PROGRAM NOTES Franz Schubert Symphony No. 3 in D Major, D. 200 in D Major, D

PROGRAM NOTES by Phillip Huscher

Franz Schubert Born January 31, 1797, Himmelpfortgrund, northwest of Vienna, Austria. Died November 19, 1828, Vienna , Austria .

Symphony No. 3 in D Major, D. 200

Schubert composed this symphony between May 24 and July 19, 1815 . Although the symphony was probably performed privately that year, the first public performance didn ’t take place un til Fe bruary 19, 1881, in London. The score calls for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets , with timpani and strings. Performance time is a pproximately twenty-four minutes.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first performance of Schubert’s Third Symphony was given at the Ravinia Festival on July 2, 1955, with Eduard van Beinem conducting. The Orchestra first perform ed this symphony at Orchestra Hall on a popular concert on January 31, 1959, with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting. Our first subscription concert performance was given on January 7, 1960 , with Igor Markevitch conducting. Our most recent subscription concert performances were given on March 12, 13, and 14, 1992, with Erich Leinsdorf conducting. The Orchestra most recently performed this symphony at the Ravinia Festival on August 2, 1980, with Neville Marriner conducting.

The most productive year of Schubert ’s life was 1815. He was still a schoolmaster then, a prisoner of the classroom who filled his free time writing the music that would one day make him famous. Schubert ’s off hours produced an extraordinary harvest that year: two piano sonatas; a set of vari ations on an original theme; dances for keyboard; a string quartet; two masses and considerable miscellaneous choral music; four operas—including Claudine von Villa Bella , which lost its second and third acts when the servants of Schubert’s friend, Josef H üttenbrenner, used the manuscript to star t fires during the cold winter of 1848; some 145 songs, including Erlkönig, long considered his greatest; and this D major symphony. Not all the music is important or memorable (S chubert was only eighteen ); he must have been writing at breakneck speed and often well into the night. But much of it is impressive regardless of the circumstances, and some of the songs, in particular, are among his finest works —they reveal a gift too strong and an imagination too vivid to be stifled even by the dull rigor of drilling reluctant boys and anticipating mischief.

Schubert’s manuscript tells us he began this symphony on May 24, the same day he wrote a piece for female chorus and horns. (He had finished a one -act singspiel five days earlier.) In the next few days, he wrote several more choral works and a number of songs; he completed the Adagio maestoso introduction and first few pages of the Allegro of the symphony, and then put the score aside. He returned to the Allegro on Jul y 11; the symphony was completed in eight days. History is filled with stories of fine music written at astonishing speed, but Schubert often did his best work in great haste —he once jotted down a song, fully formed, on the back of a café menu.

We might w ell guess, from listening to this symphony, that Schubert belonged to an orchestra that regularly played symphonies by Haydn and Mozart —as well the earliest ones by Beethoven. But we also notice a distinctive way with traditional forms —any composer capable of writing one of the most extraordinary songs in the literature, Gretchen am Spinnrade , at the age of seventeen had found his own voice at an early age. By the time he wrote that song in 1814, Schubert had finished his first symphony. And by the time he finished this one, his third, less than a year later, Schubert had written what many composers would gladly claim as a life’s work—and he had traveled light years in the perfection of his own style.

The first movement begins, like many of Haydn ’s, with a slow introduction. The manuscript shows that Schubert struggled with the bubbling clarinet theme that launches the Allegro con brio, scoring it first for oboe and horns, and then for strings before finding the right sound. The movement itself is fluent an d highly untroubled; the coda returns to the ascending scales of the introduction. Schubert originally planned to write an adagio for the second movement—he even sketched a theme in this tempo. But he settled on a fresh and unassuming allegretto instead. The third movement is a forceful minuet, its trio a charming waltz. The finale, marked presto vivace, begins pianissimo and then explodes with energy.

Schubert’s first six symphonies were rarely performed for many years. It was Antonín Dvorák who began to play them in Prague near the end of the nineteenth century, and who wrote about them while he was in this country, saying, “the more I study them, the more I marvel.”

Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

These notes appear in galley files and may contain typographical or other errors. Programs subject to change without notice.