schubert was the only one born there, and throughout the Octet, one truly senses the man. Schubert biographer Maurice Brown wrote, “In some ways, the world of the Octet gives us Schubert’s world more truly than anything else he wrote…Schubert’s everyday Vienna: his bohemianism, his sociability, his exuberance, his easy-going ‘bonhomie’; glimpses of the streets and fair-grounds of the city about him; a hint of the theatre, a snatch of song from the coffeehouse and beer-garden; and all conveyed together with the sudden inspirational flash when the poetry and picturesqueness of life in Vienna burn for a moment in his music.” To convey his world so thoroughly, Schubert required the better part of an hour of his listeners’ time.

It would be futile, or even impossible, to attempt to whittle such a majestic work down to a few pithy sentences. Nevertheless, it seems worth drawing attention to a few of the Octet’s seemingly infinite details. Located roughly at the center point of the composition are the aforementioned Theme and Variations (Andante), the theme of which is drawn from the eighteen-year-old Schubert’s two-act Singspiel Die Freunde von Salamanca. Unsurprisingly, this opera went unperformed during Schubert’s lifetime and seldom has it been staged since. Rather than let the melody stagnate any longer, Schubert spun this square-ish tune into a stunning set of variations. The movement’s impressive mix of instrumental combinations alone amply reflects the composer’s undeniable genius. The Adagio that precedes it is a soliloquy of sorts for clarinet and violin, albeit every instrument gets its due. This is Schubert at his lyrical best, and its endearing intimacy easily invokes images of such music being played in the drawing room of Schubert’s friends, where much of his chamber music and many of his songs came to life during his day. The Scherzo (Allegro vivace), with its vigorous dotted rhythms, suggests an energetic 3/4-time country dance, and is offset by the gentler motion of the Ländler-inspired character at the movement’s center. By contrast, the Menuetto (Allegretto), located after the Theme and Variations, is far more nuanced, capturing Schubert’s wistful world and distancing itself from the stately (and often static) minuets common among the composer’s Viennese predecessors.

As previously noted, both of the score’s outer movements commence with slow introductions. The latter is particularly noteworthy for its dark, dramatic nature—the tremolo strings seem to invoke drumrolls, or at the very least an orchestral world that belies the “chamber” essence of the octet (indeed, a work for eight players is the largest chamber work Schubert ever conceived). It would be folly to read too much into this gripping introduction. Still, coming amidst an otherwise highly spirited work, one nevertheless imagines Schubert being forced to accept the realization that his health was in serious jeopardy. Symptoms of syphilis had appeared two years previously. In 1824, during the very period that produced the Octet, Schubert penned the following words:

I feel myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, a man whose most brilliant hopes have perished, to whom love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain, whose enthusiasm for all things beautiful is gone, and I ask you, is he not a miserable, unhappy being? Each night, on retiring to bed, I hope I may not wake again, and each morning but recall yesterday’s grief.

The Octet, then, provides but a fleeting glimpse into the darker musical realms that Schubert often evoked in the time remaining to him. Yet, like both Mozart and Beethoven, he also possessed the almost miraculous ability to operate beyond his immediate concerns and conceive of infinitely beautiful, inspiring, and uplifting music. Such is the case with the Octet, a perfect blend of imagination, formal and harmonic command, and unsurpassed lyrical gifts.

(c) Marc Moskovitz
marcmoskovitz.org