SCHUBERT'S 8TH SYMPHO
S
chubert's routine was something he kept almost all his life, particularly with regard to his composing times. Religious, he was, about when he composed as, indeed, he was about how he composed. In this respect, too, he had one big rule - he would never start a new composition before he had finished the last one. It was an unbreakable rule of his. Even when he was producing gallons and gallons of music -and Schubert really did knock it out - he would still religiously finish one piece before starting the next. Take the year 1815. In that year alone, he composed a massive 140 songs, sometimes writing up to eight a day! But even then, with so many songs to be written, he would still… finish one before starting another.
Do you get my point? I'm not labouring it, am I? You see, it's because what /want to know is this. How did he manage to leave his Symphony No 8 unfinished? Eh? Answer me that! It was written in 1822, when he still had six years left to live. OK, not an age, or anything, but certainly, at Schubert's rate, plenty of time to finish a symphony. So what about his rule? Why was it left UNFINISHED? I mean! If Schubert was the Magnus Magnusson of classical music, how come he left us only two movements oftSymphony No 8, instead of four? I think we need to look at this more, but first, let's get our bearings.
1822: Brazil gets its independence, and, consequently, football gets its greatest exponents. Queen Caroline is now sitting on the great throne in the sky, probably as far away as possible from Napoleon, who has also recently gone up there somewhere. Both Spain and Piedmont have had revolutions - well, you have to, don't you? - and, next year, central America, too, has a bit of a general spring clean. Mexico goes it alone, while Guatemala, San Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica all join hands to form the Confederation of Central America. In the Confederation of Central Luwiedom - or the Arts, as it's more commonly known - Percy Shelley has made his final overtures to Mary. Or maybe, more accurately, H20vertures. Canova, he of the Three Graces, has gone too, as has, on a more scientific note, Sir William Herschel. From deaths to births - and the Sunday Times is a new arrival in 1822. Stretching it a little, there's a marriage, too, as Stephenson's engineering feat joins Stockton to Darlington.
That's the broad world, then, but what is going on in the mind of Franz Schubert, the absolute stickler - some might say, pain - about not picking up a blank page for one work until he's finished the last. Well, as you can imagine, there have been more than a few theories as to why it stayed at just two movements, and, subsequently, the most famous 'unfinished' in history. Some say he lost inspiration. Some say he did, indeed, finish it but that a friend lost it. And some say no: on this occasion, he simply broke his own rule and moved on to something else. Mmmm, I'm not sure. I don't think I fully buy any of those, to be honest. I just think it's much simpler than all that. I think there is no real mystery. I think Schubert is quite simply the first REAL romantic. True-blue, dyed-in-the-wool, floppy-fringed, bespectacled ROMANTIQUE. And I think he just got to two movements and thought: 'Wow, that's fantastic. You know what? Sod it. It doesn't get any better than that. Who says I have to write four movements? I'm a romantic and proud. There are no rules, now! All bets are off. IF I WANT A TWO-MOVEMENT SYMPHONY… I'LL HAVE ONE!'
Just one year later, in 1823, Beethoven unveiled his latest offering - a massive, five-movement Mass. Rather like Delius a hundred-odd years later, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis is rather less of a hymn to God and more of a personal celebration of all things natural and creative. Where a traditional Mass celebrated God, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis celebrates man. It had proved a real labour of love for him over the five years or so it took to write - so much so that the event for which it was written was long gone. On this occasion, at least, Beethoven was not going to find himself, as Schubert had, with an unfinished work on his hands.
A BOTTLE OF YOUR FINEST 1825
1825, and it's not merely by chance that I've chosen to focus on this small but perfectly formed year. If we were talking about a wine, you would have to find a turn of phrase a little more superlative than the old Sinatra line 'it was a very good year'. 1825 was vintage. Classic, as they say round these parts - more than that, really. Let me gradually focus in, if I may. In France, it's a case of'what goes around, comes around' as a new law compensates the aristocracy for losses incurred during the Revolution. John Nash - yes, the John Nash - comes up with a cute little thing at the end of The Mall, called Buckingham Palace. Pushkin follows up his Eugene Onegin which he'd started a couple of years ago, with a cool Boris Godunov, laying the groundwork for some of the nationalist operas in years to come. The diaries of Samuel Pepys are finally published, some 122 years after they were written. Now that's what I call playing hard to get. All of this, though, pales into insignificance really, when you realize that 1825 is the year that Beethoven came to England.
The previous year, he'd received a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society. It was for a symphony, which fitted in with Beethoven's plans perfecdy. He'd been making the odd sketch for a symphonic work from as early as 1815, and the commission prompted him to look at the last movement again. He revisited a text that had been in his sights for the last thirty years or so. It was by Johann Schiller and called 'An die Freude', but is most often translated into English as the 'Ode to Joy'. Odd to think now that, when it comes to one of the most famous symphonies ever written, one of its defining features, the choral movement, was only added at a very late stage. But for the RPS gig, the work would be perfect - Beethoven would provide them with a symphony. By now totally deaf yet, somehow, able to hear music better than almost anyone on the planet at the time, he set to work hacking away at Schiller's words. In the end, he used only about a third of them, and those he did use he totally rearranged to suit his own symphony. Nevertheless, the result was the symphony's finest hour - something which, today, is enjoyed by millions of concert-goers the world over - in a way the composer himself never could. It's said that at the first performance, with Beethoven himself conducting, the piece came to a close after a somewhat ragged performance, in which the orchestra and the chorus had even got out of sync with each other. Nevertheless, get to the end they did and Beethoven put down his baton, somewhat physically drained from trying to keep his brand-new work together. At this point, he didn't really know how it had gone. He was, remember, totally deaf now. He apparently looked deflated and a little disappointed. It was left to a young alto soloist from the chorus - Caroline, her name was - to come across to make him aware of how it had been received. She walked across and physically turned him round 180 degrees. It was only at this point that Beethoven realized quite what a hit his new symphony had been. The entire audience was on its feet, clapping like there was no tomorrow. Many in the crowd at this point realized that Beethoven had been unaware of the applause, and this made them clap and cheer even louder. To Ludwig, the applause seemed to go on for years. Now he knew his symphony had arrived. If you add to this the fact that William Webb Ellis was busy running with the ball down at Rugby School and 1825 adds up to one hell of a year.