Imagine for a second that you've written a novel
and not just any novel. You are absolutely convinced
this is your masterpiece. Right. It's a book
that's going to define your entire legacy. So
you pour your absolute best work into it. You
seal it in a novel. You send it to the publisher.
And then just silence. Exactly. Yeah. Total silence.
You actually pass away before anyone really reads
it. And for 10 years, that manuscript just sits
in a pile of dusty papers, completely ignored.
Yeah, it is the ultimate nightmare scenario for
any creator. I mean, the work exists, but without
an audience, does it really live? Right, it's
a philosophical question at that point. Yeah.
But today, we aren't talking about a book. We're
doing a deep dive into what is arguably one of
the most important pieces of orchestral music
ever written. We are talking about Franz Schubert's
Symphony No. 9, which is famously known as The
Great. And, you know, the great moniker isn't
just clever marketing, though we will definitely
get to that. This is the piece that really bridged
the gap between the classical precision of someone
like Beethoven and the massive, sweeping, emotional
soundscapes of the romantics. Yeah. But our mission
today isn't just to analyze the music theory.
It's to unravel this whole detective story of
how this masterpiece was lost, rejected, and
then nearly forgotten forever. And we have combed
through the historical archives, letters from
the composers themselves, and extensive musical
analysis to piece this timeline together for
you. And honestly, looking at the sources...
It reads like a timeline of near misses. It really
does. It's basically a miracle we have this music
at all today. It is. And I think we need to set
the context right away. When we say symphony
in the early 19th century, most people immediately
think of Beethoven. Oh, sure. Right. By the time
Schubert writes this, Beethoven is this absolute
titan casting a huge shadow over everyone in
Vienna. And Schubert is, well, he's the shy songwriter
living in that shadow. This symphony was his
attempt to finally step into the light. Which
makes the tragedy you hinted at even worse because
he never heard a professional note of it played.
Not a single one. That fact just blows my mind
every time I think about it. But before we get
to the tragedy, let's unpack the identity crisis
this core symphony has suffered. Because if you
look this piece up, you see the great. And it
sounds like Schubert had a massive ego. Like,
here's my great symphony. You're welcome. Was
he just feeling really confident that day? You
would completely think so. Right. It sounds like
a total flex, but the reality is actually much
more mundane, which I think makes it kind of
funny. It wasn't an artistic statement at all.
It was literally a filing system. A filing system.
Yeah. Schubert had written a symphony in C major
previously, his symphony number six. And that
one is charming. It's lighter, a bit shorter.
So when he wrote this new massive work, which
was also in C major catalog number D944 for anyone.
keeping track, the publishers needed a way to
tell them apart on the physical shelf. Oh, I
see. So you had the little C major and the great
C major. So it is literally like ordering a coffee.
I'll take the Venice C major, please. Essentially,
yes. But as time went on, the meaning of the
nickname naturally shifted. It stopped being
just about the physical size of the score or
the duration, and it started being about the
ambition of the music itself. Because it is ambitious.
Extremely. The little symphony is lovely, but
the great is, well, it's earth shattering. It's
a completely different beast. It demands your
attention in a way his earlier symphonies just
didn't. Now, speaking of confusion, the name
isn't the only problem here. The number seems
to be a total mess. Oh, it's a nightmare. I've
seen it listed as symphony number nine, which
is the standard I think most of us know today.
But I've also seen number eight, and apparently
some people used to call it number seven. Why
can't historians just agree on a simple number?
This is one of those classic musicological headaches
that absolutely drives college students crazy.
It all comes down to how you count incomplete
work. Because Schubert was notorious for starting
things and just not finishing them. The unfinished
symphony being the most famous example of that.
Right, the one that just stops abruptly after
two movements. Exactly. So, here's the breakdown.
If you are looking at the new Schubert edition
or reading most German musicologists, they often
list the great as number eight. Their logic is
that you only count the completed symphonies
plus the unfinished. Okay, that makes some sense
logically. Right. But in the English -speaking
world, and largely in the standard repertoire
recordings you'll find on streaming services
today, we count a different draft, symphony number
seven, which exists just in a sketch. We keep
that in the lineup. And that pushes the great
to number nine. And what about the people calling
it number seven? Are they just trying to mess
with us? That was an older convention from the
19th century before the catalog was fully standardized.
They were basically skipping all the unfinished
stuff entirely. But here is the real takeaway
for you listening, so you don't get bogged down
in the math. Whether you see it listed as eight
or nine, we are talking about the final completed
symphony of his career. It is his last full statement
to the world. Now, that phrase, last full statement,
usually implies a kind of deathbed work. There's
this super romantic myth that Schubert wrote
this in 1828, right before he died at age 31,
pouring his final life force onto the page. People
really love that narrative, the dying artist
raging against the dying of the light. It's very
dramatic. But the source material tells a completely
different story. Modern analysis of the paper
types and the handwriting in the sketches actually
dates the composition to the summer of 1825.
So he was perfectly healthy. He was doing relatively
well. He was in Gastein, which is this beautiful
spa town in the Austrian Alps. He was surrounded
by nature, he was feeling good, and he was incredibly
ambitious. That's a very different picture. Totally.
We actually have a letter from March 1824 where
he explicitly says he is paving his way toward
a grand symphony. This wasn't a panic -induced
rush job at the end of his life. this was a calculated
multi -year project to prove he could write a
symphony on the sheer scale of Beethoven. That
changes the whole vibe of the piece entirely
for me. It's not a funeral dirge or a desperate
farewell. It's a statement of intent. It's a
young man saying, I have arrived. Precisely.
He was swinging for the fences. So he finishes
it in 1826. He's proud of it. He sends it to
the big leagues, the Gesellschaft der Musikfond
in Vienna. The Society of Friends of Music. This
is his big shot. And this is where the heartbreak
really begins. He dedicates it to them. He sends
them this massive, dense score. They pay him
a small fee, which he desperately needed because
he was pretty much always broke. Right. They
copy out the individual parts for the musicians.
And then they try to play it. I feel like try
in the operative word there. Very much so. The
historical records say they gave it a perfunctory
run -through in the latter half of 1827. Ouch.
Perfunctory is such a stinging word when you're
talking about someone's art. It means they just
went through the motions, checked the box, and
moved on. They essentially sight -read it, decided
it was way too long, too difficult, and frankly,
just too weird for them. You have to understand,
the orchestra at the conservatory was largely
made up of amateurs. They simply couldn't handle
the technical demands of what he wrote. So they
shelved it. Wait, they didn't even reject it
outright and give it back to him so he could
send it to another city? They just put it in
a drawer? Effectively, yes. They filed it away
in the archives. And Schubert died a year later
in November 1828. There's a tiny slender thread
of evidence suggesting a performance might have
happened in 1829. But most scholars now think
that was actually just the little C major again.
Wow. So it is overwhelmingly likely that the
great just sat in the archives of the society
gathering dust totally unheard by the public.
It sits there for 10 whole years. A full decade.
The ink is drying. The paper is yellowing. And
then we get the crossover episode of the century.
Enter the hero of our story. Robert Schumann
This is truly one of the great moments in music
history. It's 1838. Schubert has been dead for
10 years. Schumann is visiting Vienna, and he's
already a huge fan of Schubert's songs and his
piano music. He decides to pay a visit to Schubert's
brother, Ferdinand. Ferdinand Schubert. He must
have been sitting on an absolute treasure trove
of music. He was, and Ferdinand, knowing Schumann
is this highly influential critic and a great
composer himself, brings him into the study and
shows him the pile of manuscripts. Schumann starts
digging through them, literally looking through
stacks. I can only imagine that feeling. It's
like finding a lost Beatles album in a basement
or unearthing a new Shakespeare play. Schumann
went absolutely crazy for it. We have the letters
he wrote to his fiancée, Clara, saying he was
happy and blissful just to have seen it. He wrote
a massive article about it in his magazine, the
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and he coined a phrase
that has stuck to the symphony ever since. He
praised its heavenly length. Heavenly length.
I want to pause on that for a second, because
today, if you tell someone a movie has heavenly
length, they might roll their eyes. We have very
short attention spans now. Was he apologizing
for how long it was? Not at all. He meant it
as the absolute highest compliment. He compared
it to a thick four volume novel by the writer
Jean -Paul. The idea was that the world short
created was so rich, so deeply immersive that
you, the listener, never wanted it to end. He
felt that Schubert was completely in control
of this massive narrative. It wasn't rambling.
It was epic. So it's not dragging. It's the difference
between a long commute and a long vacation. That's
a fantastic way to put it. But Schumann didn't
just write a glowing review and leave it at that.
He took action. He secured a copy of the score
and sent it back to Leipzig. And who was running
the orchestra in Leipzig at the time? Felix Mendelssohn.
The one and only. So you have Schubert writing
it, Schumann discovering it, and Mendelssohn
conducting the premiere. It's basically the holy
trinity of early romantic music working together
across time. And the premiere finally happens
in March 1839. Was it a success? Yeah. In Leipzig.
Huge success. Schumann and Mendelssohn championed
it, and the Leipzig audience was very sophisticated.
But, and here's the catch, just because the musical
geniuses loved it didn't mean the average orchestral
musicians did. Ah, right, we're back to the too
-difficult problem that doomed it in Vienna ten
years earlier. We are. You have to remember...
Orchestra players in the 1830s and 40s were used
to playing Haydn and Mozart. Even Beethoven was
still considered a stretch for a lot of them.
Schubert's writing in this symphony requires
incredible physical stamina. The string players
have to play these fast, repetitive, driving
figures for page after page without a single
break. There's a specific story about this that
I found hilarious in the sources, though probably
wasn't very funny for the conductor at the time.
It happened in London, right? Yes, 1844. Mendelssohn,
who absolutely loved this piece and wanted to
spread the gospel of Schubert everywhere he went,
tries to bring it to London. He's rehearsing
with the Philharmonic. They get to the finale.
And violinists, they literally start laughing.
They laughed at the music. Out loud. They collapsed
in giggles. They found the main triplet figure
in the finale, this fast, relentless da -da -da
-da -da -da to be completely absurd. They thought
it was unplayable and ridiculous. It sounded
like a technical exercise to them, not a real
melody. That is so disrespectful. Imagine Mendelssohn,
one of the greatest musicians who ever lived,
standing on the podium, baton in hand, and the
violin section is creating this undiscovered
masterpiece like a joke. It got so bad that Mendelssohn
actually withdrew the piece. He refused to conduct
it with them. He basically threw down the gauntlet
and said, if you can't take this seriously, we
aren't doing it. Wow. Good for him. And it wasn't
just London either. In Paris in 1842, the orchestra
there flat out refused to play it. They rehearsed
it once and said, no, this is too much. It's
too hard. It literally took decades for standard
orchestral technique to catch up with Schubert's
vision. That's such a common theme with true
visionaries. The hardware just hasn't caught
up to the software yet. So let's get into the
software of this piece. What exactly were these
musicians struggling with? What makes the great
so fundamentally different from what came before
it? There are a few key innovations that really
set this piece apart from anything else at the
time. The first one, and this is something you
can hear immediately when you listen to it, is
how he uses the trombones. Trombones. Okay. In
my head, trombones in classical music are usually
just blasting in the background during the loud
parts to add volume and drama. Exactly. Before
this, in the classical era, trombones were used
for two things. Religious solemnity like in a
church service or a requiem mass or just pure
volume reinforcement. Even Beethoven in his famous
Ninth Symphony uses them mostly to double the
voices in the choir. They are support staff.
And Schubert promotes them to the main cast.
He makes them lead actors. In the great, the
trombones are actually playing the melodies.
And crucially, they are playing softly. In the
first movement, they play these gorgeous lyrical
lines, pianissimo. That was revolutionary. It
completely changed the color of the orchestral
sound. It gave it this dark, golden, warm depth
that became the signature romantic sound later
on. So when we listen to this, we shouldn't just
wait for the loud brass blast. We should actually
listen for the trombone singing. Yes, listen
for them interacting with the woodwinds like
equals. It's a texture that simply didn't exist
in symphonies before this. What's the second
big shift? It's the f***. Focus on pure melody
over conflict. Think of Beethoven's Fifth. Dun,
dun, dun, de, a, a. That's a motif. It's a rhythmic
hammer. Beethoven builds a cathedral out of bricks.
He develops a tiny, angry idea into a massive
structure through conflict and resolution. But
Schubert is a songwriter at heart. He writes
leader. So he builds a cathedral out of tunes.
In a way, yes. He keeps the massive architectural
structure of Beethoven, the sonata form, the
long development sections. But he fills it with
these long... continuous singing lines. It's
exactly why Schumann called it heavenly length.
You aren't just watching a structural argument
unfold. You're being carried along by a song.
Let's walk through that structure briefly because
it is a marathon of a piece. It's four movements,
the standard format, but just... supersized right
movement one starts with an introduction but
it's not just a quick here we go intro to grab
your attention it's a solid section of music
marked on dante that lays out all the core material
keep an ear out for that opening horn call it
sounds like a summons from nature echoing through
a mountain valley it sets a magical tone immediately
and then we get into the fast section which is
full of that rhythmic drive we talked about then
movement to the andante con moto this is really
the emotional core of the symphony It's an A
minor. It has this marching, almost trudging
rhythm to it. I was reading that a lot of critics
say this movement sounds like a wanderer theme.
Very much so. The Wanderer was a huge symbolic
figure in German romanticism. The solitary figure
walking alone through nature, reflecting on life.
But then midway through, it breaks into this
second theme in F major that is just pure light.
It's consoling. It's that bittersweet mix that
Schubert does better than anyone else in history.
Happy and sad at the exact same time. Then we
hit the Scherzo, which is traditionally the dance
movement, but here it's on steroids. Huge scale.
It's vigorous, it's stomping, it has this rustic
Austrian dance feel, but it's full of incredibly
intricate counterpoint. And finally, the movement
that broke the London violinists, the finale.
The finale. This is where the energy just goes
entirely off the charts. It is an endurance test
for everyone on stage. And structurally, it's
fascinating because it is just overflowing with
ideas. A normal classical symphony might have
two contrasting themes in the finale. Schubert
throws in no less than six unique thematic elements
in the main exposition alone. He's just showing
off at this point. He has too many good ideas
and has to use them all. He really had so much
to say. But there is one specific moment in the
finale I want everyone to listen for. It's a
little musical Easter egg. Oh, I love a good
Easter egg. Where is it? Midway through the development
section, the woodwinds play a melody that should
sound very familiar to anyone who knows classical
music. It is a direct quote of the famous Ode
to Joy theme from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Wait, really? He just straight up copies Beethoven
in his own symphony? It's not copying. It's a
tribute. You have to remember the timeline. Beethoven's
Ninth premiered in 1824. Schubert is writing
this in 1825. He is deliberately nodding to the
master. He's saying, I hear what you did, and
I'm walking the same path. It's a very subtle,
beautiful acknowledgement. It's a total goosebump
moment. It's literally a conversation between
two geniuses across the staves. It is. And then,
just to show he isn't a slave to Beethoven's
rules, Schubert does something really weird in
the recapitulation, which is the part where the
main themes come back at the end. Usually you
have to come back to the home. key there, right?
To C major. That's the golden rule of sonata
form. You start at home, you go on an adventure,
and you must come home. But Schubert, he brings
the themes back in E flat major. Why break the
rule there? It delays the resolution. It takes
the scenic route home. It extends the journey,
adding even more to that sense of heavenly length.
He modulates from E flat to F, and only then
does he finally land the plane back in C major.
It's a brilliant way to keep the tension alive
until the very last possible second. It sounds
like a piece that is constantly pushing against
the boundaries of what a symphony was legally
allowed to be at the time. It absolutely was,
and that's exactly why it took 10, 20, even 30
years for the musical world to actually understand
it. So to sum it up, we have a work that was
physically too hard for the musicians to play,
structurally too long for the audiences to sit
through, and tonally too innovative for the critics
of its day to grasp. And yet today, it is an
absolute cornerstone of the repertoire. You really
can't imagine the Romantic era happening without
it. It paved the way for Anton Bruckner, for
Gustav Mahler, really for anyone who wanted to
write massive, world -building music. They all
looked back at Schubert's great C major and said,
OK. That is possible. It's an incredible redemption
arc, even if it was severely delayed. The ultimate
sleeper hit of the 19th century. I want to circle
back to where we started today, the tragedy of
the silence. We have this hour -long masterpiece.
It's loud. It's joyous. It's incredibly triumphant.
It is fiercely life -affirming music. It doesn't
sound depressed or defeated at all. But the man
who wrote it never heard it. He wrote those melodic
trombone parts entirely in his head. He wrote
that ode to joy tribute in his head. He formulated
that massive exhausting finale in his head. He
imagined the applause, surely. He must have imagined
how it would sound echoing in a great concert
hall. But he died in a city that had literally
filed his greatest achievement away in a dark
cabinet. That is a really heavy thought. It reminds
us that sometimes the work has to speak for itself,
long after the creator is gone. So here's a challenge
for you listening today. If you have an hour,
go find a recording and listen to the whole thing.
Let the heavenly length wash over you. But if
you are short on time, just skip straight to
the finale, put on your headphones and turn it
up. And when you hear those rushing, galloping
triplets, that driving rhythm that just never
stops. Don't just hear the energy of the orchestra.
I want you to picture those violinists in London
in 1844 collapsing in laughter. Picture them
thinking it's a joke. Picture them shaking their
heads because they couldn't play it. And then
realize that you are listening to the sound of
the future that they just couldn't hear yet.
And remember that Schubert left that sound for
us. He never got to experience it, but we do.
A gift delivered 10 years late, but right on
time. Thanks for joining us on this deep dive
into Schubert's Ninth. See you next time.