Schubertiade tradition

The Festival’s Gala Dinner and Concert has always tried to recreate something of the “fashionable salon” atmosphere so characteristic of 18th- and 19th-century musical performance. (Recall that the modern recital was essentially invented ). And tonight we go straight to the heart of the Hausmusik tradition with a Schubertiad for the 21st century. All of tonight’s music centers on the creative genius and legacy of Franz Schubert—just as the original Schubertiads centered on Schubert himself as composer and performer (in the cover illustration, Schubert is wearing glasses and seated at the keyboard). In his biography of the composer (Schubert, Schirmer, 1997), John Reed describes the context from which the term Schubertiad was first coined:

On 26 January 1821, Schubert gathered with fourteen members of the [Sonnleithner] circle for a musical party in Schober’s rooms. Schubert played and sang, a lot of punch was drunk, and the festivity went on till three in the morning . . . Josef Huber wrote to tell his betrothed about it, leaving us the earliest surviving account of a “Schubertiad” (p. 72).

In his musical maturity Schubert relied heavily on a small coterie of friends and admirers, both for spiritual and financial support. Sadly, as Schubert’s popularity grew during the 1820s, his health gradually declined so far that his actual appearances at these musical evenings become more and more infrequent. Personal disagreements and marital indiscretions among the regular members of the circle brought the whole situation to a crisis point during the winter of 1823-24. Yet the “Schubertiad” concept endured even as the personnel migrated in and out, and a “big, big Schubertiad” was held on December 15, 1826 at the home of Josef von Spaun; it is this event that is depicted in the cover illustration. Piano duets and over 30 songs were performed that night, followed by a feast and dancing until the early morning. This was the Schubertiad’s shining moment, never to be equaled again, and the final such event before Schubert’s death took place in January 1828.

(c) Jason Stell