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Schubert

My musical tastes incline decidedly toward the Romantic, but I can spare time for the occasional Classical composer. Beethoven, giant that he was, flits in and out of my subconscious at will. Others are entertained only when I'm in the mood for them. Mozart is turned away right at the door. Schubert occupies an unusual place in the pantheon of Classical composers in that he can't truly be said to be Classical. Nor was he truly Romantic. One can't even call him a bridge between the two periods, because he wasn't. Schubert was more an offshoot of Beethoven - sort of a grand conclusion to Beethoven's art - than a milestone in the evolution of music.

Even still, Schubert at times does seem to anticipate Romantic ideas. One recalls his Ständchen, which may as well be a Chopin Nocturne, and his Erlkönig, which far surpasses all other attempts to set the eponymous poem by Goethe to music. Some such as Křenek (pronounced something like "KSHEH-neck") have even called him a "lucky inventor of pleasing tunes" as late as the twentieth century, though he later withdrew his statement with great contrition. Godowsky, in his preface to his Passacaglia on a theme from Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, which he composed for the centenary of Schubert's death, writes, "With the exception of Chopin, I know of no other composer whose lyricisms have touched the heart of so many; whose melodies have become so thoroughly the treasured property of all civilized nations; whose tone-imageries have so sensitized and refined our poetic sensibilities." High praise indeed. Surely Schubert deserves to be hailed as an honorary Romantic.

One need only listen to the liturgical opening bars of Schubert's Piano Sonata in B-Flat Major, D. 960 to perish all doubts about Schubert's worthiness to be counted among the Titans of classical music.* If one is lucky, one might even forget about Schubert's syphilitic end.

*Mozart is a different story. The more you listen to him, the more you wonder why he is still spoken of today.

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