Schubert: Octet in F major, D.803 (Op.166, 1824)

Adagio – Allegro
Adagio
Scherzo:- Allegro vivace
Andante
Menuetto:- Allegretto
Andante molto – Allegro – Allegro molto

The similarities in structure and instrumentation between Beethoven’s Septet and this gloriously sunny work (with its extra violin) – so often remarked upon – are surely too great to have been coincidental. And so it transpires that, although separated by 24 years, they were both commissioned by the same amateur clarinettist (Count Ferdinand Troyer, chief steward to Archduke Rudolf), who was in turn joined at the première of the Octet by a number of those who had previously launched its model – including the great quartet leader Ignaz Schuppanzigh, motivator for so many of Beethoven’s string quartets. Although the latter professed irritation at the popular success of his Septet he had – as always – created something innovative and influential: a large scale chamber work indeed, yet its origins actually lay in the eighteenth century’s predilection for entertainment music – the serenades, divertimenti, cassations for a mixture of winds and strings, invariably with more than four movements. Very often the wind instruments would have been simply a pair of horns, but Beethoven – and Schubert, Hummel, and Spohr after him – looked to greater variety, exploiting their concertante potential in a hitherto unfulfilled manner.

It follows that one ought not to be too surprised that the hedonistic side of Schubert’s temperament should have found so congenial an outlet in this milieu, even though this is (inevitably) the most symphonic of all his chamber works – borne out by his own stated assertion that, together with the visionary quartets in A minor and D minor, he was at that time preparing for a Grand Symphony (which duly arrived the following year – 1825 – in the form of the “Great C major”). More startling perhaps might be his aptitude for creating two such dark, gloomy – at times almost deathly – quartets whilst simultaneously at work on this apparent exposition of the good things in life. Yet one only has to think of such pieces as the finale of the C major quintet to be reminded that for Schubert there is nothing unusual in making bedfellows out of the most unlikely partners – in that instance unashamed Viennese café music in the context of one of the most profoundly sublime works in the entire repertoire. So let’s also not be so surprised – or even shocked – when undercurrents of unease are allowed to surface, adding a certain requisite drama, of course (an added dimension from the Septet); but once or twice touching a faintly sinister nerve surely provoked by awareness of his own mortality and approaching doom. The characteristic whipped-up tempo of the finale’s coda should in the end persuade us not to be too troubled, however deeply we have been drawn into the soul of this generous man – that mixture (according to the poet Mayrhofer) of “tenderness and coarseness, sensuality and candour, sociability and melancholy”.

© Alan George
All Alan’s articles