Concerts & Tickets

Programme note

Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828)
Symphony No 3 in D major, D200 (1815)

Adagio maestoso – Allegro con brio
Allegretto
Menuetto: Vivace
Presto vivace

If Schubert’s “heavenly lengths,” a description coined by Robert Schumann, represent the mature side of his genius, what are we to say about that brilliant teenage feat of compression, the Symphony No 3? Clearly it is not a masterpiece in the same sense as the 'Great' C major Symphony, but a masterpiece it undoubtedly is, driven by the same sort of irresistible energy as would propel the later symphony to its close. Even to hail it as a stepping stone to that tremendous outpouring of genius is scarcely enough, for the Symphony No 3 is tremendous in its own right. Its very directness, from the ominously hammered-out sonorities of the slow introduction to the swerving tarantella-like finale, guarantees its success. In a good performance, the thrust of its first movement and finale should be like a galvanic force, unimpeded by the sweetness of the slow movement (which is a short and lightweight allegretto rather than a full-blown andante or adagio) or by the bouncingly jovial minuet.

The work could be described as a domestic symphony, though not in the same way as Richard Strauss’s Sinfonia Domestica. It is not about Schubert’s home life, though in one respect it comes close to that by being written for a Viennese neighbourhood orchestra, which had steadily grown from a family string quartet – with young Schubert himself as viola player - into something bigger, containing about twenty strings, along with woodwind, brass, and drums. These players gathered regularly to perform new music chez Schubert, or in larger premises owned by friends and acquaintances.

By the time he was eighteen, Schubert was already a prolific composer. Of the thousand-or-so pieces he had produced by the end of his short life, more than half were written before he was 21. But though his first symphonies were based on Viennese tradition as he knew it – with Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven among his models - their flavour was already recognisably Schubertian, so much so that the main theme of the first movement of the Third Symphony is almost identical to that of the first movement of the Great C major.

Yet, supreme melodist though he was, Schubert knew that symphonic themes did not have to be melodic – this one is confined to rhythm and harmony, and is in no way obviously “tuneful.” But the slow movement, with its gently ambling opening theme on strings and woodwind and its even more engaging successor on clarinet, is all melody. The minuet, fast enough to be a Beethoven scherzo, is characterised by its leaping offbeat accents and its songlike central trio section, with prominent woodwind. The racy finale, like the first movement, sticks almost entirely to a single extended melody - an obsessively hurtling dance of a sort Schubert would employ later in the finale of his Death and the Maiden quartet and that of his G major quartet, D887.

Shortly before his early death, Schubert decided that he needed a lesson in counterpoint from Simon Sechter, the Viennese pedagogue who reputedly composed a fugue a day and later became Bruckner’s teacher. The lesson, despite its sense of Viennese continuity, hardly seemed necessary. Schubert was by then in full command of his genius. His grasp of structure, as demonstrated by his last works, was already (at a time when Bruckner was still a three-year-old child) on a Brucknerian scale. Sechter had nothing to teach him.

© Conrad Wilson

Programme note

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 3 in E flat, 'Eroica' (1806)

Allegro con brio
Marcia funebre: Adagio assai
Scherzo – Allegro vivace
Finale – Allegro molto

"I live only in my notes, and with one work barely finished, the other is already started; the way I write now I often find myself working on three, four things at the same time."

— Ludwig van Beethoven

While still writing the Second Symphony, Beethoven started on his Third, another work from that dark Heiligenstadt Testament year (though any connection to Beethoven’s personal struggle with deafness has been utterly eclipsed by the story of its dedication).

For Beethoven, this symphony was Revolutionary as well as revolutionary. The original title page simply read 'Buonaparte' at the top and 'Luigi van Beethoven' at the foot. Beethoven’s admiration for the Corsican was no secret, which must have been a little risky. After all, he lived in the heart of the Hapsburg Empire, whose dominions were deeply threatened by all that Napoleon represented. And, in spite of his 'republican' passions, he was highly dependent on the goodwill of aristocrats. This very symphony had its earliest try-out performances at a private concert in a grand ballroom of a grand palace, in the heart of reactionary Vienna.

Beethoven’s respect for Bonaparte was famously dashed when the Corsican proclaimed himself emperor. Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven’s friend, reports:

"...[Beethoven] flew into a rage and cried out: 'Is he too, then, nothing more than an ordinary human being? Now he, too, will trample on all the rights of man and indulge only his ambition. He will exalt himself above all others, become a tyrant!' "

Ries goes on to say that Beethoven then ripped the title page of this piece in two and threw it on the floor. Ries, like many of Beethoven’s friends, was apt to dramatise his recollections, but we have further evidence of Beethoven’s disappointment. Writing to the publisher Hoffmeister in 1802, he responded indignantly to a suggestion that he write a "Revolutionary" sonata:

Well, perhaps at the time of the revolutionary fever such a thing might have been possible, but now, when everything is trying to slip back into the old rut, now that Bonaparte has concluded his Concordat with the Pope – to write a sonata of that kind?

Yet Beethoven did not definitively change the symphony’s dedication until 1806, when orchestral parts were finally published. Perhaps a lingering nostalgia for what Bonaparte had once represented stayed his hand.

‘Eroica’ undoubtedly is the most apt title for the piece. It encapsulates not only the spirit of the times and Napoleonic Europe, but also the extent of Beethoven’s musical achievement. The scale and ambition of this piece set it apart from anything he (or anyone else) had previously written. The form of the classical symphony he had inherited from Haydn and Mozart is easily recognisable, but with a drama and sense of conflict that go far beyond their work. He freely embraces ugliness as well as beauty, coarseness as well as great refinement, violence as well as concord, brute force as well as masterly craftsmanship. His instrumental palate – enriched by three horns instead of the usual two – is astounding, full of martial effects and the generous use of timpani and brass. With this work, Beethoven paved the way for Romantic-era composers Schumann, Bruckner and Mahler, and redefined what 'symphony' meant.

Igor Stravinsky, of all people, was flattered to note that some listeners had drawn a parallel between the opening notes of his pivotal 20th-century work, Rite of Spring, and the ‘Eroica’. Few works in the history of music are considered more significant and revolutionary than these two.

© Svend Brown