Interior of the Gewandhaus concert hall, 1845, location of the premiere of the Great C Major Symphony / Illustrirte Zeitung, 19. April 1845, p. 253  

Franz Schubert started at least ten symphonies and completed seven of them. The last completed symphony is known as the Great C Major Symphony to distinguish it from the shorter Sixth Symphony, also in C Major. It has been variously numbered 7, 8, and 9.

None of his symphonies were known in his lifetime. Why? Did the Viennese musical establishment callously neglect the young composer?

Generations of critics leveled that charge. But it seems that Schubert’s own insecurities kept him from even trying to gain an audience for his symphonies until very close to his death.

Aristocrats had long hosted musical performances in their homes. The second decade of the 19^th century saw the educated middle class also hosting musical performances. Much of Schubert’s music received its first performance at the home of one of his friends. These private concerts came to be known as Schubertiade.

The frequent performance of Schubert’s works and their enthusiastic reception contrasts starkly with publishers’ reluctance to issue them. It appears that they preferred to publish music by composers well known as performers. Schubert did not fit that mold.

Schubert and the symphony

Franz Schubert. Detail from a watercolor portrait (1825) / Wilhelm August Rieder.

Schubert’s personal style first appeared in his songs and only over time in his instrumental works. It includes not only great melodic invention but also harmonic complexity, spontaneous modulations, and his own method of expanding melodic and rhythmic ideas.

Schubert composed five symphonies before he turned 20. The Sixth followed shortly afterward. He got to hear them at private performances by his school orchestra, which he sometimes conducted.

These early symphonies absorbed the symphonic styles of Haydn and Mozart, with touches of Schubert’s own emerging style. He did not consider them worthy of public performance.

Schubert started two different symphonies in D major (one in 1818 and one in about 1820) and abandoned them. They remain only as fragments. In 1821, he got farther on a symphony in E major. He sketched out four movements and started to determine the orchestration.

It is this torso that Otto Erich Deutsch called Symphony no. 7 in his catalog of Schubert’s works. Leaving behind the models of Haydn and Mozart, it suggested new directions for symphonic writing. He did not complete any of the movements, however. He seems to have had trouble working out his intended formal structures.

In 1822, he composed and orchestrated two movements of a symphony in B minor and did substantial work on a third movement. This symphony is, of course, the beloved Unfinished Symphony.

For whatever reason, Schubert clearly did not intend to finish it. He gave the manuscript to Josef Hüttenbrenner. Hüttenbrenner gave it to Schubert’s brother Anselm. It remained completely unknown until 1865, when Anselm gave it to the orchestra conductor the Vienna Musikverein. It has been a staple of the repertoire ever since that orchestra’s performance of the two movements in December 1865.

The Great C Major Symphony

Schubert’s manuscript of the Great C Major Symphony bears the date “March 1828.” It was commonly assumed for a long time to be the date that Schubert finished it. He died in November 1828. Later research has determined that Schubert actually began work on it in 1824 or 1825 and finished the orchestration in 1826 In that case, the meaning of the date is unclear.

Schubert began work on this symphony not long after he heard the premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Instead of paralyzing him, it seems to have pointed a new direction for him. His vast structure and manipulation of melodic, rhythmic, and tonal material not only rivals Beethoven but actually quotes the Ode to Joy in the finale.

But where Beethoven built his themes from motivic fragments, Schubert, the quintessential song composer, spins out exquisite melodies. He achieves a structure every bit as powerful as Beethoven’s without ever sounding like an imitation of Beethoven.

Schubert’s orchestration likewise does not use Beethoven’s as a point of departure. Perhaps most notably, Schubert uses trombones in every movement. Also, he gives them thematically significant material instead of using them merely to provide volume.

Early performance history

Not only was the Great C Major Symphony the first one Schubert had actually completed in nearly a decade, it was the first he ever made any attempt to promote.

He had no money to hire an orchestra, but he did send it to the Gesellschaft für Musikfreunde with a dedication. The organization gave him some money and arranged to have parts copied. At some time, its orchestra read through it in rehearsal. It decided it was too long and difficult to work on further.

In 1838 Robert Schumann visited Vienna. Schubert’s brother Ferdinand showed him the manuscript of the Great C Major symphony. Schumann, in turn, gave it to Felix Mendelssohn, who performed it with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra on March 21, 1839.

Schumann’s 1840 review of the symphony famously praises its “heavenly length.” It takes a little more than an hour to perform it if the orchestra takes all the repeats. Few orchestras do these days. For comparison, Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, unusually long for its day, takes about 50 minutes. (His Ninth Symphony is even longer than Schubert’s.)

Schubert’s symphonic innovations

A look at the score suggests that the opening horn solo begins the standard slow introduction of a sonata form, marked Andante. Not quite. The Andante ends with a dotted-eight sixteenth figure. Schubert marked the beginning of the movement proper as Allegro ma non troppo. The meter changes from common time to cut time and the opening figure is dotted quarter and eighth.

In other words, the pulse remains the same and the opening rhythm of the exposition simply continues the closing rhythm of the introduction. The first theme group emerges with neither pause nor transition. And then, instead of the proper G major, the second theme group begins in E minor.

Usually, material from a symphony’s introduction never reappears. Schubert, however, reintroduces the opening horn call in the development, clearly intending it to be heard in the same tempo. That is, since it is in cut time, the notated values appear twice as long as before.

Throughout the symphony, Schubert juxtaposes tonal centers a third apart rather than the traditional fifth. Earlier composers had explored that relationship, but not with the insistence Schubert displays here.

The third movement is especially audacious. In previous symphonies, the minuet or scherzo offered audiences a chance to relax a little before the finale. Schubert marks his movement “scherzo” but provides a full sonata form nearly as long and every bit as intense as the other movements.

Schubert began to sketch another symphony on his deathbed. Suppose he had lived a few years longer and been able to get his late symphonies performed and published. Could he have eclipsed Beethoven and taken his place as the towering figure the next generation feared?

Sources:

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie (Grove Dictionaries of Music, 1980), s.v. “Schubert, Franz” by Maurice J. E. Brown
Schubert, the self-doubting symphonist / Gavin Plumley. Notes to Schubert: the 10 symphonies. Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, conductor. (Symphony no. 9 recorded January 1984). 6-CD set © 2011, Newton Classics 8802033
Schubert: Symphony in C major, D.944, The Great / James M. Keller, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. October 2017