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Schubert and the Symphony: A New Perspective (Symphonic Studies)

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Schubert and the Symphony: A New Perspective (Symphonic Studies)

Professor Brian Newbould has written a comprehensive discussion of the symphonies, completed and uncompleted, of Franz Schubert. Newbould is a leading scholar on the music of Schubert and is the former head of the Schubert Institute of the UK. In his book, he points out that throughout his short life, Schubert aspired to be known as an important symphonist as well as a writer of songs. However, nearly all of his symphonies were unknown until many years after his death.

The first five symphonies were written by a teen-age Schubert and perhaps performed privately by groups consisting mainly of his fellow former students and musical friends. They are in the late 18th Century style of Haydn and Mozart of which his teacher of almost 8 years, Antonio Salieri (yes - that Antonio Salieri), approved. The sixth symphony was influenced by those of Beethoven, with a mixed result. After that, Schubert entered a period in which, with one exception (the 9th) he failed to complete his symphonic efforts, including the 7th, sketched out orchestrally but not fully orchestrated; the 8th, with two completed movements and piano sketches for a third (and possibly for a fourth that ended up as an Entr'acte in the Rosamunde music); and piano sketches for three movements of a tenth symphony that Schubert worked on in his last days. There are also existing incomplete sketches for other presumed symphonic movements.

Newbould devotes a chapter to each of these symphonies, including the incomplete ones, and illustrates his discussions with notated musical examples. Newbould has been responsible for orchestrating the piano sketches and completing the partially orchestrated 7th. These "realizations", as Newbould calls them, are admirttedly not genuine Schubert, but they are intended to convey an idea of Schubert's symphonic thought processes as they developed during his musical years. Newbould intends the book to be used as a companion to listening to the symphonies, including the reconstructed ones. A 6 CD set exists that fills this role: "The 10 Schubert Symphonies," performed by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, under Neville Marriner (available at Amazon.com).

This book will appeal to serious students of Schubert's larger-scale works, but it assumes an ability to read musical notation; it is definitely not for the casual reader. (Professor Newbould has also written a book on Schubert's life and his music that is directed more to non-specialists who wish to learn more about Schubert.) I would have liked the author to discuss in more detail how he put together his "realizations" from the available sketches, but his discussions about that crucial task are rather brief. Nevertheless, I found his book to be a valuable source of information when used with the mentioned CD set.

The copy of the book that I have (and I think the only version now available) is a paperback. The quality of the printing is generally fine, but the notated musical examples are not reproduced entirely clearly in some cases. There are nine black-and-white illustrations, some of which are facsimiles of autograph manuscript pages. Some of these are also not as sharp as they could be.