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Music for Meditation: Schubert and Brendel

Music for Meditation: Schubert and Brendel

By Mark George, President and CEO


A weekly recommendation of music for meditation. Find a comfortable chair or lie down, turn on a smart speaker or put in earbuds, and just listen. My recommendation this week is the Andante sostenuto from Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960. Regardless of our relative comfort in quarantine, we cannot but be touched by the public, and in many cases personal, calamity of COVID-19.


Many composers have reflected on their own mortality, some in a religious context, and others in a very personal way. Schubert is in the latter category. He is counted among the great composers, yet he lived barely 31 years and much of that in ill-health and poverty. Schubert had a burst of creativity in his last months, composing a string quintet, a collection of songs, and three piano sonatas. Unfortunately, the piano sonatas were not published until more than ten years after Schubert’s death.


The Andante sostenuto movement creates a sound space that is at once sad, serene, resigned, and quietly optimistic. The performance is approximately 9’ 35” in length. The movement is among my favorites in all the literature for a number of reasons.

 

First, it is ingeniously constructed so that, in addition to the melody and harmony played by both hands in the middle of the keyboard, the left hand continuously alternates between playing (extra) notes in the lowest register and jumping to others in the highest register. This technical feat somehow does not detract from the serenity of the music. Second, in the middle section of the three-part form, there is a major shift in tone as the key moves to A Major. Schubert borrows a musical quotation from one of his earlier song cycles, Die Winterreise (Winter Journey) and sends us a musical telegram. In the words of the song from the cycle, Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree), the Linden tree calls out to the cold and beleaguered traveler, “Here you would find peace.” The words are not used in the sonata but the music implies their meaning. This reference is clearly the composer reflecting on the end of his own journey. The third and final section presents a slightly embellished version of the original material. However, it is Schubert’s juxtaposition of harmonically distant keys along the procession that produces some of the most touching and sublime moments in music literature. Of special interest is the detour from G-sharp minor to C Major in a pianissimo dynamic. You will find this moment at about 6’ 30” of the recording. The movement ultimately lands in G-sharp major, quietly marching forward with acceptance of what is next.


Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960..........Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Andante sostenuto
Alfred Brendel, piano


Franz Schubert was born in Vienna and trained in singing school that is now known as the Vienna Boys Choir. In spite of his relatively few years of productivity Schubert composed an incredible amount of music, including nine symphonies and more than 600 songs. Very little of his music was published or performed in his lifetime outside of his apartment, where a devoted group of followers would regularly gather.


Pianist Alfred Brendel is recognized as an expert of Germanic and Austrian classical music. Largely self-taught, he studied the piano from childhood and in 1949, won fourth prize in the Busoni International Competition. He was the first pianist to record the entire piano works of Beethoven. Among his extensive repertoire, his recordings of Schubert’s sonatas and Liszt’s piano works showed the world once again the greatness of the composers. He is also known for his number of essays on music that enhanced deeper understanding about music from the audience as well as musicians.