Notes on The First Symphony

By Jonathan Berman

In conversations about Franz Schmidt the recurring theme emerging for many is that listening to a performance of his music at a young age became the turning point in their lives – the realisation of how powerful music can be.

It was when I was researching Franz Schmidt for my first performance of his music (the 4th Symphony) that I found what was to become a key to Schmidt’s music for me and has fuelled my love of his music.

In the British Library in London I came across a small manuscript book not much bigger than the size of my hand. It was full of counterpoint exercises from 1925 by the 14 year old Susi Jeans (later to become an eminent organist, teacher and musicologist), all heavily corrected by Franz Schmidt, her counterpoint teacher at the Vienna Conservatory. These corrections weren’t just about adhering to the rules (there were no mistakes in the exercises per se), but they were aesthetic corrections to improve the organic connection between notes and the beauty of the lines.

Soon after, in Vienna, I was able to study Schmidt’s own sketches for his 4th symphony. It became obvious that Schmidt adhered to the same criteria in his own compositions; constantly refining each line, first one line at time, then combining them, constructing musical structures from the relationships notes have to each other and building up from details to larger musical ideas.

This for me is the essence of Schmidt’s language. Even though he expresses many different emotions, creates many varied characters, and even references many styles of music, it is his awareness and care taken over every line, every interval of his music which I find so bewitching. There is a natural or organic quality which like many things in life appears simple, but takes a great amount of work to achieve.

The First Symphony, sketched when he was 22 and finished three years later in 1899, is, of course, early in his compositional journey. But already his personal voice is evident, and his desire for organic structures can be seen through a phrase he added at the end of his 1st Symphony “Ich singe wie der Vogel singt, der in den Zweigen wohnet“ (I sing like the bird sings, that lives in the branches). Schmidt entered his first symphony into the Beethoven Prize anonymously – as the rules stated – and won.

The first movement begins with a slow introduction; a graceful and majestic reimagining of a Handelian French overture, moving through an almost melancholic trumpet solo (a colour Schmidt will use throughout his life) to a fast classical sonata movement whose main subject bares more than a passing resemblance to Richard Strauss’ Don Juan. Throughout this movement though, there is a constant quest by Schmidt for grace and elegance, however dramatic the surface layer may appear.

The second movement showcases Schmidt’s ‘Austro-Hungarian- ness’ (the fusing of nationalities that was to effect the music of Mahler, Schmidt, Dohnányi and others). The first part is a plaintive Magyar (Hungarian) style melody which continually varies with every repetition. The second section is an almost photographic picture of the hills around Vienna; a church service represented by a horn choral juxtaposed with pastoral birdcalls in the winds. The movement builds up to three climaxes before disintegrating, from where salvation comes in the form of an echo of the church chorale. In this movement, although very different in character, Schmidt emulates Bruckner by the way his very similar musical ideas are constantly and subtly changed to tell vastly different stories in different places. It gives the impression of a single organism continually evolving.

The third movement also bares Brucknerian traces, not least in the way Schmidt hides under the surface of the opening section a full (but short) sonata form. The refinement of the Viennese Waltz is never far away in this movement marked “fast and light”. The Scherzo has two trio sections connected with a passage as sensuous and decadent as parts of Salome. The first Trio is a miniature passacaglia with a descending chromatic bass line, whilst the second Trio is the most extraordinary dreamlike scene, perhaps the most unique passage in the whole symphony. It is created out of deep chromaticism mixed with rhythmic subtlety (of the type you find in late Brahms where the character is varied by changing the relationship between the strong beats and the bar line within each voice), which was to become a fascination of Schmidt throughout his life. If one was being poetic you might say that this Trio sounds as though half awake on a foggy icy Viennese morning, you hear a slow Strauss waltz in the distance.

The last movement is a glorious finale drawing on different models, such as the various dances from a Bach orchestral suite, moments of baroque trio sonatas, Mendelssohn (symphonies and organ works), and a good dose of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (at least the overture, Scene I, and the crowd scenes in Act III). Schmidt unifies all these models under the formal processes of a Rondo- Sonata form, with one Double fugue, and another Gigue-fugue, all with a lightness, joy and gracefulness, which is infectious.

Whilst the first symphony is redolent of many other composers, it is in the details in which Schmidt’s personality lies. It is through these details that we can connect to his sensitivity and imagination. Schmidt’s grace and refinement is what has motivated us to record these symphonies, and which we have tried to draw out on this recording.