The Enigma of Franz Schubert

This is the summer of great performances of Schubert. At the Festival of the Sound in Parry Sound, Ontario, we heard two of the major string quartets. The Trout and a selection of Lieder. During two weekends this month at Bard College chamber, symphonic and choral works are being presented as well as Die Winterreise.

Alec Ross wrote in the current New Yorker (page 14):

“…Schubert is in many ways the most unfathomable of the great composers. We know more about him than about, say, Bach. Yet, while we summon a rough idea of Bach’s personality – blunt, cantankerous, at once earthy and devout – Schubert elude­­­­­­­s capture.

“Modern scholars have discarded the Romantic picture of Schubert as the innocent tunesmith, but agree on little else. Was he a dissipated merrymaker? A solitary depressive? Gay, straight, or none of the above? Did his highest ambitions lie in opera, symphony, chamber music or art song? It seems as though Schubert, who died at thirty-one, departed before his character was fully formed.

“That he nonetheless possessed a ragingly powerful musical identity is not in doubt. The apocalyptic tremors that scar his mature lyric landscapes…presage symphonic works and operatic utterances that would have struck fear into the nineteenth century and perhaps rendered Wagner unnecessary….”