Unlikely Revolutionary

           

Coastside Community Orchestra's spring concert is Saturday, May 9, at Coastside Lutheran Church, 900 Cabrillo Highway, Half Moon Bay. The program includes music of Schubert, Bizet, Saint-Saëns and the unlikely revolutionary, Gioacchino Rossini.

             Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) Overture to The Barber of Seville (1816)

            Most people would be astonished at the idea that Figaro, the Barber of Seville, could have had any political influence away from the opera house. Equally surprising would be the suggestion that Rossini and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) were revolutionary in any way other than musically.

            Yet both Rossini’s opera “The Barber of Seville” and Mozart’s opera “The Marriage of Figaro” were based on plays of the same name by Pierre de Beaumarchais, plays which Napoleon called “the revolution in action”—because of their egalitarian treatment of servant and master.

            The French playwright de Beaumarchais supported the American Revolution and even personally arranged to ship arms from France for 25,000 American soldiers.

            “The Barber of Seville” was written in less than two weeks, Rossini’s normal time frame for his productions. The overture does not contain themes from the opera itself, possibly because Rossini had previously used it for three other operas, “Elisabetta”, “Aureliano” and “L’Equivicato Stravaganti”. “Barber” also used arias and ensembles from yet another Rossini work, “La Cambiale de Matrimonio,” written in 1810.

            From 1811 5o 1818, Rossini staged at least three operas a year. By 1829, he had written at least 39 such works.

            Although opera seems to have been mere business as usual for Rossini, his fellow musicians greatly admired his work. Schubert in particular was influenced by Rossini, and Beethoven admired his music.

            Rossini retired at age 37, a wealthy man, at the time of his greatest popularity. He never wrote another opera and in fact composed very little for the rest of his life—39 more years—though he continued to be honored throughout the western world as the grand old man of music.

                       

Why Was the "Unfinished" Unfinished?

I've been writing program notes for the Coastside Community Orchestra concert May 9, and thought it might be fun to post them in advance. Why Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony, Number Seven or Number Eight, depending, remained unfinished is one of those music mysteries which has always invited speculation, and sometimes downright fiction. Here's my take on it. (The concert will be at 7 P.M. at Coastside Lutheran Church, 900 Cabrillo Highway, Half Moon Bay.)

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Symphony in B Minor, D. 759 “Unfinished”

            Franz Schubert himself said that he was born for no other purpose than to make music. And make music he did, producing in his short life 19 string quartets, 21 piano sonatas, 600 songs, ten operas, seven masses, volumes of work for piano solo and piano duet, and nine or ten symphonies including the “Unfinished.”

            Harold Schonberg says in Lives of the Great Composers that Schubert “seemed content to pour out page after page of music, whether or not it was performed.” He left no estate—no property or progeny-- except for music manuscripts scattered all over Vienna. Robert Schumann discovered Schubert’s unplayed ninth symphony, the so-called “Great C Major” in a box left at a brother’s house, and Felix Mendelssohn conducted the world premiere of the work in 1839, eleven years after Schubert’s death.

            Schubert was the twelfth of 14 children and became a boy soprano in Vienna’s court chapel at the Imperial and Royal Academy, where he received his musical education. He never traveled far from Vienna. By the age of eleven, he was already a prolific composer. He may not have had quite the gravity of his contemporary, Beethoven, but no one could resist the singular beauty of his melodies and the startling innovations in his key-shifting harmonies. The house concerts—Schubertiades—arranged by his friends were famous.

            The original seventh symphony, in E major, was sketched out in 1821 and was never completed, so the B Minor work done in 1822 became Number Seven. Number nine, the symphony unearthed by Schumann, was written in the last year of Schubert’s life. Another symphony known as the Gmunden-Gastein (for two places Schubert had spent summer vacations) has been lost, though some elements may have been used in the Great C Major.

            Just why the Seventh remained unfinished has been the subject of much creative speculation. The symphony was dedicated to the Graz Musical Society which had just nominated Schubert, and in 1822 the composer left it in the hands of a member, who apparently laid it aside and never delivered it to the society. Since Schubert lived six years after that, composing all the while, chances are that he—and the friend—simply forgot about the symphony, or that the friend lost the last two movements.

            Schubert was a pallbearer at Beethoven’s funeral and died of typhoid a year later at the age of 31. He was buried beside Beethoven in what today is called Schubert Park, in Vienna.

            In 1894 Franz von Suppé (“Light Cavalry Overture,” “Poet and Peasant,”etc.) wrote an operetta, “Franz Schubert,” which one reviewer described as “wonderful biographical kitsch based on Schubert tunes,” and in 1916 another musical play loosely based on Schubert’s life had its premiere in Vienna, setting words to his famous melodies. Known as “Blossom Time” in the adaptation by Sigmund Romberg, the musical was wildly successful.

            Although classicists may have cringed at the popularized treatment of Schubert’s music, the operetta did in fact accomplish posthumously Schubert’s hopes of writing for the stage, and the play’s success was due almost entirely to the beauty of Schubert’s unforgettable melodies.

(Watercolor by Howard Gilligan, from Julius Schmid's 1897 painting of a Schubertiade.)