Schubert’s Ninth Symphony

I do not sing or play any musical instrument. I am practically tone deaf and can’t read music. I do operate the CD player but only with the help of the user manual. But in my own silly way I love music and over the years have assembled a large collection of recordings of chamber, orchestral and operatic music of composers ranging from Schutz to Schaffer, from Albeniz to Zemlinski. Listening to music is my major interest. Evelyn and I go to concerts everywhere on our travels, often we travel just for concerts and operas. I read a lot about music and have written and spoken about it. Musician friends are indulgent although they think of me as a pompous ignoramus who doesn’t know how foolish he is. However, I carry on regardless, thinking that my views enhance the enjoyment of lay listeners. I realize that I may be fooling myself in this too. Still, I continue to talk and write about music and musicians. My writing is not about the interplay of melodies and major and minor keys, all that is beyond me, it is about what the particular piece means to me. That, of course, is influenced by my personal circumstances when I first listened to it and my knowledge of composer’s other works in the context of the music of that period. This bit of harangue is more of the same in the continuing saga.

A few weeks ago Calgary Philharmonic performed Franz Schubert’s symphony no. 9 in C major, appropriately labeled ‘Great’. Schubert lived in Vienna throughout his short life at the same time as Beethoven. He started composing in early teens and wrote his first masterpiece at the age of seventeen. He was a prolific composer in every genre. ‘Great’ was one of his later works completed two years before his death in 1828 at the age of thirty and premiered in 1839 at Leipzig by Mendelssohn. It has been hailed as the pinnacle of romantic symphonies even though it has no program like several of Beethoven’s great works. It is long by standards of the day, fifty minutes, of ‘heavenly length’ as Schumann said. Yet a listener never notices the passage of time even in a mediocre performance. The excitement among the audience when the conductor lowers his baton is palpable. Standing ovations are a normal occurrence.

The symphony has the usual four movements. All movements of the symphony, one may even say every note, is full of joy. The key word about the symphony is ‘moto’ the Italian word for movement. The listener has a sense of motion right from the moment conductor’s baron is raised and there is no pause till the end. The titles of the movements say it all. The first movement is titled Andante – Allegro ma non troppo. It begins with steady flowing tempo then gathers speed to become ‘lively but not too much’. Schubert wants he players to conserve their energy for what is to come. Second movement is titled Andante con moto – flowing steadily with strong sense of movement. Third and final movements are both titled Allegro vivace – lively flowing tempo, except that the finale’s title could be elaborated a little more with vivace con troppo – as lively as possible.

Although I said earlier that the symphony has no program, I could invent one with ease. Imagine a beautiful spring afternoon in a large playground. A glorious horn call invites children in the community to come and play. After the usual hubbub, several eight to ten year boys begin an unstructured game under the watchful eyes of their parents. There is energy, fun, and complete lack of competitive spirit in the play. The air is vibrant with delight that parents feel when their offspring are happy. Children are full of excitement, running round and round with not a care in the world. Then, as if on a cue from some invisible baton, they pick up speed and run in circles as fast as they can totally oblivious of adults who are now feeling dizzy. They stop for a breather, but just for a few seconds and then start running again picking speed. One would think they will never stop but eventually they do and fall flat on the ground in blissful exhaustion.

For me, the difference between a good and great performance is how the orchestra and the conductor control the momentum through out the performance but most critically in the finale, how they pause for the breather and finally how they bring it to the end. There was a great performance of this symphony by the same orchestra in the same hall in the nineties conducted by Mario Bernardi comparable to any I have heard live or on a recording. The recent performance was excellent but it failed to reach greatness as I heard it. Music being what it is, it is quite possible that Maestro Graf’s rendition of the symphony could have touched me even more deeply than Bernardi’s on a different occasion.