Schubert: Symphony No. 10 in D major, D.936A (1828)
(Realised and orchestrated by Brian Newbould)
Allegro maestoso – Andante – Presto
Andante
Scherzo (Allegro moderato)
“….unmatched in his work or anyone else’s…..the epitome of loneliness, expressed unsentimentally with a bareness of harmony one hopes he would have left untouched. Was there ever a more heart-breakingly beautiful passage than this? Such music demands new terms for both classical and romantic. It is outside either.” Thus wrote Harold Truscott nearly sixty years ago. Those words – and particularly the few bars of music quoted – had long stayed in my mind, since schooldays. Thanks to the dedicated, painstaking, and inspired scholarship of Prof Brian Newbould, we have for 45 of those years been able to hear that music for ourselves – and we can also hear all too clearly how Truscott’s impression was uncannily true.
Such is not the case with other knowledge he offers – not that he was to blame for the inaccuracies, because he was at that time still at the mercy of information supplied in 1950/1 by Maurice J. E. Brown and Otto Erich Deutsch. This was that a folio of piano sketches, dated (by the composer) May 1818 on the title page, consisted of workings for a symphony in D major, amounting to nine attempted movements – five of which were (erroneously) assumed to have been superseded by the remaining four. However, as part of the 150th anniversary celebrations in 1978, this folio was re-examined and re-appraised, resulting in the sensational discovery that it contained not one but three symphonies! Through analysis of the handwriting and the paper used, not to mention the musical content and diversity of styles, it was established that these projected symphonies date from 1818, 1821, and 1828 respectively. With the benefit of hindsight it is hard to understand how two such eminent Schubert scholars could have made such an error. Ahead of a performance I directed with the University Chamber Orchestra in York, on 11 October 1985 (which actually proved to have been the first time it had been heard live in this country), I myself was able to study the original material in the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek (thanks to an introduction from Prof Newbould himself): holding those precious pieces of paper in my own hands proved a truly extraordinary, mystical experience; and one could readily observe, at first hand, how it all does indeed fall into place. But in Brown/Deutsch’s defence, the movements were all in D major (or the expected related keys), the pages had been incorrectly numbered by an earlier librarian, and Brown had had access only to a photocopy of the manuscript.
My justification for the word “sensational” lies in the revelation that the third of these symphonies actually occupied Schubert during the final weeks of his pitifully short life, and was almost certainly interrupted by his death (on November 19th). With the “Great C major” (No.9) having been established as the supposedly missing “Gastein” symphony of 1825, this “Letzte Symphonie” adds a crucial dimension to our knowledge and understanding of Schubert as a composer and symphonist. The dramatist Eduard von Bauernfeld actually included both these symphonies in a list of his friend’s “works not generally known”, as part of a biographical sketch of the composer following his death. For 149 years this perfectly explicit information was misinterpreted and misunderstood.
Having recently completed the unfinished orchestration of the seventh symphony (in E major) Brian Newbould’s response to the “discovery” of No.10 was to set about preparing a finished score for performance – rather as Deryck Cooke had done with another unfinished Tenth, although Mahler had reached a more advanced stage on paper than had Schubert. Both symphonies must have been virtually complete in their composer’s minds, and all three movements of Schubert’s are more or less fully drafted in piano score. But in what a jumble! Sorting out which bit goes where, interpreting Schubert’s methods of shorthand, finding repeat marks and continuation signs, identifying occasional instructions as to instrumentation and dynamics – all this must have been an endlessly arduous and frustrating task. But it has brought alive for us a priceless and visionary piece of music: Schubert’s last symphony – probably his last musical thoughts, but suggesting with tantalising clarity that these were moving in quite new directions: a premonition of Mahler is unmistakable in the Andante; likewise of Bruckner in the scherzo/finale, where he displays a contrapuntal ingenuity and imagination previously unmatched and un-attempted in his life’s work. It is known that Schubert had begun a series of counterpoint lessons with the celebrated pedagogue Simon Sechter (as also did Bruckner at a still more advanced age, a quarter of a century later), and – poignantly – some of his exercises are to be found on one of the pages of the symphony! It may have been the extraordinary nature of this scherzo which led the composer to cast the work in three movements only – almost as if the music were dictating its own course to its creator as it evolved, starting off as a normal scherzo (albeit, unusually, in 2/4 time), but expanding into something far more substantial. Certainly there is no precedent for such an overall structure in Schubert who, whatever other musical innovations he may have been responsible for, had hitherto seemed generally content with traditional forms as they stood. Neither is there any evidence to suggest that anything would have followed the “scherzo” – which in itself is perfectly conclusive, but at the same time was perhaps considered too dance-like to have been preceded by any normal scherzo or minuet. Other striking features will surely provoke reaction, such as the trombones’ sombre transformation of the second subject at the centre of the first movement, or the strangely tenuous, bare lines of the Andante – not forgetting the unforgettable: that sublime passage, at the heart of the same movement, which inspired the quotation at the top of this note.
The tenth symphony demands to be heard: not just out of historical curiosity, but because it contains supremely great music of grandeur, unexpected vitality, and unearthly beauty (to return to Truscott) “….unmatched in his work or anyone else’s”.
© Alan George
