Portrait of Franz Schubert. Schubert's instrumental works

At the age of eleven, Franz was accepted into the Konvict - the court chapel, where, in addition to singing, he studied playing many instruments and music theory (under the guidance of Antonio Salieri). Leaving the chapel in the city, Schubert got a job as a teacher at a school. He studied mainly Gluck, Mozart and Beethoven. He wrote his first independent works - the opera "Satan's Pleasure Castle" and the Mass in F major - in the city.

Why didn't Schubert complete the symphony?

Sometimes it is difficult for an ordinary person to understand the lifestyle that creative people lead: writers, composers, artists. Their work is of a different kind than that of artisans or accountants.

Franz Schubert, an Austrian composer, lived only 31 years, but wrote more than 600 songs, many beautiful symphonies and sonatas, and a large number of choirs and chamber music. He worked very hard.

But the publishers of his music paid him little. The lack of money haunted him all the time.

The exact date when Schubert composed the Eighth Symphony in B minor (Unfinished) is unknown. It was dedicated to the musical society of Austria, and Schubert presented two parts of it in 1824.

The manuscript lay there for more than 40 years until a Viennese conductor discovered it and performed it at a concert.

It has always remained a mystery to Schubert himself why he did not complete the Eighth Symphony. It seems that he was determined to bring it to its logical conclusion, the first scherzos were completely finished, and the rest were discovered in sketches. From this point of view, the “Unfinished” symphony is a completely finished work, since the circle of images and their development exhausts itself within two parts.

Essays

Octet. Schubert's autograph.

Operas- Alfonso and Estrella (1822; staged 1854, Weimar), Fierabras (1823; staged 1897, Karlsruhe), 3 unfinished, including Count von Gleichen, etc.;
Singspiel(7), including Claudina von Villa Bella (on a text by Goethe, 1815, the first of 3 acts has been preserved; production 1978, Vienna), The Twin Brothers (1820, Vienna), The Conspirators, or Home War (1823; production 1861, Frankfurt am Main);
Music for plays- The Magic Harp (1820, Vienna), Rosamund, Princess of Cyprus (1823, ibid.);
For soloists, choir and orchestra- 7 masses (1814-28), German Requiem (1818), Magnificat (1815), offertories and other wind works, oratorios, cantatas, including Miriam’s Victory Song (1828);
For orchestra- symphonies (1813; 1815; 1815; Tragic, 1816; 1816; Small C major, 1818; 1821, unfinished; Unfinished, 1822; Major C major, 1828), 8 overtures;
Chamber instrumental ensembles- 4 sonatas (1816-17), fantasy (1827) for violin and piano; sonata for arpeggione and piano (1824), 2 piano trios (1827, 1828?), 2 string trios (1816, 1817), 14 or 16 string quartets (1811-26), Trout piano quintet (1819?), string quintet ( 1828), octet for strings and winds (1824), etc.;
For piano 2 hands- 23 sonatas (including 6 unfinished; 1815-28), fantasy (Wanderer, 1822, etc.), 11 impromptu (1827-28), 6 musical moments (1823-28), rondo, variations and others plays, over 400 dances (waltzes, landlers, German dances, minuets, ecosaises, gallops, etc.; 1812-27);
For piano 4 hands- sonatas, overtures, fantasies, Hungarian divertissement (1824), rondos, variations, polonaises, marches, etc.;
Vocal ensembles for male, female voices and mixed compositions with and without accompaniment;
Songs for voice and piano, (more than 600) including the cycles The Beautiful Miller's Wife (1823) and Winter's Journey (1827), the collection Swan Song (1828).

Bibliography

Konen V. Schubert. - ed. 2nd, add. - M.: Muzgiz, 1959. - 304 p. (Most suitable for an initial introduction to the life and work of Schubert)
Wulfius P. Franz Schubert: Essays on Life and Work. - M.: Muzyka, 1983. - 447 pp., ill., notes. (Seven essays on the life and work of Schubert. Contains the most detailed index of Schubert’s works in Russian)
Khokhlov Yu. N. Schubert's songs: Features of style. - M.: Music, 1987. - 302 pp., notes. (The creative method of Schubert is explored based on the material of his songs, and a description of his songwriting is given. Contains a list of more than 130 titles of works about Schubert and his songwriting)
Alfred Einstein: Schubert. Ein musikalisches Portrit, Pan-Verlag, Zrich 1952 (als E-Book frei verfügbar bei http://www.musikwissenschaft.tu-berlin.de/wi)
Peter Gülke: Franz Schubert und seine Zeit, Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 2002, ISBN 3-89007-537-1
Peter Härtling: Schubert. 12 moments musicaux und ein Roman, Dtv, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-13137-3
Ernst Hilmar: Franz Schubert, Rowohlt, Reinbek 2004, ISBN 3-499-50608-4
Kreissle, "Franz Schubert" (Vienna, 1861);
Von Helborn, "Franz Schubert";
Rissé, "Franz Schubert und seine Lieder" (Hannover, 1871);
Aug. Reissmann, “Franz Schubert, sein Leben und seine Werke” (B., 1873);
H. Barbedette, "F. Schubert, sa vie, ses oeuvres, son temps" (P., 1866);
Mme A. Audley, “Franz Schubert, sa vie et ses oeuvres” (P., 1871).

Links

Schubert's Catalog of Works, Unfinished Eighth Symphony (English)
NOTES (!)118.126MB, PDF format Complete collection of Schubert's vocal works in 7 parts in the Sheet Music Archive of Boris Tarakanov
Franz Schubert: Sheet music of works at the International Music Score Library Project

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See what "Franz Schubert" is in other dictionaries:

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Franz Peter Schubert- Franz Peter Schubert Lithograph by Joseph Kriehuber Date of birth January 31, 1797 Place of birth Vienna Date of death ... Wikipedia

Franz Peter Schubert is a great Austrian composer, one of the founders of romanticism in music. He wrote about 600 songs, nine symphonies (including the famous Unfinished Symphony), liturgical music, operas, and a large amount of chamber and solo piano music.

Franz Peter Schubert was born on January 31, 1797 in Lichtenthal (now Alsergrund), a small suburb of Vienna, in the family of a schoolteacher who played music as an amateur. Of the fifteen children in the family, ten died at an early age. Franz showed musical talent very early. From the age of six he studied at a parish school, and his household taught him to play the violin and piano.

At the age of eleven, Franz was accepted into the Konvict - the court chapel, where, in addition to singing, he studied playing many instruments and music theory (under the guidance of Antonio Salieri). Leaving the chapel in 1813, Schubert took a job as a teacher at a school. He studied mainly Gluck, Mozart and Beethoven. He wrote his first independent works - the opera Des Teufels Lustschloss and the Mass in F major - in 1814.

In the field of song, Schubert was a successor to Beethoven. Thanks to Schubert, this genre received an artistic form, enriching the field of concert vocal music. The ballad “The Forest King” (“Erlk?nig”), written in 1816, brought fame to the composer. Soon after it appeared “The Wanderer” (“Der Wanderer”), “Praise of Tears” (“Lob der Thr?nen”), “Zuleika” (“Suleika”) and others.

Of great importance in vocal literature are large collections of Schubert’s songs based on the poems of Wilhelm Müller - “The Beautiful Miller’s Wife” (“Die sch?ne M?llerin”) and “Winter Reise” (“Die Winterreise”), which are, as it were, a continuation of Beethoven’s idea expressed by in the collection of songs “Beloved” (“An die Geliebte”). In all these works Schubert showed remarkable melodic talent and a wide variety of moods; he gave the accompaniment greater meaning, greater artistic meaning. The collection “Swan Song” (“Schwanengesang”) is also remarkable, from which many songs have gained worldwide fame (for example, “St?ndchen”, “Aufenthalt”, “Das Fischerm?dchen”, “Am Meere”). Schubert did not try, like his predecessors, to imitate the national character, but his songs involuntarily reflected the national current, and they became the property of the country. Schubert wrote almost 600 songs. Beethoven enjoyed his songs in the last days of his life. Schubert's amazing musical gift was reflected in the areas of piano and symphony. His fantasies in C major and F minor, impromptu songs, musical moments, and sonatas are proof of his rich imagination and great harmonic erudition. In the string quartet in d-minor, the quintet in c-dur, the piano quartet “Trout” (Forellen Quartett), the large symphony in c-dur and the unfinished symphony in b-minor, Schubert is Beethoven’s successor. In the field of opera, Schubert was not so gifted; although he wrote about 20 of them, they will add little to his fame. Among them, “Der h?usliche Krieg oder die Verschworenen” stands out. Certain numbers of his operas (for example, Rosamund) are quite worthy of a great musician. Of Schubert's numerous church works (masses, offertories, hymns, etc.), the Mass in es major is especially distinguished by its sublime character and musical richness. Schubert's musical productivity was enormous. Beginning in 1813, he composed incessantly.

In the highest circle, where Schubert was invited to accompany his vocal compositions, he was extremely reserved, was not interested in praise and even avoided it; Among his friends, on the contrary, he highly valued approval. The rumor about Schubert's intemperance has some basis: he often drank too much and then became hot-tempered and unpleasant to his circle of friends. Of the operas performed at that time, Schubert liked most of all “The Swiss Family” by Weigel, “Medea” by Cherubini, “John of Paris” by Boieldier, “Cendrillon” by Izouard and especially “Iphigenie in Tauris” by Gluck. Schubert had little interest in Italian opera, which was in great fashion in his time; only “The Barber of Seville” and some passages from Rossini’s “Othello” seduced him. According to biographers, Schubert never changed anything in his compositions, because he did not have it for that time. He did not spare his health and, in the prime of his life and talent, died at the age of 32. The last year of his life, despite his poor health, was especially fruitful: it was then that he wrote a symphony in C major and a mass in es major. During his lifetime he did not enjoy outstanding success. After his death, a mass of manuscripts remained that later saw the light (6 masses, 7 symphonies, 15 operas, etc.).

Schubert Franz Peter - an outstanding Austrian composer; founder of early romanticism; creator of nine famous symphonies. Born on January 31, 1797 in Vienna in the family of an ordinary teacher. At first there were fourteen children in the family, but nine of them died at an early age. During his short life, Schubert wrote about 600 song compositions, many of which are relevant to this day. In creating his own style, he relied primarily on the works of Mozart, Gluck, Haydn and Beethoven.

Since childhood, the boy received a home musical education. In church he learned to play the organ and vocals. Frederick was one of the best singers of the court chapel choir. Salieri himself took him as his student, admiring his beautiful voice and musical gift. At about 13 years old he began to write his first symphony. His first independent works were written in 1814.

By that time he had already been expelled from the choir, as the boy’s voice was breaking. Therefore, young Frederick entered the teachers' seminary, following in his father's footsteps. He devoted all his free time to composing music. The composer's song music was a kind of continuation of Beethoven's style. The year 1815 is considered the most fruitful in his career. During this period he wrote more than a hundred songs, six operas, many symphonies and music for the church.

One of his best songs based on Goethe's poems was written at the end of the same year - “King Earl”. For the cantata “Prometheus” (1816), the composer received his first fee, as it was written to order. Schubert's personal life was unsuccessful. Having met the daughter of a manufacturer, Teresa Grom, who did not stand out in anything remarkable, but loved music very much, young Frederick decided to marry her. However, his income did not allow him to start a family, and Teresa’s mother opposed this marriage.

In 1816, the composer presented to the public a work that brought him long-awaited popularity - “The Forest King”. Subsequently, his famous symphonies appeared one after another. Gradually the composer gained worldwide fame. In the 1820s. he started having health problems. For some time he worked on the estate of Count I. Esterhazy, teaching music to his daughters. The composer spent the last years of his life in Vienna.

He died on November 19, 1828, after a long battle with typhoid fever. The composer has two graves. Initially, in accordance with his last will, he was buried next to his idolized Beethoven at the Wehring cemetery (now Schubert Park), and in 1888 the ashes of both composers were reburied at the Vienna Central Cemetery.

Franz Schubert

creativity composer Schubert

Childhood and years of study. Franz Schubert was born in 1797 in the Vienna suburb of Lichtenthal. His father, a school teacher, came from a peasant family. Mother was the daughter of a mechanic. The family loved music very much and constantly organized musical evenings. His father played the cello, and his brothers played various instruments.

Having discovered musical abilities in little Franz, his father and older brother Ignatz began to teach him to play the violin and piano. Franz had a wonderful voice. He sang in the church choir, performing difficult solo parts. The father was pleased with his son's success.

When Franz was eleven years old, he was assigned to a konvikt - a training school for church singers. The environment of the educational institution was conducive to the development of the boy’s musical abilities. In the school student orchestra, he played in the first violin group, and sometimes even served as conductor.

Already in those years, Schubert began to compose. His first works were fantasia for piano, a number of songs. The young composer writes a lot, with great passion, often to the detriment of other school activities. The boy's outstanding abilities attracted the attention of the famous court composer Salieri, with whom Schubert studied for a year.

Over time, the rapid development of Franz's musical talent began to cause concern in his father. But no prohibitions could delay the development of the boy’s talent.

Years of creative flourishing. For three years he served as an assistant teacher, teaching children literacy and other elementary subjects. But his attraction to music and his desire to compose is becoming stronger. The father's desire to make his son a teacher with a small but reliable income failed. The young composer firmly decided to devote himself to music and left teaching at school. For several years (from 1817 to 1822) Schubert lived alternately with one or the other of his comrades. Some of them (Spaun and Stadler) were friends of the composer from their convict days. The soul of this circle was Schubert. Short, stocky, very short-sighted, Schubert had enormous charm. During meetings, friends got acquainted with fiction, poetry of the past and present.

But sometimes such meetings were devoted exclusively to Schubert’s music; they even received the name “Schubertiad”. On such evenings, the composer did not leave the piano, immediately composing ecosaises, waltzes, landlers and other dances. Many of them remained unrecorded.

The last years of life and creativity. He writes symphonies, piano sonatas, quartets, quintets, trios, masses, operas, a lot of songs and much other music. Having neither funds nor influential patrons, Schubert had almost no opportunity to publish his works.

And yet the Viennese came to know and love Schubert’s music. Like ancient folk songs, passed on from singer to singer, his works gradually gained admirers.

Insecurity and constant failures in life had a serious impact on Schubert's health. At the age of 27, the composer wrote to his friend Schober: “...I feel like an unhappy, insignificant person in the world...” This mood was reflected in the music of the last period. If earlier Schubert created mainly bright, joyful works, then a year before his death he wrote songs, uniting them under the common title “Winterreise”. In 1828, through the efforts of friends, the only concert of his works during Schubert’s lifetime was organized. The concert was a huge success and brought the composer great joy and hope for the future. The end came unexpectedly. Schubert fell ill with typhus, and in the fall of 1828 Schubert died. The remaining property was valued for pennies, and many works were lost. The famous poet of the time, Grillparzer, who had composed Beethoven’s funeral eulogy a year earlier, wrote on the modest monument to Schubert in the Vienna cemetery: “Death buried here a rich treasure, but even more wonderful hopes.”

Major works.

Over 600 songs

9 symphonies (one of them lost)
13 overtures for symphony orchestra
22 piano sonatas

Several collections of pieces and individual dances for piano

8 impromptu
6 “musical moments”

“Hungarian Divertissement” (for piano 4 hands)

Trios, quartets, quintets for various compositions

The first romantic composer, Schubert is one of the most tragic figures in the history of world musical culture. His life, short and uneventful, was cut short when he was in the prime of his strength and talent. He did not hear most of his compositions. The fate of his music was also tragic in many ways. Priceless manuscripts, partly kept by friends, partly donated to someone, and sometimes simply lost in endless travels, could not be put together for a long time. It is known that the “Unfinished” Symphony waited for its performance for more than 40 years, and the C Major Symphony - 11 years. The paths that Schubert discovered in them remained unknown for a long time.

Schubert was a younger contemporary of Beethoven. Both of them lived in Vienna, their work coincides in time: “Margarita at the Spinning Wheel” and “The Forest King” are the same age as Beethoven’s 7th and 8th symphonies, and his 9th symphony appeared simultaneously with Schubert’s “Unfinished”. Only a year and a half separates the death of Schubert from the day of Beethoven's death. Nevertheless, Schubert is a representative of a completely new generation of artists. If Beethoven's work was formed under the influence of the ideas of the Great French Revolution and embodied its heroism, then Schubert's art was born in an atmosphere of disappointment and fatigue, in an atmosphere of the harshest political reaction. It began with the “Congress of Vienna” of 1814-15. Representatives of the states that won the war with Napoleon then united in the so-called. "Holy Alliance", the main goal of which was the suppression of revolutionary and national liberation movements. The leading role in the “Holy Alliance” belonged to Austria, or more precisely to the head of the Austrian government, Chancellor Metternich. It was he, and not the passive, weak-willed Emperor Franz, who actually ruled the country. It was Metternich who was the true creator of the Austrian autocratic system, the essence of which was to suppress any manifestations of free thought in their infancy.

The fact that Schubert spent the entire period of his creative maturity in Metternich's Vienna greatly determined the nature of his art. In his work there are no works related to the struggle for a happy future for humanity. His music has little heroic mood. In Schubert's time there was no longer any talk about universal human problems, about the reorganization of the world. The fight for it all seemed pointless. The most important thing seemed to be to preserve honesty, spiritual purity, and the values of one’s spiritual world. Thus was born an artistic movement called « romanticism". This is an art in which for the first time the central place was occupied by an individual with his uniqueness, with his quests, doubts, and suffering. Schubert's work is the dawn of musical romanticism. His hero is a hero of modern times: not a public figure, not an orator, not an active transformer of reality. This is an unhappy, lonely person whose hopes for happiness are not allowed to come true.

The fundamental difference between Schubert and Beethoven was content his music, both vocal and instrumental. The ideological core of most of Schubert's works is the clash of the ideal and the real. Every time the collision of dreams and reality receives an individual interpretation, but, as a rule, the conflict does not find a final resolution. It is not the struggle in the name of establishing a positive ideal that is the focus of the composer’s attention, but the more or less clear exposure of contradictions. This is the main evidence of Schubert's belonging to romanticism. Its main topic was theme of deprivation, tragic hopelessness. This topic is not made up, it is taken from life, reflecting the fate of an entire generation, incl. and the fate of the composer himself. As already mentioned, Schubert passed his short career in tragic obscurity. He did not enjoy the success that was natural for a musician of this caliber.

Meanwhile, Schubert's creative legacy is enormous. In terms of the intensity of creativity and the artistic significance of the music, this composer can be compared with Mozart. His compositions include operas (10) and symphonies, chamber instrumental music and cantata-oratorio works. But no matter how outstanding Schubert’s contribution to the development of various musical genres was, in the history of music his name is associated primarily with the genre songs- romance(German) Lied). The song was Schubert's element, in it he achieved something unprecedented. As Asafiev noted, “What Beethoven accomplished in the field of symphony, Schubert accomplished in the field of song-romance...” In the complete collection of Schubert's works, the song series is represented by a huge number - more than 600 works. But it’s not just a matter of quantity: a qualitative leap took place in Schubert’s work, allowing the song to take a completely new place among musical genres. The genre, which clearly played a secondary role in the art of the Viennese classics, became equal in importance to the opera, symphony, and sonata.

Schubert's instrumental work

Schubert's instrumental work includes 9 symphonies, over 25 chamber instrumental works, 15 piano sonatas, and many pieces for piano for 2 and 4 hands. Growing up in an atmosphere of living exposure to the music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, which for him was not the past, but the present, Schubert surprisingly quickly - by the age of 17-18 - perfectly mastered the traditions of the Viennese classical school. In his first symphonic, quartet and sonata experiments, the echoes of Mozart, in particular the 40th symphony (the favorite composition of the young Schubert), are especially noticeable. Schubert is closely related to Mozart clearly expressed lyrical way of thinking. At the same time, in many ways he acted as an heir to Haydn’s traditions, as evidenced by his closeness to Austro-German folk music. He adopted from the classics the composition of the cycle, its parts, and the basic principles of organizing the material. However, Schubert subordinated the experience of the Viennese classics to new tasks.

Romantic and classical traditions form a single fusion in his art. Schubert's dramaturgy is a consequence of a special plan in which lyrical orientation and songfulness as the main principle of development. Schubert's sonata-symphonic themes are related to songs - both in their intonation structure and in their methods of presentation and development. Viennese classics, especially Haydn, often also created themes based on song melody. However, the impact of songfulness on instrumental dramaturgy as a whole was limited - developmental development among the classics is purely instrumental in nature. Schubert emphasizes in every possible way the song nature of the themes:

often presents them in a closed reprise form, likening them to a finished song (MP of the first movement of the sonata in A major);
develops with the help of varied repetitions, variant transformations, in contrast to the symphonic development traditional for Viennese classics (motivic isolation, sequencing, dissolution in general forms of movement);
The relationship between the parts of the sonata-symphonic cycle also becomes different - the first parts are often presented at a leisurely pace, as a result of which the traditional classical contrast between the fast and energetic first part and the slow lyrical second is significantly smoothed out.

The combination of what seemed incompatible - miniature with large-scale, song with symphonic - gave a completely new type of sonata-symphonic cycle - lyrical-romantic.