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Symphony No. 2 in B-flat major, D.125
Franz Schubert
V ienna was abuzz when Franz Schubert
composed his Second Symphony. The
Congress of Vienna had convened in Sep-
tember 1814, and until it ended nine
months later the city was saturated with
monarchs, ministers, and diplomats from
throughout Europe. Breathing easier now
that Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to the
island of Elba, they gathered to formulate a
plan whereby the nations of Europe might
reach a workable balance of power based
on legitimate government. Plans were
rudely interrupted when, in the first week
of March, Napoleon sprang loose. Europe
remained on tenterhooks until he met his
Waterloo a hundred days later. By the time
the Viennese delegates went home in June,
they had managed to chart a map of Europe
that would hold more or less firmly until
World War I, and they had provided Vienna
with an excuse to adopt a festive air that,
according to many accounts, resembled a
nine-month-long carnival.
Schubert celebrated his 18th birthday —
and composed his Second Symphony —
during this tumultuous period. Composing
was not yet his profession, strictly speak-
ing. He had completed his formal educa-
tion in 1813, at the end of five years at the
Viennese boarding school known as the
Kaiserlich-königliches Stadtkonvikt (Impe-
rial and Royal City College), which he at-
tended tuition-free as a mezzo-soprano in
the Imperial Court Choir and (after his
voice broke) as the recipient of a music
scholarship. Now he unhappily endured his
working hours as an assistant teacher in his
father’s school. During his two years as a
teacher Schubert composed 382 pieces of
music; by the time he turned 20 he had pro-
duced about half of the 1,000 compositions
in his eventual list of works. In October 1814
he wrote his first unquestionable master-
piece, the song “Gretchen am Spinnrade.”
His Second Symphony occupied him from
December 1814 through March 1815 and he
embarked on his Third Symphony just two
months later.
Schubert’s early symphonies are clearly
grounded in the analogous works of his Vi-
ennese predecessors, Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven. The precedent of Haydn’s “Lon-
don” symphonies (or several of Mozart’s late
symphonies) can be sensed in the opening
movement, which begins with a stately in-
troduction before breaking into a more spir-
ited mood for the main section. Schubert’s
First Symphony, unveiled in the autumn of
1813, had been a creditable entry into the
field, but the Allegro vivace of the Second
bursts forth with vigorous drama that
IN SHORT
Born: January 31, 1797, in Liechtenthal, then a
suburb of Vienna (now incorporated into that
city), Austria
Died: November 19, 1828, in Vienna
Work composed: December 10, 1814–
March 24, 1815
World premiere: probably in 1815 at the
Kaiserlich-königliches Stadtkonvikt in Vienna;
first documented performance, October 20,
1877, in London, by the Crystal Palace
orchestra, August Manns, conductor
New York Philharmonic premiere:
November 22, 1936, John Barbirolli, conductor
Most recent New York Philharmonic
performance: September 27, 1994,
Kurt Masur, conductor
Estimated duration: ca. 26 minutes
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seems more allied to Beethoven, eight of Haydnesque coda) on a theme of bashful

whose nine symphonies had been pre-
sented in Vienna by the time Schubert em-
barked on this work. Indeed, the opening
theme of the Allegro vivace portion seems
all but pillaged from Beethoven’s The Crea-
tures of Prometheus Overture. “Schubert
discovers a new sort of energy in the outer
movements,” observed the musicologist
Brian Newbould,
but it is not simply a matter of short
notes and fast tempi, of which the First
Symphony had its share. Brilliance gives
way to “bite:” well-placed accents make
their contribution, and the composer
becomes increasingly aware of the
power of dissonance.
Schubert was a masterful composer of
variations, but the Andante of this piece is
the only instance to be found in his sym-
phonies. It includes five variations (plus a
mien, their evolving character enhanced
through sensitive touches of orchestra-
tion. Schubert identified his third move-
ment as a Menuetto, but it is that only in a
Beethovenian sense — which is to say that
it is really a scherzo, and a blustery one at
that. Its spirit is rendered all the more po-
tent by the intervention of a pastoral Trio
section in the middle. Listeners inclined to
music theory may note unconventional
harmonic experiments in this symphony,
including the idea of setting the Menuetto
in C minor (odd for a symphony in B-flat)
and, in the sonata form of the last move-
ment, the concept of launching the reca-
pitulation in the subdominant key and
only later wending to the tonic of B-flat
that one would have expected.
Instrumentation: two flutes, two oboes,
two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns,
two trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Angels and Muses

Schubert’s Symphony No. 2 was most likely premiered in a concert in 1815 at the Kaiserlich-
königliches Stadtkonvikt, his alma mater, an assumption bolstered by the fact that a manuscript
copy of its orchestral parts bears a dedication to Franz Innocenz Lang, the school’s director and
the guiding force behind the establishment of its student orchestra. The first professional, pub-
lic performance of the work waited more than six decades, until August Friedrich Manns led it
with the Crystal Palace orchestra in London in 1877. Manns (1825–1907) had moved to England
from his native Germany in 1854 to serve as clarinetist and assistant conductor of the orches-
tra, which at the time was actually a concert band. He ascended to its directorship a year later
at the invitation of its administrative head, George Grove (future author of the famous Diction-
ary of Music and Musicians). They transformed it into a
high-quality symphony orchestra and made a specialty
of championing worthy but obscure repertoire, includ-
ing the orchestral music of Schubert and Schumann.
Manns’s credits include the professional World Premieres
of Schubert’s Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, and 3, as well as of
a speculative completion of a Symphony in E major
(D.729), which the composer had sketched but left
far from complete. All of the remaining Schubert
symphonies received their British premieres under
Manns’s baton, and in 1881 he led a chronological cycle London’s Crystal Palace, site of musical
of Schubert’s complete symphonies. performances led by August Manns

36 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC