Though the two composers lived in the same city, they were hardly, if at all, in touch. Of the three composers responsible for the city’s preeminence, Mozart was dead, and Haydn had more or less retired only Beethoven remained active during Schubert’s short life. When Schubert was born in 1797, Vienna was the musical capital of Europe. In his well over six hundred songs he was able to elevate the genre to its highest level, matching what Haydn accomplished as a grandmaster of the string quartet: the creation of a vast panorama, a kind of comprehensive musical cosmos. Already by the age of seventeen he had written some of his greatest songs, while the mounting distinction of his later instrumental works, up to the great String Quintet-his last chamber work-is staggering. Even next to the prodigious output of Bach and Handel, Haydn and Mozart, Schubert’s accomplishments seem truly inconceivable, considering that he lived for only thirty-one years, and that the quality of many of his works is so remarkable. But he was also the most phenomenal in the amount of work he produced. Is Schubert, among great composers, the most immediately moving? I would think so.
Ian Bostridge at the Hay Festival, Hay-on-Wye, Wales, 2012 Clara Molden/Telegraph/Camera Press/Redux
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