Schubert - Symphony No. 9 Program Note

Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944 “Great”
Composed 1825–1826
 

When we hear Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C Major referred to by its nickname, "The Great," it is safe to assume that it must be pretty good. However, at the time, the subtitle was chosen to distinguish the symphony from the earlier Symphony No. 6 (“Little”), also cast in the key of C. The distinction could also apply to the work’s prodigious length, which in performance rivals that of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.

As was so often the case (consider Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony or Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude), Schubert was not intentionally responsible for the sobriquet by which his symphony is now so well known. He did, however, intimate in an 1824 letter that he was about to begin work on a grosse (German for “large” or “grand”) symphony.

The most recent scholarship dismisses the long-held belief that the work was composed during Schubert’s final year. It is now thought to have been completed in the spring or summer of 1826. Schubert was unable to pay for an actual performance, but the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of Friends of Music)—to which he made the canny decision to dedicate the symphony— gave the work an informal reading. It would be the only time the composer would have an opportunity to hear it.

In 1838, ten years after Schubert’s death, his brother, Ferdinand, showed the manuscript to Robert Schumann, during one of the latter’s visits to Vienna. Schumann returned to Leipzig with a copy, where he handed it off to Felix Mendelssohn, then conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. The symphony was first performed publicly under Mendelssohn’s direction in 1839. Schumann reviewed the concert in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and famously praised the work for “its heavenly length.”

“The Great” was composed by a man who stood only five foot one. His friends referred to him as Schwammerl (“Little Mushroom”). He was 27 years younger than Beethoven, the premiere of whose Ninth Symphony he had attended in 1824.

In homage to Beethoven, Schubert incorporated into the final movement of his “Great” symphony a reference to the “Ode to Joy.” A fleeting remembrance occurs at the beginning of the development section, in the clarinet, flute, and oboes, before undergoing a transformation by way of tremolo strings. The episode appears as a fairly understated interlude in the otherwise rhythmically wild finale.

Schubert’s astoundingly prolific output and the heights to which he strove were likely spurred in part by the fact that he was laboring under a death sentence. Syphilis would claim his life at the age of 31. He completed this, the last of his symphonies, at 29—the same age at which Beethoven had only just begun work on his first.

A torchbearer at Beethoven’s funeral in 1827, Schubert outlived the elder composer by less than two years. On his deathbed, Beethoven is said to have attributed to him “the spark of divine genius.” What further greatness “Little Mushroom” might have achieved, had he been able to live out his natural lifespan, is anyone’s guess.

~Ross Amico
Journalist & Radio Host