A Plan For Listening: Week 2

Last week I got you started with a listening plan. Have a look at that post for the basic idea. Here is what I suggest for week 2.

Two more composers: this time from slightly later. Bach's dates are 1685 - 1750 and Mozart's from 1756 - 1791--yes, he died young. This week we are going to listen to some Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) --good heavens, that means that this year is his 250th birthday! and some Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828 ) --he died at only thirty-one. Both Beethoven and Schubert were mostly active in Vienna, Austria, as was Mozart for that matter. For the better part of two centuries this was the musical place to be. Beethoven was hugely famous and a big success with the upper classes. He took up where Mozart left off and essentially expanded and developed what is known as the Classical Style, music that is characterized by clarity, elegance and expressivity, though he took it to a more intense level. Here is a justly famous piano sonata by Beethoven, nicknamed the "Moonlight" Sonata. The first movement is typical of Beethoven in that it seems to grow from the most simple and fundamental musical essence. The pianist is Claudio Arrau.

I said Beethoven lent greater intensity to the style and an example is the furious finale to his String Quartet, op. 59 no. 3. This is the Borealis Quartet with a video presentation that helps you follow what each instrument is doing.

As that amounts to twenty-five minutes already, I am going to leave Beethoven for now and move on to Schubert. Unlike Beethoven he was almost completely unknown during his brief life. One of his most loved symphonies was not even performed until forty years after it was written and long after he was dead when Robert Schumann stumbled across it in a drawer at the symphony society. Between the ages of seventeen and thirty-one, when he died, Schubert wrote a thousand pieces of music, including six hundred songs. Let's listen to one of those songs. The poem is by Goethe and Schubert set it when he was only eighteen. Follow the link for the text and background. Here is a performance by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who recorded every one of Schubert's songs. Lieder and opera can be difficult genres for people today to get into, because of the unfamiliar way they use the voice. You should read the poem before listening to the performance.

Schubert wrote piles of music in every genre, including the symphony. His "Unfinished" Symphony is in only two movements instead of four like most symphonies. But in those two movements he achieves a depth of expression we rarely hear. He once said to someone at a soirée who complained that his music was sad that "all music is sad!" This is the Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Trevor Pinnock: