Portrait of Franz Schubert (source).
Epilogue
By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger
Special guest blogger
Thank you for taking this voyage with me. I love this book dearly. This final Epilogue serves as a transition to Rosen’s 1995 masterpiece The Romantic Generation.
I love Rosen’s discussion of Schubert in the Epilogue. When I first read The Romantic Generation it surprised me that he didn’t write more about Schubert. This Epilogue makes clear that Rosen sees Schubert as a transitional figure from the classical style to the Romantic generation. Yes, I had read The Classical Style before I read The Romantic Generation, but this distinction about Schubert’s unique transitional role did not become clear to me until about the fifth time I read The Classical Style. Like Thomas Pynchon, I seem a slow learner.
Ezra Pound tended to translate works he found important. In the same way, Rosen recorded works he found important, and I love his playing of the Schubert sonata he focused on in the Epilogue.
4 comments:
I found the description of "Schumann's homage to Beethoven, the Fantasy in C major" very interesting as well as Rosen seeing it as the death of the classical style. I googled and learned that Schumann composed it to raise money for a monument to Beethoven in Bonn, his birthplace. He initially titled the movements:
1. Ruins - representing the fragments and struggle
2. Triumphal Arch - representing achievement and heroism
3. Starry Crown - representing transcendence, legacy and immortality.
Rosen notes this in a footnote. Those movement titles sound very Illuminati-like, to me.
The discussion of Schumann's tonal ambiguity – "The Kreisleriana, like the great song cycles is written around a set of related keys, none of which is felt as more important than the others." – reminds me of Schoenberg's 12 tone compositions.
Thank-you for guiding this voyage, Eric. I did not understand most of The Classical Style when it got into the music analysis. When I read things I don't understand I trust that something below conscious awareness gets absorbed with maybe unintended effects down the road. It seems synchronous that while reading this book I got a gig to mix a concert by a chamber orchestra. They (Live Room Orchestra) will play in support of a singer name Simrit who I've worked with for a number of years. The concert is October 18th at the Grammercy Theater on 23rd St (of course) in New York. Drop in if you're in the neighborhood. The first name of the orchestra's conductor/leader is Jackson. I'm incredibly thrilled.
Schumann's Fantasy has multiple names and spellings. I love this recording by Rosen:
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RywRzybGf18&list=OLAK5uy_njBcc5iHb80EpRqf8u3W8zCiXowdE2cro&index=9
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdUJbw1ANR8&list=OLAK5uy_njBcc5iHb80EpRqf8u3W8zCiXowdE2cro&index=10
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CEmzXR2h6k&list=OLAK5uy_njBcc5iHb80EpRqf8u3W8zCiXowdE2cro&index=11
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I listened to the last song of Beethoven's "An Die Ferne Geliebte" a bunch over the past few months to help me get ready to listen to the reference to it in the first movement of Schumann's Fantasy. Sometimes I hear the Beethoven reference, sometimes I miss it. Rosen discusses this piece in detail in "The Romantic Generation." I took my copy of the book off the shelf today to look at it over the next few days.
Thank you, Oz, for your kind words and all of your comments. Good luck on your chamber orchestra gig. I loved playing in the chamber orchestra in college.
Thank-you for the You Tube clips, Eric, I listened to all three. My ear lacks the education to hear a Beethoven influence, but I found they really communicated the sense of each movement title.
The last page of the first movement of Schumann's Fantasie quotes the beginning of the final song of Beethoven's "An die ferne Geliebte." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3jab57_rJc&list=RDw3jab57_rJc&start_radio=1
All of the earlier themes of the first movement of the Fantasie hint at the Beethoven quote, so it nurtures the idea of the piece as detailing the "ruins" of a hoped for love with the memory of a song he and the beloved listened to together or played together. Rosen sees this first movement as perhaps Schumann's greatest accomplishment. Rosen notes the skill with which Schumann makes the phrase from Beethoven seem like a memory.
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