In an article in the Guardian today ( http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2040018,00.html ), Misha Donat looks at the fact that none of Schubert's symphonies were published in his lifetime, and explains this in terms of the prominence of Beethoven, in whose shadow Schubert supposedly lived. He does in the process tend rather tend to perpetuate the 'poor Schubert' myth, which Christopher Gibb (in his biography of Schubert, published by CUP, and also in a fascinating essay in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert) has gone a long way to challenge. Beethoven wrote his First Symphony when he was 29-30; it was first performed in his 30th year; Schubert was only 31 when he died (does anyone else get chilling feelings about aging arise when considering the age that Purcell, Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn were when they died? All were younger than I am now, and Chopin just the same age). Gibb has shown that, looked at relative to most other composers including Beethoven (but with the exception of a few extremely prodigious figures such as Mozart and Mendelssohn), Schubert was doing reasonably in terms of recognition and career for the age he was; as such the myths about the 'poor, suffering, neglected composer' do not really stand up. Indeed none of his symphonies were performed by a professional orchestra during his lifetime, though the earlier ones were written for amateur orchestra, both of which facts Donat points out, but that doesn't signify very much. Many of the common ideas about Schubert seem to stem essentially from the fact that he died young. Now, it's hard not to believe that, in his late works - Winterreise, the piano trios, the three late sonatas, the string quintet, Schwangesang - Schubert had an intimation of impending mortality, perhaps feeding into the sense of urgency, finality and pathos in this music, quite at odds, say, with what Beethoven was writing at the same age (though of course both composers' temperaments were extremely different in many other ways). Yet I wonder if these sorts of myths might be a little too uniformly prevalent in performances of Schubert's music, leading to exaggeratedly pained lyricism, sometimes extremely slow tempos (I think Richter manages to take an incredible 27' over the first movement of the G major sonata D894), heavily applied pathos, underlining of the static and downplaying of the dynamic and dialectical elements of the works, and so on and so forth. A similar situation appertains to what Malcolm Macdonald has called the myth of the 'bearded Brahms', leading to rather slow and heavy performances of much of his output (including those from some time before he grew the beard, such as Ein Deutsches Requiem, written by a still relatively young Brahms of 32-35). Maybe if some of these biographical/psychological constructions were viewed in a more balanced and nuanced manner, then we might have a greater diversity of approaches? I'm interested in anyone's thoughts.

We know what you mean, Ian. 

In 1867 Sullivan and Grove went hunting in Vienna trying to track down Schubert's music, in particular Rosamunde. After visiting various houses and searching through drawers and cupboards they found it and much else besides.

We should be wary of reading too much into music written shortly before their composers' deaths. Some extreme claims (I think) in that respect were made for Mozart's last piano concerto when it was broadcast on Radio 3 a couple of weeks ago.

187 songs is not that bad going.

Always a good idea to blu-tak a portrait of Janacek above the piano for those chilling moments.

But to feel chilled in another way, whenever people refer to Schubert's early death I'm always reminded that someone pointed out somewhere that 31 was roughly the average age of death in Vienna at the time. I know it's misleading in a way because it comes down to the appalling level of infant mortality rather than a large numbers of people dying in their early thirties, but even so....

I know there is a lot of dispute about this because there just isn't enough evidence but wasn't it a bit more than an 'intimation' of mortality in Schubert's case? It's ages since I've read them but isn't it possible to read some of his letters as hinting that he knew pretty well what was coming?

I take what you say about a particular type of performance practice, and 'hearing practice' too, being coloured with the benefit, or possible disbenefit, of hindsight (though, despite the astonishingly slow tempi I'm not sure Richter is necesarily himself guilty of the other characteristics you mention*). But there are still a couple of things that remain mysterious or are left significantly unexplained.

One is that (for me anyway) 'straightforward' or 'robust' performances of the sonatas, for example, often come across as having even more 'tragedy' or 'pathos' than the ones that apparently emphasise those characteristics in the way you describe. The other is this strange business, which happens too often to be dismissible as just anecdotal, of people saying, and you hear it again and again, how Schubert means more and more to them as they get older and is much more central to their listening in their sixties say than when they were in their twenties. I think it is a real mystery; how was it that this twenty/thirty year old, almost uniquely, produced works which the rest of us feel we can only begin to 'understand' in later life. I don't think this is anything to do with romantic myths, or hindsight about his early death, which we are reading in to the music; I think it is unquestionably there, and it is very strange. I've never understood it.    

(* Ah, I see you are careful not to suggest he necessarily does these things; but are referring specifically to his extremely slow tempi.)

Yes, I'm reading Hanslick's criticisms and in some cases they are more of a sort of personal attack on the composer than the music.  Having said that, he is generous to some as performers while being very dismissive of their compositions, the best example of this is his treatment of Liszt.

Didn't Schumann have something to do with the first performance of Schubert's 9th or is my memory playing tricks?  Liszt also did much to publicise the songs via his numerous transcriptions.

Hi Roslynmuse.
I agree about hearing the Liszt transcriptions first and then being able to understand the original songs - it is those which made me able to listen to the originals wth "fresh" ears!

No, nothing from Jan yet - Lynn and I are going to visit him next month to help the Liszt Society with cataloguing their scores and CDs so I will remind him then and hopefully get an answer for you.  I have the score of some (recently published) works they might be the works you heard.  Anyway, the details for this work are as follows: Published by Sarastro as part 2 of their Liszt Series, Cinq Choeurs, S.18 (5 unaccompanied choruses on french texts [nos.1 - 4:  SSTB; no.5: 3 equal voices].  Urtext edition edited by Leslie Howard. 

The first 3 are setting of Racine (L'Eternel est son nom, Chantons l'auteur de la lumiere and Grand Dieu, qui fais briller), the 4th sets Chateaubriand's Combienj'ai douce souvenance and the final one is a setting of Mallet's Qui donc m'a donne la naissance.

I hope this helps but I'll still ask Jan anyway!

Thanks, Jonathan, I guess, these must be the same choral pieces, although I thought there were six... I shall investigate further!

He certainly did. Rather famous letter to Leopold Kupelweiser, 1824:

In a word, I feel myself the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world.  Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair over this ever makes things worse and worse, instead of better; imagine a man, I say, whose most brilliant hopes have perished, to whom the happiness of love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain, at best, whose enthusiasm (at least of the stimulating kind) for all things beautiful threatens to disappear, and I ask you, is he not a miserable unhappy being?—“My peace is gone, my heart is sore, I shall find it never and nevermore”. I may well sing every day now, for each night, I go to bed hoping never to wake again, and each morning only tells me of yesterday’s grief.

I see a reasonably clear reflection of that in the music but not in the sense of it somehow demanding slow tempi (is that how people looking at death in the face see the world anyway? I wouldn't know but I can see a firm case for the opposite). To me it's in the pieces like the late piano sonatas and the last symphony that don't want to end. Or in Winterreise: I'm not personally convinced by performances which milk Der Leiermann for all it's worth; for my money he wrote all the pathos out of it. I remember many years ago singing it through with a pianist and being (wet behind the ears as I was) startled by the fast tempo he took for the opening. But rather than do the old singer thing of imposing my own tempo I gave it a go and we continued in a moderate and absolutely fixed tempo. Which has been how I've seen it ever since: there's no rhetoric in the music as far as I'm concerned, any more than there is in the playing of the kind of street musician who's the Leiermann's archetype.