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I would get to them all eventually, I told myself when I was idled or sick or housebound.
Lighthearted distractions dont distract.
Instead, my musical desires have narrowed to a tiny illuminated point: a handful of Schuberts last pieces.
Franz Schubert led a short but sociable life in Vienna, where he was born.
He spent his 20s barhopping with friends, conducting vigorous, meandering discussions into the night.
Music wasthesocial medium of his day.
But Schubert was also a poet of solitude.
Especially in the music from his last years, he developed a language of isolation.
Thelyricsdescribe the old musician staggering barefoot on the ice, disoriented, destitute, and utterly alone.
Bleak as it is, the song draws a mesmerizing beauty from the consciousness of better times.
Schubert slips from tense to tense.
He never got the chance to grow old, which means that all his memories were recent and vivid.
He contracted syphilis sometime around early 1823 and spent his most productive years in physical distress.
The intermingling of pain, doom, uncertainty, and depression that dogged him has a familiar cast.
He died a few weeks later.
Those last months were feverish, and not just because of illness.
He used them to produce work that is panoramic in scope and emotional range.
The final piano sonata, in B-flat major, opens with atune of Zenlike serenity.
Convention tells us it will be restored, but Schubert doesnt give it back to us whole.
Instead, the music we recall from the beginning is scarred, hesitant, prone to erratic outbursts.
What was normal no longer is.
The piece denies catharsis.
It does no good to erupt into wrath.
Schubert doles out fortissimos, then nips them off, restoring a mood of quietude.
Terrors subside, but dont disappear.
In the sonata, Schubert often performs a similar manipulation.
I recognize that state of mind now, better than I used to.
you might hear the same febrile brooding in the G-major quartet.
What draws me through these pieces is the promise of joy.
