In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Schubert’s Beethoven Project by John M. Gingerich
  • Anne M. Hyland
Schubert’s Beethoven Project. By John M. Gingerich. pp. xvi + 358. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2014. £65. ISBN 978-0-521-55035-2.)

Of songs I have not written many new ones, but I have tried my hand at several instrumental things, for I wrote two string quartets and an octet, and I want to write another quartet; in fact, I intend to pave my way towards a grand symphony in this manner.

(Schubert, cited on p. 42)

The crux of Schubert’s Beethoven Project resides in the final three words of this excerpt from Schubert’s letter to Leopold Kupelweiser on 31 March 1824. The phrase ‘in this manner’ has traditionally been taken to refer to a compositional process whereby Schubert wrote string quartets and other chamber pieces in Beethovenian genres as preparation for a grand symphony. John M. Gingerich, in this fascinating reappraisal, suggests that they are better interpreted as ‘a process, in general, of [Schubert] making a name for himself in Beethoven’s instrumental genres, and specifically, of establishing himself with Schuppanzigh and with Schuppanzigh’s audience as a worthy heir to Beethoven’s legacy’ (p. 237). In other words, Gingerich invites us to hear these words as a statement of practical as well as compositional intent: in the final years of his life, Schubert resolved to pursue the public dissemination of the large-scale instrumental works he composed after 1824, those that represented his ‘strivings after the highest in art’.

The foundation for Schubert’s Beethoven Project was laid in Gingerich’s 2007 article on the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony (19th-Century Music, 31 (2007), 99–112), which outlined for the first time this new way of understanding Schubert’s career as an instrumental composer in the genres of the piano sonata, string quartet, and symphony. The monograph under review offers a more fully developed and thoroughly comprehensive exploration of the historical, cultural, professional, and institutional contexts that made Schubert’s Beethoven project a possibility after 1824. In so doing, it ascribes to Schubert a conscious professionalism and meticulousness not normally associated with the natural composer [End Page 337] of song, and as such offers a restorative emendation of Schubert in relation to Beethoven that is long overdue.

Gingerich’s thesis is outlined in chapters 1 (the divide of 1824), 2 (the year of crisis, 1823), and 3 (Schuppanzigh and Schubert’s chamber music), which together set the stage for ‘a chronological narrative of Schubert’s Beethoven project from 1824 to 1828’ (p. 3) in chapters 4–12. This chronological organization raises some questions: why is the octet, composed in February 1824, considered after rather than before the string quartets composed later that year (D804 and D810), and why does the ‘Great’ C major symphony, D944 (which was subject to revision in 1827 and early 1828; hereafter D944) appear in the chapters before the first piano sonatas of 1825? Indeed, the organization of the later chapters (4–12) is not always apparent. Chapter 7, for instance, could have been placed after chapter 3; the progression from Schubert’s treatment by Schuppanzigh to his treatment by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (GdMf) is a natural one, and placing the two chapters side by side would have reinforced the distinction Gingerich ably draws between Schuppanzigh’s concerts and the Abendunterhaltungen. Similarly, the final section of chapter 7 would sit comfortably in the first part of chapter 8, since both consider the responses elicited by D944 over the course of its reception. Such structural issues give rise to some unnecessary repetition between chapters, such as the discussion of the status of the Abendunterhaltungen in chapters 3 and 7, and the triplication of Schuppanzigh’s remark on the string quartet, D810 (pp. 78, 85, and 199).

These are minor distractions, and the book’s historical narrative is guided by two clear tracks, the first pertaining to Schubert’s public career in Vienna, and the second relating to issues of genre, especially to distinctions between ‘public genres and private genres, genres for large and small public venues, male genres and feminized ones, aristocratic and folkish genres’ (p...

pdf

Share