{"id":3483,"date":"2025-04-07T23:45:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T03:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3483"},"modified":"2025-04-07T23:45:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T03:45:35","slug":"schubert-and-the-music-of-exhaustion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2025\/04\/schubert-and-the-music-of-exhaustion.html","title":{"rendered":"Schubert and the Music of Exhaustion"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The supreme string quartet, for me, has long been Schubert\u2019s last, in G major — memorably performed last Friday night by the Danish Quartet at Carnegie\u2019s Zankel Hall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As one of the quartet\u2019s violinists, Rune Tonsgaard Sorensen, was on parental leave, his place was taken by Yura Lee \u2013 introduced by violist Asbjorn Norgaard as a Korean-American musician from Los Angeles. Norgaard also pointed out that the group\u2019s cellist, Fredrik Schoyen Sjolin,  happens to be not Danish, but Norwegian. He was making a point about music, the arts, and mutual understanding. The audience responded with a sustained ovation: a sign of the times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, the quality of attention throughout (the program also included a new work by Bent Sorensen inspired by the Schubert G major) was extraordinary. Experiencing this concert at this unhinged moment in our American odyssey nearly felt defiant. \u201cA breath of fresh air\u201d would be an under-statement. It was more like finding refuge in an oxygen tent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of all, there was Schubert. Composed in 1826, his G major quartet wasn\u2019t premiered until 1850 \u2013 22 years after Schubert\u2019s death \u2013 and first published somewhat later. Even today, it\u2019s not much programmed. The most obvious reason is stamina. A performance can last nearly an hour. And the last movement, the most grueling of Schubert\u2019s perpetual motion finales, is relentless. If ever a string quartet took no prisoners, it\u2019s the Schubert G major.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exhaustion is here an actual motif. You can\u2019t listen to the slashing accents and hurtling velocity without absorbing the physical demands being inflicted on the performers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exhaustion is differently evoked by the quartet\u2019s most unforgettable, most original inspiration. In a sonata form, the recapitulation \u2013 bringing back the opening material \u2013 is typically a refulgent moment. In the first movement of the Schubert G major, it\u2019s a moment of fatigue and decomposition. The entire movement is a kaleidoscope of heaving chordal formations, dancing lyric effusions, and \u2013 most magically \u2013 anticipatory whiffs of Bruckner\u2019s existential tremolos. So by the time the recapitulation occurs, all energy is spent: the opening gestures here fall limp. Schubert\u2019s pianissimo residue uncannily calibrates the exertion and argumentative density of everything that has gone before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through my wife Agnes, I enjoy a sporadic acquaintance with the violinist Gidon Kremer \u2013 who participated in a tremendous Schubert G major performance decades ago at New York\u2019s 92nd<\/sup> Street Y. (The other players were Daniel Philips, Yo-Yo Ma, and Kim Kashkashian.) That performance was released as a recording \u2013 can hear it here<\/a>. Not long after the LP came out, Gidon happened to visit and asked to hear a portion of the first movement. What he wanted to know was whether the exposition repeat (which I dimly recall had not been performed) was inserted in the studio. It was \u2013 and Gidon needed to hear nothing more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no strong feelings, in general, about exposition repeats. As often as not, I can do without them. But in the Schubert G major the first movement exposition repeat is vital \u2013 only then can Schubert\u2019s exhaustion fully register. It\u2019s an exhaustion that (as in Mahler) inspires fresh spiritual energies. The remainder of the movement is shaded by a newly acquired lyric pathos. Schubert tenderly smooths what had been the tremolo theme. (His sonata-form recapitulations can be surprisingly literal \u2013 but not here.) But the wrestling between major and minor modes remains pervasive \u2013 and will continue, relentlessly, in the movements to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No other composer understood exhaustion as Schubert did. I am thinking especially (of course) of the desperately fraught quietude of his song cycle Winterreise<\/em> (which I have performed and also written about in this space<\/a>) \u2013 ultimately, a glimpse of existential desolation whose finality somehow consoles. And there are Schubert\u2019s other perpetual motion machines, whose in<\/em>exhaustion registers terrifying impersonal energies. Of the plunging chromatic scales streaking the finale of the C minor Piano Sonata, Claudio Arrau (in my book Conversations with Arrau<\/em><\/a>) discovered \u201csomething skeletal, macabre \u2013 without any flesh. Really the work of death.\u201d And there is the Andante of Schubert\u2019s Ninth Symphony, whose dire central juggernaut hurtles toward an abyss. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, the Danish Quartet omitted that exposition repeat. So their terrific reading of the first movement was shortchanged. Otherwise, I marveled at the quartet\u2019s intensity of understanding. It was a highly personal interpretation \u2013 the opening tremolo theme, with its Brucknerian amplitude, was daringly slow — that at no point felt self-conscious. I could not help focusing on Fredrik Schoyen Sjolin, a cellist of exceptional subtlety who reminded me that Schubert has here gifted the cello the quartet\u2019s peak lyric inspirations (in movements two and three both).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The players took a deep collective breath before launching the finale \u2013 the heaving triple-forte climax of which (Schubert could have marked four fortes, five fortes) summoned a sonorous anguish exceeding every previous expressive peak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                                    ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further thoughts on the music of exhaustion:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Beethoven\u2019s Seventh Symphony, a perpetual-motion finale tests human stamina. In Schubert, with his \u201cheavenly length,\u201d perpetual-motion (as a music historian of my acquaintance once misguidedly argued) invariably persists \u201ctoo long\u201d: the stamina is inhuman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahler\u2019s morendo<\/em> endings to his Ninth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde<\/em> marry physical exhaustion to spiritual enlightenment. Gradually dissipated energy levitates the endings of  Schubert\u2019s Piano Sonatas in D major and G major.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wagner twice calibrated to exhaust his tenor \u2013 in the final acts of Tannhauser<\/em> and Tristan und<\/em> Isolde<\/em>. A fresh-voiced tenorial rendering of either of these two acts (readily possible on recordings) is a false rendering. In a famous (to Wagnerites) exchange of letters, the composer implores his best tenor, the imperious Albert Niemann, not to abridge the finale of Tannhauser<\/em> act two. So as to conserve his voice for the third and final act, Niemann insists on cutting an outburst — \u201cErbarm dich mein, der, ach! so tief in S\u00fcnden\u201d — which Wagner (correctly) deems essential. Wagner wants Niemann to understand that Tannhauser needs<\/em> to sound vocally exhausted in act three: \u201cOnce more: — sing the second finale as if you were to end the evening with it \u2013 and rest assured — only then will you sing the third act entirely to my liking. In a word: I find you far too fresh in the third act, too physically powerful, and I have waited in vain so far for the nuances that I demand. . . . Everything here is calculated to produce a ghostly tonelessness which gradually rises to the level of a touching tenderness, but no further. There is too much physical strength in your rendering of the [act three] narration up to your arrival in Rome: that is not how a man would speak who had just been roused from madness to a few minutes lucidity, a being from whom others shy away when they meet him, who for months has gone almost entirely without food, and whose life is sustained only by the glimmer of an insane desire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This desperate advice is not irrelevant to the Schubert G major String Quartet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a blog on Schubert and Alfred Brendel, click here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The supreme string quartet, for me, has long been Schubert\u2019s last, in G major — memorably performed last Friday night by the Danish Quartet at Carnegie\u2019s Zankel Hall.  As one of the quartet\u2019s violinists, Rune Tonsgaard Sorensen, was on parental leave, his place was taken by Yura Lee \u2013 introduced by violist Asbjorn Norgaard as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3483","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-Ub","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3483"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3491,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483\/revisions\/3491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}