Notes for: August 9, 2011
Virtually every biography of Schubert includes this famous drawing of a schubertiad, a festive party frequently given by Schubert’s friends to hear his most recent work of music.
The scene is a crowded Viennese drawing room. Schubert, rumple-haired and bespectacled, is at the piano. Sitting next to him on the bench, his head thrown back in song, is Johann Michael Vogl, the leading baritone of the day. A large gathering of elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen, clearly the cream of Viennese bourgeois society, is seated or standing about the performers, listening in rapt attention. The atmosphere is intimate, informal and social, the kind of party that we in Maine would love to go to if only we had a Schubert among our acquaintances.
The party shown was typical of the frequent schubertiads that the composer’s friends gave during the final decade of his life, centered on his most recent lieder, chamber works or piano pieces. They were always gala events with the music supplemented by feasting, toasts with punch or Moselle wine, poetry recitations, party games (charades was a favorite) and, for the men only, acrobatic stunts. Following the concert, there was dancing. Schubert, who couldn’t dance, was at the piano. At midnight, those who had the stamina adjourned to a nearby cafe or tavern to continue singing and drinking.
The drawing, entitled “A Schubert Evening at Josef von Spaun’s,” is particularly relevant to the B-flat Major Trio since the work was first performed at a von Spaun-hosted schubertiad. That event, held in January 1828, ten months before Schubert’s death, was an even livelier affair than usual since von Spaun was throwing it in honor of his fiancée. According to the diary of one participant, “Altogether 50 people (attended). We nearly all got tipsy. We danced. Then we nearly all went to Bogner’s (cafe) where we sat on until 2:30.”
The history of the trio following von Spaun’s party is something of a mystery. Schubert’s E-flat major Trio, Op. 100, written about the same time, was performed in public and was published before Schubert’s death. In contrast, the B-flat Major Trio, surely as infectious a piece of music, had no public performance in Schubert’s lifetime, and he never even offered the work to a publisher. After his death, his brother Ferdinand found it buried in a pile of other manuscripts, discarded or forgotten.
When the trio was finally published in 1836, Schumann, who apparently had never heard of it, was unable to contain his enthusiasm. “A glance at Schubert’s trio,” he wrote in the music journal that he edited, “and all miserable human commotion vanishes; the world glows with a new splendor.... Time, though producing much that is beautiful, will not soon produce another Schubert.” Posterity has more than confirmed Schumann’s assessment.
The most compelling characteristic of the trio is its lyrical sweep, its sheer melodic inventiveness. In this regard, few other chamber music works can approach it. In addition, the trio is a showcase for Schubert’s gift for modulation - his changing of keys to vary the presentation, treatment and tone color of his themes. He initially developed this device to underscore the drama in the texts of his lieder, but later used it effectively in his mature instrumental works.
In the case of this trio, there is an almost continuous shifting of tonal gears. Melodic strains are repeated in three or four different keys, each with a different harmonic base, and modulations occur unexpectedly, even abruptly, but almost always ingeniously.
Two modulations, daring even for Schubert, can be cited in the first movement, allegro moderato. The first is at the introduction of the second theme: The three instruments trumpet the key of A major, and the cello, playing alone, intones the note A. Before the listener can say schubertiad, the cello, still on A, has embarked on the second theme in the key of F major.
The second example is at the start of the recapitulation: The closing of the development prepares us for the return of the buoyant first theme in B-flat. But there is a sudden switch in harmony and we hear the melody first in G-flat, then in D-flat, before the piano quietly takes it up in B-flat where it belongs.
These subtle changes in harmonic dress are used with equal dexterity in the other movements - in the warm, lyrical slow movement, andante un poco mosso, with its great flowing melody; in the impish yet graceful scherzo, allegro, whose middle section suggests a landler or Austrian country dance; and in the final rondo, allegro vivace, where Schubert piles modulation on modulation for an unusually long movement, a full 653 measures.
Notes for: August 6, 2024
Benjamin Britten called the last year and a half of Schubert’s life arguably “the richest and most productive eighteen months in our music history.” Despite being in the painful final throes of the disease that soon would kill him, during this period Schubert wrote some of his sunniest works, including his great B Flat Major Piano Trio. It is one of his most radiant compositions, overflowing with the rich harmonies, ingratiating melodies, and rhythmic inventiveness that make Schubert’s work instantly recognizable. Schumann later said of it, “One glance at Schubert’s Trio and all the troubles of our human existence disappear, and all the world is fresh and bright again.” Yet during his lifetime it was performed only once, privately, at the apartment of a friend who was celebrating his recent engagement.
The first movement, Allegro moderato, opens warmly and convivially, with an airy first theme introduced by the strings playing in unison. After the piano joins in and this first theme is expanded, the cello sings out a lovely, lyrical second theme. A typically leisurely development section ends with a striking example of Schubert’s adventurous harmonies: In a surprising modulation, he begins the apparent recapitulation with the violin playing not in the expected key of B-Flat Major, but in the unexpected key of G-Flat Major. After a few more false starts, the music winds its way back to a proper recapitulation in the opening key.
Schubert’s melodies don’t get any more beguiling than the one with which the cello begins the Andante second movement. The violin and the cello trade this melody back and forth before the piano introduces a second theme at the start of a more agitated middle section, after which the three instruments recapture the enchantment of the opening with restatements of the first melody. Like the second movement, the playful, contrapuntal third is vintage Schubert, a witty Scherzo built on two of Vienna’s most popular dances, the ländler and the waltz. Schubert called the Finale a rondo, but it is really a hybrid that mixes rondo with sonata form. Instead of the theme being repeated between contrasting episodes, it is “put through a variety of hoops,” as Brian Newbould puts it – including a wonderful moment at the start of the development section when Schubert shifts from 2/4 time to a three-beat bar, a metrical joke that he repeats in the exuberant coda.
Alfred Einstein pointed out that the opening theme of the Finale recalls an earlier Schubert song, “Skolie,” which includes the verse, “Let us, in the bright May morning, take delight in the brief life of the flower, before its fragrance disappears.” It is a fitting sentiment for a work so filled with delights.