I have decided to post Schubert’s 4 Impromptus Op. 90. I have played a few of these, and they are not easy, but they are a staple of the piano repertoire today.
These are a set of four impromptus for solo piano composed by Franz Schubert in 1827. They were written in the same year as the Impromptus, Op. 142, though only the first two pieces were published during Schubert’s lifetime.
The pianist is Artur Schnabel, considered to be one of the experts in Schubert even until today. I would not call him a virtuoso, even though he studied with the virtuoso teacher Leschetizky. I would call him a brilliant musician, and, during his lifetime, he was a great champion of Schubert’s music, especially of Schubert’s works that had fallen into critical disdain.
Artur Schnabel
April 17, 1882 – August 15, 1951
Artur Schnabel was an Austrian pianist and teacher whose performances and recordings made him a legend in his own time and a model of scholarly musicianship to all later pianists.
Schnabel was a child prodigy and studied in Vienna with the celebrated pianist and teacher Theodor Leschetizky. He lived in Berlin from 1900 and was a leading piano teacher at the State Academy of Music in Berlin from 1925 to 1933. He emigrated to Switzerland in 1933 after Adolf Hitler came to power, and he lived in the United States from 1939 until after World War II, when he returned to Switzerland.
Schnabel specialized in the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, and Franz Schubert. He was never a virtuoso pianist, and he neither taught technique nor concerned himself with mere technical mastery. Yet he was able to bring out every nuance of meaning in a musical text with remarkable intellectual penetration and eloquence. Among the high points of his career were his concert performances of all 32 of Beethoven’s sonatas in Berlin in 1927 and 1932–34, in which his imaginative interpretations took on a visionary clarity and intensity. Much of his playing is preserved on early recordings.
As a composer Schnabel was influenced by his contemporary Arnold Schoenberg, whom he knew in Berlin. He never played his own or other modern music in public, however. Schnabel’s thoughts on music were published as Reflections on Music (1933) and Music and the Line of Most Resistance (1942) and were more concretely expressed in his edition of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.
Franz Schubert
January 31, 1797 – November 19, 1828
This is a very abridged description of Schubert’s life.
Franz Schubert was an Austrian composer who bridged the worlds of Classical and Romantic music, noted for the melody and harmony in his songs (lieder) and chamber music.
Early life and career
Schubert’s father, Franz Theodor Schubert, was a schoolmaster; his mother, Elisabeth, whose maiden name was Vietz, was in domestic service at the time of her marriage. Franz was their fourth surviving son. His elder brothers were Ignaz, Karl, and Ferdinand, and there was a younger sister, Maria Theresa. The elder Franz Schubert was a man of character who had established a flourishing school. The family was musical and cultivated string quartet playing in the home, the boy Franz playing the viola. He received the foundations of his music education from his father and his brother Ignaz, continuing later with organ playing and music theory under the instruction of the parish church organist. In 1808 he won a scholarship that earned him a place in the imperial court chapel choir and an education at the Stadtkonvikt, the principal boarding school for commoners in Vienna, where his tutors were Wenzel Ruzicka, the imperial court organist, and, later, the composer Antonio Salieri, then at the height of his fame. Schubert played the violin in the students’ orchestra, was quickly promoted to leader, and in Ruzicka’s absence conducted. He also attended choir practice and, with his fellow pupils, cultivated chamber music and piano playing.
The many unfinished fragments and sketches of songs left by Schubert provide some insight into the working of his creative mind. Clearly, the primary stimulus was melodic. The words of a poem engendered a tune. Harmony (chordal structure of a composition) and modulation (change of key) were then suggested by the contours of the melody. But the external details of the poet’s scene—natural, domestic, or mythical—prompted such wonderfully graphic images in the accompaniments as the spinning wheel, the ripple of water, or the “shimmering robe” of spring. These features were fully present in the songs of 1815.
Maturity of Franz Schubert
In Vienna the popularity of Schubert’s songs and dance music became so great that concert parties were entirely devoted to them. These parties, called Schubertiaden, were given in the homes of
The early months of 1824 were unhappy. Schubert was ill, penniless, and plagued by a sense of failure. Yet during these months he composed three masterly chamber works: the String Quartet in A Minor, a second string quartet in D Minor containing variations on his song “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (“Death and the Maiden”), and the Octet in F Major for strings and wind instruments. His dejection is manifest in a letter of March 31, 1824, to the painter Leopold Kupelwieser in which he speaks of himself as “the most unfortunate, the most miserable being in the world.” In desperate need of money, he returned in the summer to his teaching post with the Esterházy family and in May 1824 went again to Zseliz. Once more his health and spirits revived. The period was marked by some magnificent piano duets, the Piano Sonata in C Major (Grand Duo), the Variations on an Original Theme in A-flat Major, and the Divertissement à la hongroise (Hungarian Divertissement).
Although his operas remained unperformed, there were frequent public performances of his songs and part-songs in Vienna during these and the following years. Publication proceeded rapidly, and his financial position, though still strained, was at any rate eased.
Last years of Franz Schubert
The resignation of Salieri as imperial Kapellmeister (musical director) in 1824 had led to the promotion of his deputy, Josef Eybler. In 1826 Schubert applied for the vacant post of deputy Kapellmeister, but in spite of strong support by several influential people he was unsuccessful. From then until his death two years later he seems to have let matters drift. Neither by application for professional posts nor submission of operatic work did he seek to establish himself. It can hardly be believed that Schubert was unaware of his exceptional powers; yet, together with an awareness of genius and the realization that it opened doors into cultivated society went the knowledge of his humble birth and upbringing and also of his somewhat uncouth bearing. This self-consciousness made him diffident, reserved, and hesitant. His life was almost entirely devoted to composition, and he derived his livelihood from publishers’ fees and occasional teaching.
The only public concert Schubert gave took place on March 26, 1828. It was both artistically and financially a success, and the impecunious composer was at last able to buy himself a piano. At the end of August he moved into lodgings with his brother Ferdinand. Schubert’s health, broken by the illness of 1823, had deteriorated, and his ceaseless work had exhausted him. In October he developed typhoid fever as a result of drinking tainted water. His last days were spent in the company of his brother and several close friends.
It is said that Schubert’s place in the history of music is equivocal, for he stands between the worlds of Classical and Romantic music. He can, however, be considered as the last of the great Classical composers. His music, subjectively emotional in the Romantic manner, poetically conceived, and revolutionary in language, is nevertheless cast in the formal molds of the Classical school—with the result that it has become increasingly apparent that Schubert more truly belongs to the age of Haydn, Beethoven, and Mozart than to that of Schumann, Chopin, and Wagner.