Schubert's Beethoven Project

Gingerich provides a new understanding of Schubert's relationship to Beethoven, and the ways in which he built on Beethoven's legacy.

John M. Gingerich (Author)

9781316621257, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 September 2016

376 pages, 10 tables 83 music examples
24.5 x 17 x 2 cm, 0.65 kg

'… a new height and intensity in terms of the composers own musical outlook, would make such an idea an attractive one to contemplate …' Seow-Chin Ong, 1650–1850

Why couldn't Schubert get his 'great' C-Major Symphony performed? Why was he the first composer to consistently write four movements for his piano sonatas? Since neither Schubert's nor Beethoven's piano sonatas were ever performed in public, who did hear them? Addressing these questions and many others, John M. Gingerich provides a new understanding of Schubert's career and his relationship to Beethoven. Placing the genres of string quartet, symphony, and piano sonata within the cultural context of the 1820s, the book examines how Schubert was building on Beethoven's legacy. Gingerich brings new understandings of how Schubert tried to shape his career to bear on new hermeneutic readings of the works from 1824 to 1828 that share musical and extra-musical pre-occupations, centering on the 'Death and the Maiden' Quartet and the Cello Quintet, as well as on analyses of the A-minor Quartet, the Octet, and of the 'great' C-Major Symphony.

Introduction
1. Preparations
2. The year of crisis, 1823
3. Schuppanzigh and Schubert's chamber music
4. Songs of death and the chamber music of 1824
5. Schubert's first public quartet and sonata form
6. Schubert's octet and Beethoven's septet
7. The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Schubert, and his symphony
8. Schubert's heroic symphony
9. The piano sonatas of 1825–6
10. Schubert and his publishers
11. The E flat trio, Schubert's career, and its last two movements
12. Schubert's annus mirabilis and the string quintet
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Classical music [c 1750 to c 1830 AVGC4], Music [AV]