Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Donald Macleod explores the work of Franz Schubert, focusing on five distinct phases in the composer’s life. And afterlife.

We start in 1815, the year in which Schubert turned 18 and was a reluctant schoolmaster still living under his father’s roof. Although he was in many ways unhappy and constrained by his circumstances, he was still prodigiously prolific. In the years after 1820, we see him spreading his wings as he’d never been able to do before, enjoying a sense of liberation after being shackled to the schoolroom in his father’s house. In 1824 we see a year of ill-health for Schubert, but also a year of fighting back, with attempted cures and triumphant, ambitious music. In Schubert’s final year – inevitably coloured by sadness, but also by great spirit and tenacity - emerged what is for many people Schubert’s crowning achievement: his song-cycle Winterreise. Schubert died at the age of 31, when most people are just getting going in life – in the same decade as Keats and Byron and Shelley – and he's often thought of, with them, as an exemplar of a kind of doomed romanticism. Central to that is a sense of having been thwarted in life – encapsulated, in Schubert’s case, by the fact that so much of his music was unpublished in his lifetime, so much never even heard. However, in the years after his early death, his music found an audience, including the BBC’s regular ‘Schubert Nights’ in the 1920s.

Music Featured:

Erlkonig Sonatina for violin and piano No 2 in A minor String Quartet No. 12 Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli (Variation 38) Am See Sei mir gegrüßt, o Sonne! (Alfonso und Estrella, Act 1) Fantasie in C major, “Wanderer” Das Wandern (Die Schone Mullerin, No 1) Des Baches Wiegenlied (Die Schone Mullerin, No 20) Piano Sonata in C major for Four-Hands, "Grand Duo" String Quartet No 13 in A minor, Op 29, "Rosamunde" Arpeggione Sonata in A minor (1st - 2nd mvt) Winterreise 2, No 1: Die Post Winterreise 2, No 7: Tauschung Symphony No 9 in C major, “the Great” (4th mvt) Piano Sonata No 21 in B Flat major (1st mvt) Die Nacht Der Tod und das Mädchen Symphony No 10 (orch. Brian Newbould)

Presented by Donald Macleod Produced by Martin Williams

For full track listings, including artist and recording details, and to listen to the pieces featured in full (for 30 days after broadcast) head to the series page for Franz Schubert (1797-1828) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001bkkp

And you can delve into the A-Z of all the composers we’ve featured on Composer of the Week here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3cjHdZlXwL7W41XGB77X3S0/composers-a-to-z