Two weeks ago, I told you that Die Stadt could give us a clue about the music we missed due to Schubert’s early death. Back then, I told you it was a strange and fascinating song, just that. Not even the poet, Heine, or the performers, Thomas Quasthoff and Justus Zeyen. That article was already long enough to add even one or two more paragraphs and I thought I'd rather tell you more about the song in another post.

When people talk about what Franz Grillparzer called Schubert's "fairer hopes", that music he couldn’t write, we usually refer to the modernity of some of the works he wrote during his last year, such as the three piano sonatas or Heine's songs. We could add some other ones written before which anticipate some decades other [...].

 

"O is for orchestra? But you shared just a few songs with orchestra!" Well, that's the point. I realized when I chose the letter, and thought that our alphabetalphabet would give me a chance for self-examination. To begin with, how many different kinds of songs with orchestra are there? Let's see.

There are orchestral songs, without piano version (as far as I know). So my only options are to share them and not to share them. Of course, I share them, but, in fact, there aren't so many... For example, we listened to one of the Ernest Bloch's Poèmes d'Automne, or Richard Strauss' Hymnus. Then we have the songs with two versions simultaneously published, with piano and with orchestral accompaniment; That meaning mostly Mahler [...]

 

Little is known about the relationship between Schubert and Wagner. Over the years, the apple of my eyes learnt to overcome his shyness to some extent, but Wagner’s overwhelming personality was a tough test for him. They might have met several times; as I said last week, maybe Schubert also attended that 1863 meeting where Brahms and Wagner were first introduced, although they didn’t become friends, they kept in mutual respect and admiration. Schubert gave opera up very early, demotivated by the cold reception his works have. Despite being told that he only needed a good libretto, he suspected that the main problem was another: he used to compose German opera, while the audience wanted Italian opera (and then he smiled, remembering his good master Salieri). No doubt many Italian operas with absurd libretti were really successful in Vienna! So, after his [...]

 

Franz Schubert died on 19 November 1883 and this week we're commemorating on Liederabend the 134th anniversary of his death. He was 86 years old, and he passed away quietly, as he had always sung in his Lieder: he took a nap after having lunch and death took him in his arms to rest after a long and worthwhile life. From that inner circle of friends, he used to gather with during his youth, only two of them were still with him: Anton Stadler, his friend since his boarding school times, who died five years later, and Eduard Bauernfeld, who died in 1890. The rest had already died; the dearest Franz Schober, just one year earlier. Grillparzer, too; someone else should write his epitaph.

 

If I ask you the names of Italian composers, it's easy, isn't it? If I ask you Italian composers not known because of their operas... not that easy. And what about Italian song composers? Well, it's becoming increasingly difficult... But we all know Italian song composers! The 19th-century Italian salons weren't unaware of that fashionable entertainment and the most important opera composers (Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini or Verdi) wrote some romanze di salotto, clearly of operatic inspiration, to be performed by amateur singers and pianists with some technical background; Towards the end of the century, the canzone napoletane, originally traditional song, also became parlour songs.