History AwesomeMusic / FranzSchubert

** Schubert's first six symphonies were works of his youth, and the first classic among them is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4Oxnf0Q20c No.4 in C minor]] (''Tragic''), written when he was just 19. Highlights include the clouds of minor key gloom in the first and last movements parting for their respective major key codas and a minuet that is surprisingly dark given its major key and makes extensive use of hemiolas to fool the listener into thinking it is in 3/2 rather than 3/4.

** The mammoth [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yyw5OHUDHh4 "Great" C major symphony]][[note]] So nicknamed to distinguish it from Schubert's other symphony in C major (No.6, the "Little" C major), as there is no consensus on how Schubert's symphonies after No.6 should be numbered. Besides the B minor and "Great" C major symphonies, there is a symphony in E major that was sketched to completion but only very partially scored. George Grove assigned No.7 to the E major, No.8 to the B minor, and No.9 to the "Great" C major after a visit to Vienna in 1867, but Johannes Brahms, in contributing to Breitkopf & Härtel's edition for the centenary of Schubert's birth, only numbered finished symphonies, making the "Great" C major No.7, while the B minor was appended as No.8. The current version of Otto Deutsch's catalogue of Schubert's works skips the E major, assigning No.7 to the B minor and No.8 to the "Great" C major; this numbering is favoured in German-speaking countries, while Grove's numbering is the most popular in English-speaking countries. Confused yet?[[/note]] is the apex of Schubert's orchestral works, packing countless memorable melodies and clever harmonies into nearly an hour of music, a duration that inspired Music/RobertSchumann, who was instrumental in getting the symphony onto the concert stage for the first time courtesy of his friend Music/FelixMendelssohn (as conductor of Leipzig's Gewandhaus Orchestra), to write of its "heavenly length".[[note]] Indeed, the nickname "Great" is now regarded as a nod to the symphony's magnitude and majesty rather than simply a distinction from Schubert's other C major symphony. The premiere was a resounding success, with the audience applauding each movement, but not everyone was convinced the length or the treatment of the material was a positive; the orchestra initially contracted to give the symphony its London premiere in 1842 laughed it out of rehearsals, while fifty years later, Creator/GeorgeBernardShaw infamously said that "a more exasperatingly brainless composition was never put on paper."[[/note]] The horn melody-led introduction to the first movement is a sweeping epic on its own, and the magnification of its main theme in the coda is a masterstroke. The oboe-led slow march of the second movement boasts some of Schubert's most captivating harmonic transitions, particularly in the lead-in to the recapitulation. The third movement scherzo, unusually long by the standards of the day yet never starved for new ideas, set the standard for Romantic symphonies (such as those of [[Music/AntonBruckner Bruckner]], [[Creator/JohannesBrahms Brahms]], and [[Music/GustavMahler Mahler]]) in which the scherzo is so much more than just a breather between the slow movement and finale. And the finale ties up the ideas of the entire symphony in a mood of pure exuberance, and finds time to subtly reference the finale of [[Music/LudwigVanBeethoven Beethoven]]'s Symphony No.9 along the way.

* The song cycle ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh1Ky7gj4vw Winterreise]]'', a set of interconnected songs about a young man journeying alone in winter and reflecting on the purpose of life. The bleak, haunting mood will be [[TearJerker sure to choke you up]], even more when you consider this was the last piece Schubert completed before his early death.

** [[http://www.nfb.ca/film/erlKing Erlkonig]]. Dark, whimsical, and completely menacing.

* Schubert's last three piano sonatas are often pointed to as examples of how Schubert was fast catching up with Beethoven as a master of the form, and may have overtaken him had he not died aged 31.[[note]] For comparison, when Beethoven was 31, the sonatas published as Nos.21-32 were still ahead of him.[[/note]] The agitated [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltvKcZ9U5QA No.19 in C minor]] bookends a charming slow movement and a tense minuet with two storms very much in the mould of Beethoven's ''Pathétique'' sonata in the same key. The heroic [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EClFYa3APA8 No.20 in A major]] is ingeniously tied off with a neat bow when the chord progression in the opening measures of the first movement recurs near the end of the finale. And the easy-going [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbJtHzaFpBQ No.21 in B-flat major]] is perhaps the greatest piano sonata composed between Beethoven's last sonata and Liszt's B minor sonata, with all four movements, especially the epic-length first (over 20 minutes with repeats in most recordings and performances), packed with Schubert's signature songlike melodies and unexpected harmonic shifts.[[note]] If you found the different numbering systems for Schubert's symphonies difficult to follow, you'd find the different numbering systems for his piano sonatas even more so! The numbers included here are the most widely used.[[/note]]

* The song cycle ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8UDOmUcxCk Winterreise]]'', a set of interconnected songs about a young man journeying alone in winter and reflecting on the purpose of life. The bleak, haunting mood will be [[TearJerker sure to choke you up]], even more when you consider this was the last piece Schubert completed before his early death.

** The ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE1WoMocTlw Ave Maria]]'', memorably used as the concluding piece in the original ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'' and a recurring theme in the ''VideoGame/{{Hitman}}'' series of games, is one of the loveliest vocal pieces ever composed - whether it uses the words of the ''Ave Maria'' prayer or the original German words as "Ellens dritter Gesang" ("Ellen's third song"), the sixth of Schubert's seven settings of excerpts from a translated version of Creator/WalterScott's epic poem ''The Lady of the Lake''.

** The ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE1WoMocTlw Ave Maria]]'', memorably used as the concluding piece in the original ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'', is one of the loveliest vocal pieces ever composed - whether it uses the words of the ''Ave Maria'' prayer or the original German words as "Ellens dritter Gesang" ("Ellen's third song"), the sixth of Schubert's seven settings of excerpts from a translated version of Creator/WalterScott's epic poem ''The Lady of the Lake''.

* The song cycle ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8UDOmUcxCk Winterreise]]'', a set of interconnected songs about a young man journeying alone in winter and reflecting on the purpose of life. The bleak, haunting mood will be [[TearJerker sure to choke you up]], even more when you consider this was the last piece Schubert completed before his early AuthorExistenceFailure.

** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR43Ti4w5MM "Wanderer" Fantasy in C major]] is Schubert's most technically demanding composition,[[note]] Indeed, it was beyond Schubert's own capabilities; after an attempt to play the final pages went badly wrong, he broke down and shouted, "Let the devil play the stuff!"[[/note]] a twenty-minute epic in one movement with four subsections, the second of which lends the fantasy its nickname as it builds a set of variations on his earlier ''lied'' "Der Wanderer"; the fact that Schubert preserves its original key of C-sharp minor (finishing in E major) requires one of his typically unexpected harmonic shifts, and he then climbs up via two major thirds across a playful scherzo to return to C major in time for a gargantuan fugal finale that brings back the opening theme in style.
** The Impromptus, gathered in two collections of four books each, show just how awesome Schubert could be while still sounding as though he was making the pieces up as he went along.
*** The first impromptu from the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRjKo0QEIuI Op.90]] book is an extended set of variations that ultimately leads from C minor solemnity to C major tranquility. The second impromptu alternates between a fluid theme that darkens from E-flat major to E-flat minor and a stormy theme in B minor; unusually, the minor mode emerges triumphant in the final measures to set up the third impromptu in G-flat major (relative major of E-flat minor), a lyrical serenade with harplike accompaniment that reminds us of Schubert's outstanding gift for melodic writing. And the A-flat major impromptu that closes the set nominally opens in the minor as its cascading right hand arpeggios provide sublime accompaniment to vocal melodies in the left hand.
*** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0T0q99wP-w Op.142]] book is sometimes thought to have been originally conceived as a sonata, as the first and fourth impromptus are both in F minor, though they were more likely simply intended as a continuation of the previous set. The first impromptu is almost Beethovenian in its dark intensity, a startling contrast from the lyrical minuet and ''moto perpetuo'' triplet-led trio of the second impromptu in A-flat major. The heart of the set is the third impromptu in B-flat major, a set of variations of increasing ornamentation on a songlike theme that resembles a melody from the incidental music to ''Rosamunde''. The technically demanding, hemiola-dominated fourth impromptu provides a suitably stormy bookend to the set.

* Easily the grandest of Schubert's compositions for piano four hands is the mammoth [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzjYQuDPi9Q Fantasy in F minor.]] Like the "Wanderer" fantasy, it is an a single twenty-minute movement with four subsections and only shifts away from its home key by a semitone for the slow second section in F-sharp minor, in which it remains for the vivacious scherzo section before a harsh return to F minor for the impassioned fugal finale. The last measures, in which Schubert resolves the duality of the two themes on which most of the preceding twenty minutes have been built, represent one of his most ingenious conclusions.