# Schubert's Influences



## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

Who do you think were the greatest influences on the development of Schubert's music, and where do you hear that influence?

Beethoven's importance to Schubert was of course profound and undeniable, but at the same time the beautiful long melodic lines in the Unfinished Symphony or the Rosamunde quartet seem to me to come out of a different universe from Beethoven. (You may disagree of course!)

Anyhow, I am curious what lines of influence you would trace.

(Note: inspired by StevenOBrien's thread on composers' influences. :tiphat


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Mozart was definitely one. Look at Schubert's early masses for that (maybe the first three he composed). Also, the Classical Era in general. I read a book on Schubert but it was ages ago. It's totally, or almost all, gone from my memory now. Thing is that Salieri also taught Schubert, which may well be a factor of sorts here.

Beethoven, yes, in terms of Schubert's _String Quintet in C_ at least. Schubert was present at the first performance of Beethoven's Op. 131 string quartet. After he said something like after that masterpiece, what was left for composers to do (the assumption being that Beethoven had done it all, covered all bases, in that work). Schubert's _response_ in artistic terms, or his follow up, was that quintet, his finest work imo.

Beethoven and Schubert did meet towards the end of Beethoven's life, but of course Beethoven was deaf. Apparently Beethoven expressed admiration for Schubert as a composer. Schubert was shortly a torch bearer at Beethoven's funeral procession.


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## waldvogel (Jul 10, 2011)

Schubert's 5th symphony sounds very Mozartean; the rest of his youthful symphonies (1-4 and 6) sound more like Haydn. 

Schubert, in my opinion alone among the great composers, seems to have little in common with his predecessors. It might be that he had an almost infinitely deep well of melody that he could use to power everything from a two-minute song to a seventy-minute chamber piece, a resource that other composers just couldn't tap. His harmonic language ranged from simple galant-style accompaniment to the depth found in the late Impromptus and Piano Sonatas. His style of development by melodic alteration seems to have been entirely original, but influenced composers from Brahms to Tchaikovsky to Mahler. 

Schubert had a strange combination of skills to go with his melodic genius. To the delight of amateur pianists, he was no virtuoso, and this trait is generally lacking everywhere in his music. As far as I know, he wrote no concertos for any instrument, and I can't think of any of his contemporaries or predecessors who fit that bill. Schubert also had no regular patron, no influence at the Opera, and wasn't much of a religious believer as an adult, forcing him to write mostly for soloists and chamber groups.


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

Schubert is kind of ''isolated'' composer to me.

I mean:

Mozart and Haydn knew each other. They were friends. Beethoven and Haydn are student-teacher.

Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Liszt and Wagner, knew each other. They run in the same circle. Same with the Second Viennese School and Tchaikovsky/Big Five.

The thing is, Schubert has no great composer friends or acquaintances. He only has *himself*.


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

Sid James said:


> Schubert's _response_ in artistic terms, or his follow up, was that quintet, his finest work imo.
> 
> Beethoven and Schubert did meet towards the end of Beethoven's life, but of course Beethoven was deaf. Apparently Beethoven expressed admiration for Schubert as a composer. Schubert was shortly a torch bearer at Beethoven's funeral procession.


Schubert's quintet was actually composed in response to Mozart's string quintet in the same key.


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## TrazomGangflow (Sep 9, 2011)

Schubert wrote many vocal compositions. He longed for his operas to be published but had little success and he also wrote his lieder works. Mozart probably influenced him through his many operas


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

trazom said:


> Schubert's quintet was actually composed in response to Mozart's string quintet in the same key.


I did not realise that, but wikipedia (in this article on Schubert's _String Quintet in C_) says it was also influenced by Beethoven and Onslow. Although Beethoven's late quartets are not mentioned, I think it is likely they would have been at least a kind of subliminal influence on Schubert. However, Beethoven's late quartets did not directly (or as strongly) influence anything until Bartok's string quartets 4 & 5 almost 100 years later (to my knowledge). Mendelssohn may also have seen the scores, but it's not been proven, it's educated guesswork & filling in gaps based on what he did in his own _Octet for Strings_, some of the counterpoint and cross-rhythms in that.


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

Sid James said:


> I did not realise that, but wikipedia (in this article on Schubert's _String Quintet in C_) says it was also influenced by Beethoven and Onslow. Although Beethoven's late quartets are not mentioned, I think it is likely they would have been at least a kind of subliminal influence on Schubert. However, Beethoven's late quartets did not directly (or as strongly) influence anything until Bartok's string quartets 4 & 5 almost 100 years later (to my knowledge). Mendelssohn may also have seen the scores, but it's not been proven, it's educated guesswork & filling in gaps based on what he did in his own _Octet for Strings_, some of the counterpoint and cross-rhythms in that.


I've seen that wikipedia article, but I'm not sure I agree with it. I've read that there are more similarities between the opening of Schubert and Mozart's string quintets and, if anything, the quintet is more like Beethoven's earlier quartets. It makes sense, anyways, because the C major and G minor quintets were some of Mozart's greatest works, while Beethoven's is relatively weak compared to the rest of his chamber music.


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## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

Sid James said:


> Beethoven's late quartets did not directly (or as strongly) influence anything until Bartok's string quartets 4 & 5 almost 100 years later (to my knowledge). Mendelssohn may also have seen the scores, but it's not been proven, it's educated guesswork & filling in gaps based on what he did in his own _Octet for Strings_, some of the counterpoint and cross-rhythms in that.


Hi Sid, I've read Mendelssohn definitely knew the late Beethoven quartets. Leaving aside the octet, his Op. 13 quartet in A minor is deeply influenced by the Op. 132 of Beethoven (the Wikipedia article on the Op. 13 is tremendously informative about this). However, I agree with your larger point----the Beethoven quartets that most 19th century composers wrote in the shadow of were the Razumovskies, the Harp and the Serioso, not the 127, 130-133 and 135.


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## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

Sid James said:


> Mozart was definitely one. Look at Schubert's early masses for that (maybe the first three he composed). Also, the Classical Era in general. I read a book on Schubert but it was ages ago. It's totally, or almost all, gone from my memory now. Thing is that Salieri also taught Schubert, which may well be a factor of sorts here.


Hi Sid,

I've been thinking about the influence of Mozart on Schubert (it's one reason I began this thread).

I am beginning to think that while early Schubert (e.g. the 5th Symphony, etc.) has an obvious kinship to Mozart, I think his final works have an even deeper but less obvious one obscured by more glaring Beethovenian features.

I think Schubert's long melodic lines in the Unfinished Symphony, etc.---totally unlike Beethoven---can be traced to some of Mozart's slow movements. I think there's a powerful kinship between the F-sharp minor slow movement of Mozart's 23rd piano concerto and (say) the Unfinished, or the slow movement of the clarinet concerto or quintet and the Adagio of Schubert's Octet (which features the clarinet prominently), etc.


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## PianoMan (Mar 13, 2005)

I know that his "Trout" Quintet was written for musicians gathering to play Hummel's Septet, which Hummel had also arranged for piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. If I remember correctly, the two works also have some very similar movement structures.


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## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

Piano,
This came up on another forum recently (i.e. was the Trout inspired by Hummel's Septet in Quintet version, or did it just borrow the instrumentation?) and after long discussion there was a general consensus that we couldn't really hear much of the Hummel in the Schubert, other than the fact that both have theme-and-variations movements. So in my opinion Schubert just used the instrumentation (at his friend's urging) but did not take the work as a model in any other way.


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## PianoMan (Mar 13, 2005)

Hausmusik said:


> Piano,
> This came up on another forum recently (i.e. was the Trout inspired by Hummel's Septet in Quintet version, or did it just borrow the instrumentation?) and after long discussion there was a general consensus that we couldn't really hear much of the Hummel in the Schubert, other than the fact that both have theme-and-variations movements. So in my opinion Schubert just used the instrumentation (at his friend's urging) but did not take the work as a model in any other way.


I'll admit, it's a tenuous connection at best. After looking back over a paper I had written on Hummel, I remember that Schubert also had originally dedicated his last three piano sonatas (D 958-960) to Hummel, but the publisher who printed the works after Schubert's death took it upon himself to change the dedication to Schumann. Some similarities in the music of the two men can be found in those sonatas as well.


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## Hausmusik (May 13, 2012)

PianoMan said:


> Some similarities in the music of the two men can be found in those sonatas as well.


Interesting! Where do you hear similarities? I have a few Hummel sonatas (Stephen Hough on Hyperion) and I have never noticed Schubertian qualities before.

As to the dedication, that doesn't in itself signify influence. It could just have been an office of friendship. Schubert met Hummel at Beethoven's memorial service in 1826, where they became friends, and so they would have been in the early stages of their friendship when wrote his final sonatas a little under a year later.


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## AmateurComposer (Sep 13, 2009)

peeyaj said:


> Schubert is kind of ''isolated'' composer to me.
> 
> I mean:
> 
> ...


George Lachner, a popular composer during the 19th century, was a very close friend of Franz Peter Schubert.

While Schubert, like other composers, was influenced by his predecessors, he had a lot within himself to invest in his music.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Aside from actual composers, Goethe's writings had a major influence on Schubert and spurred him to write some of his finest songs - in the lieder category I think he set more music to Goethe's words than he did to anyone else's. Goethe's imagery and Schubert's melodic imagination dovetailed so beautifully you could almost imagine them collaborating!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I'd have to say, as many others have, both classicism and specifically Mozart are the major influences.

A key missing component, not yet mentioned, is the music, and importantly the musical style, of Carl Maria von Weber, who was by dates an almost exact contemporary of Beethoven but whose music from the onset was clearly 'romantic' in both its tenor and its harmonic and rhythmic procedures. Actually, before the dates of the Romantic era, von Weber is clearly the first romantic composer. Schubert the 'earliest' of romantics within the actual era by date.

Certainly, von Weber's music is closest in style to Schubert's 'romanticism' - very much of a similar stripe. It is also impossible to imagine Schubert not having been aware of Weber's music.

Beethoven's ghost and body of work loomed large in many a later composer's imagination. For Schubert, I think it was more a matter of the extended length of pieces in various forms which was clearly influenced by what Beethoven had done. 

Schumann commented on the Schubert sonatas, "That heavenly length..." Other than that influence, scope and length, I hear nothing else at all similar in the way of harmonic procedure, manipulation of themes or motif, or 'strategic' placement of events which at all make me hear or think, 'Beethoven.' I find the Beethoven connection, other than expanded length of forms, very slight.


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