PROGRAM NOTES

by Phillip Huscher

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

Symphony No. 3 in D Major, D. 200

Schubert composed this symphony between May 24 and July 19, 1815 1815.. Although the symphony was
probably performed privately that year, the first public performance didn
didn’t take place until
til February
Fe 19, 1881,
in London. The score calls for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets,
trumpets with timpani
and strings. Performance time is approximately
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 performed
perform this
symphony at Orchestra Hall on a popular
opular concert on January 31, 1959, with Sir Thomas Beecham
conducting. Our first subscription concert performance was given on January 7, 1960
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

Schubert’s 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 Schubert off
hours produced an extraordinary harvest that year: two piano sonatas; a set of vari variations
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 Bella,, which lost its second and third acts when the servants of
Schubert’s friend, Josef Hüttenbrenner,
üttenbrenner, used the manuscript to startt fires during the cold winter of 1848;
some 145 songs, including Erlkönig, long considered his greatest; and this D major symphony. ymphony. Not all the
music is important or memorable (Schubert
chubert was only eighteen
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
works—they
hey 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’ss 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
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 Julyy 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
haste—he once jotted down a song, fully
formed, on the back of a café menu.

We might well ell guess, from listening to this symphony, that Schubert belonged to an orchestra that regularly
played symphonies by Haydn and Mozart 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
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

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 and
an 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.

© Chicago Symphony Orchestra. All rights reserved. Program notes may be reproduced only in their
entirety and with express written permission from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

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