“Picture to yourself,” he wrote broken-heartedly to a friend at this time, “a man whose health can never be reestablished, who from sheer despair makes matters worse instead of better; picture to yourself, I say, a man whose most brilliant hopes have come to nothing, to whom proffered love and friendship are but anguish, whose enthusiasm for the beautiful -an inspired feeling, at least- threatens to vanquish entirely; and then ask yourself if such a condition does not represent a miserable and unhappy man….Each night, when I go to sleep, I hope never again to waken, and every morning reopens the wounds of yesterday.”
Can you conclude that someone’s life can effect the music the compose?! Or is the connection no more the healthy concoction of music professors of the ages trying to glean something from the pages from the hands of composers in an effort to stave off their own starvation? Could you consider the analogy perhaps of the studies that say children are effected by the characteristics of their parents in their upbringing is to the evolution of a work of music that born from a composer?
To that question I guess there will forever be a lot of heated argument. I know I can’t claim to have the answer because more then once I can be heard saying that a work “really has no meaning, its just a lot of fun” shortly before listening to another piece and feeling intrinsically linked to the composers life and experiences, whether at their intention or not.
Some pieces though really leave you undoubted that there had to be something deeper to the piece then mere composition. One such would be Schubert’s D940 fantasy in F minor for four hands. I would challenge anyone not to feel moved by this work from the outset with its elegiac theme contradicting his usual explosive bravura. Its hard though to look at it as one piece, I mean, where does it fit into his life? His compositions? The D940 catalogue should give you some idea of the composers prolific nature. With nearly 1000 official completed works to his name, and many hundreds more that he never completed, Shubert was an obsessive composer. He was one of 15 children, though granted 10 died in infancy. For someone with such evident talent, if had no formal musical education. He couldn’t play and instrument, at a time when to be successful as a musician, you had to be a commanding performing first, and a composer 2nd – generally playing your works to get them into the public domain. He was bought up by his father, offered little or no musical training. His father was a school master who was it would seem to be a strongly catholic man. Schubert was baptised, and gained his musical exposure at Mass. His father taught him basic viola, is first formal teacher was an organ master at a church. From word go the boy showed amazing talent, true virtuosic ability with music. Though still he received no formal musical education. We was sent to a convent where he was educated, to later become a school teacher at his fathers school. What he did do was compose at every opportunity. Whenever someone gave him manuscript, it would be tightly packed with a score moments later.
Teaching was a money maker, and music was nothing short of an obsession. He wrote prolifically while still teaching, receiving no acclaim for his work. Years on he applied for the position of music teach in Laibach, but was rejected – in spite of the fact legend Salieri recommend him for the position.
With the backing of close friends, he left the teaching job and focused on being a full time composer. For that decision he spent the rest of his life without money, leaving off the kindness of others who appreciated his talent, struggling for recognition. In his life only 7 songs were published, his operas all failed (granted one had over 1000 pages of manuscript). While he close friends never lost faith in him, the masters such as Beethoven, Schumann, saleriari all praised him (Beethoven is often quoted saying that true genius resided within him) he could never get any recognition. No one would publish him, or take him seriously. And yet his passion for ever remained in composing. When he couldn’t afford manuscript he would plan and devise this music. Friends would most often be the ones that purchased more manuscript.
Obviously this is giving the life of the man a very short run, but I’m sure you get the idea. He felt that there was but one use for him on this earth, and that was composing music. Indeed I’d have to agree! There are precious few composers who can compose music as lyrical and beautiful as him. No work, no one will publish, his operas failures, have to beg manuscript from friends, and then the man writes a work such as his fantasy in f minor, as celebrated masterpiece that leads you to wonder about how closely it reflects his emotional state at the pathetic circumstances his life had ended in. Add to this lack of success an illness, a year before its composition Schubert sought medical treatment for the first time, admitting to a friend via letter that he had contracted a disease for which there was no real cure. He entered a hospital and stayed there for a prolonged period.
To establish a mood at the start of this piece isn’t hard, while he often composed in f minor, never had it been this emotionally gripping, like he had been scarred with the feelings that made him write such a passage. Adding the harmony at fourths for its second playing does everything to highten an upmost feeling of hopelessness. The music just isn’t ready to dwell though, it loses some of its angst and scarred sadness to interject some moments of more aggressive, angry passages, falling quickly back to a mix of anger and hopelessness. Both pianists are playing in fourths, heavy use of pedals, its almost a sobbing style of lament. You have to wonder if the words he wrote that I started this with were written with something like this score in mind.
Schubert being Schubert though, its tightly constructed. Sonata form first movement that plays with this theme. Injected some melancholy, some more anger, and even more wistful thinking, at all times though he flows inevitably from what procedes. Then in total contrast with the first movement he seamlessly moulds his way into a bright, major 2nd movement, with an almost positive, outgoing lyrically melody that belies the undercurrent, which is an ever current original theme, struggling to et its way to the top again. It never does in the 2nd movement, although his bright theme loses its brightness and pedalled, becomes almost ‘what could have been’ questioning, with nothing less then a rueful smile on his face! Your left to ponder what had him in this frame of mind?! Was it his thoughts of going to sleep and having the luxury of never waking again? How does someone like Schubert deal with his failure in life? If his friends recounts are anything to go by, if failure to be widely recognised as a composer was tantamount to his personal belief in failure. There is no doubt he has an unfair turn of events. At 30 he wrote this piece. Terminally ill. He knew that he was going to die, die no where near in sight of his ambition of being a success musically in the eyes of the world. Can his depressed happiness in the 2nd movement be linked to his pain in illness, his wanting not to rewake? The guy was a devote Christian, in the 18th century. One could assume he believed its teaching closely. If you do so can you find reason? many aspects of life are unfair, whether religion offered anything to him about anything distinctive on injustice, suffering and death?
There perhaps is one empirical point – belief in life after death changes the quality and depth of mourners’ grief. A funeral celebrated by friends and family with strong beliefs in the afterlife is very different from one without hope. Most people long for anafter life, and even agnostics can hope to regain the company of their loved ones. Devote Christians believe in heaven and hell because of Jesus’s teachings. Heaven is necessary if the scales of justice are to balance eventually. Not everyone is treated justly in this life, but God will restore a proper balance in heaven and hell. This is for those that believe it a profound consolation. Whether it was a profound consolation for him or not though is academic.
From his wistful 2nd movement he shapes himself back to a multitude of variations on his original theme. There, hidden away is that scar. Never to far from his thoughts though. And from there he just builds and builds what feels to a listener like an emotional storm. He builds runs, getting higher and higher by each pianist as builds more and more, like he can’t accept the continuing logic and reasoning He adds fourths in one pianists hands, sixths in another, before coming to an unloading point, high octaves, played harshly, like an alarm bell, a ‘this can’t continue’ style declaration where reasonable self discussion would seem to have been lost. What is truly an explosive coda there continues. There is the best part of 4 thematic items that are played over the top of each other, one hand each almost. There is a fight for supremacy, the left hand doing everything it can with a fast moving brooding passage to overpower a disjointed variation of his wistful theme, while the hands in the middle play a new idea, back in his original key, like a third voice trying to set both highly contradictive and opposite themes straight.
And then mid though, on the 5th, his original theme appears once more, in the coda, a final gesture of intimacy and longing before the heart-wrenching dissonances of the closing measures, reminding you that on no uncertain terms there is a troubled conclusion to all this mental unloading…
A few months later, he was in bed, in terrible pain for three days before finally seeing what his consolation was.
Two days later, he was buried in the Währing cemetery, near Beethoven. Franz Schober, his devoted friend, read a poetic farewell:
May peace at last be with you!
Angel-pure soul!
In the full bloom of Youth,
The stroke of Death has seized you
And extinguished the pure light within you!” |
At 31 one you’d think the guy had a lot of consolation to be getting! Then again, he got the consolation in his life to be able to write the best part of 1000 pieces of music, including over 600 songs that helped start the romantic period. For those that love rachmaninov, you have to thank Franz for that little nudge out the door he gave music. In that regard I guess perhaps he shouldn’t be expecting much consolation. While he always felt himself to have failed, he did truly end up succeeding. Success is such a subject measure though. And therein lies the problem in trying to set personal goals that don’t have results that are more concrete then being ‘successful’ at something.
I would hope that in my life I would be able to achieve a degree of success. Success in my own eyes that is! The key to that I guess is settle the hurdle low! Haha, although you can’t derive much satisfaction from success if you do that. What you do need though is a hurdle. It would seem to be rather overwhelming I think to try and set up such a device at such an age. Though I guess for those older, this is the age to be doing it. at there here and now though it doesn’t at all feel like the age to be doing it. such things are done by older, mature folk. Alas though, that time of life is upon us whether we like it or not now. You have to wonder what hurdle Schubert set when he left teaching. You have to wonder what was set considering some of the works he wrote. You have to wonder whether he would have written differently if he set that hurdle differently. Whatever those questions are though the key to it all is that he actually set one. And I’d challenge any person to find someone widely regarded as a success that didn’t.
All said and done though, it’s a dam fine piece of music and everyone should listen to it once in their life, in a dark room, with nothing but the music and their thoughts!
An Aussie In Japan 