Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, D.485

“As from afar the magic notes of Mozart’s music still gently haunt me… Thus does our soul retain these fair impressions, which no time, no circumstances can efface, and they lighten our existence.  They show us in the darkness of this life a bright, clear, lovely distance, for which we hope with confidence.  O Mozart, immortal Mozart, oh how endlessly many such comforting perceptions of a brighter and better life hast thou brought to our souls!” 
 

This, Schubert wrote in his diary during his “Mozartean” or “Classicist” phase in the year 1816.  Schubert is one of the first full-blooded Romantics of the great composers.  He was the greatest symphonist after Beethoven and before Brahms.  Schubert’s 8^th (“Unfinished”) and 9^th (“Great C-Major”) symphonies follow in Beethoven’s groundbreaking footsteps—enlarging the form and pushing it great depths of expression.  Schubert bore Beethoven’s torch—literally, at Beethoven’s funeral; and figuratively with his music.  
 

Yet in 1816, Schubert called Beethoven “eccentric” and accused him of confusing “the tragic with the comic, the agreeable with the repulsive, heroism with howlings and the holiest with harlequinades.”  Beethoven had already published the first eight of his symphonies and such criticisms of his music were still common.  In that context of Beethoven, Schubert’s first five symphonies may seem lagging, never reaching past the dimensions of Haydn and Mozart.  (Yet if we are to do the comparison justice, we should also consider that Schubert had only 31 years of life in which to write his nine symphonies. Beethoven did not publish his first until age 30.)  Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 temporarily sets aside his Romantic sensibilities and looks back with nostalgia to the days before Beethoven. 
 

The Symphony No. 5 was composed in September-October of 1816 and is one of his most “classical” pieces.  It bears the smallest instrumentation, is very compact in formal organization, and uses typically 18^th-century textures.  Many parts of the symphony can easily be mistaken for Mozart, but certainly not all.  The third movement, for example is a direct homage to the Minuet  in Mozart’s Symphony No. 40.  But the lengthy and sensual second movement second movement is undeniably Schubert.