Septet in E flat major, Op.20

A sure way of arousing Beethoven’s anger in his later years was to praise his Septet in E flat. It was an early successes the lasting popularity of which he came to resent as getting in the way of the appreciation of more mature and better things. Had he known that Schubert’s Octet in F, which is consciously modelled on the Septet, would one day usurp its supremacy in the repertoire, he might have felt differently about it. Instead of being “unable to endure it,” as one contemporary reported, he might even have taken some pride in its originality. True, its structure – with both a minuet and a scherzo and two slow movements, one of them in variation form – is clearly in the divertimento tradition. Its sound, on the other hand, was quite new.

The main difference between the scoring of the Septet and the Octet is not so much Schubert’s addition of a second violin to the ensemble as the prominence of the clarinet in the Octet and of the violin in the Septet. The authority of the violin – played by Ignaz Schuppanzigh in the first performance in 1800 – is established at an early stage in its elaborate line in the Adagio introduction and in its claim on the first use of all the main themes of the Allegro con brio. Although the beautifully scored and expressively developed Adagio cantabile restores the balance in favour of the wind instruments, not least the clarinet, and although the horn has an increasingly dramatic role in the next three movements, the dominance of the violin is confirmed not only by its extended cadenza towards the end of the concluding Presto but also by its frenetic activity in the coda.

A sure way of arousing Beethoven’s anger in his later years was to praise his Septet in E flat. Like Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor and Enescu’s First Romanian Rhapsody, it was one of those early successes whose lasting popularity their composers came to resent as getting in the way of the appreciation of more mature and better things. Had Beethoven known that Schubert’s Octet in F, which is consciously modelled on the Septet, would one day usurp its supremacy in the repertoire, he might have felt differently about it. Instead of being “unable to endure it,” as one contemporary reported, he might even have taken some pride in its originality. True, its structure - with both a minuet and a scherzo and two slow movements, one of them in variation form - is clearly in the divertimento tradition. Its sound, on the other hand, was quite new. Whether it was the composer’s own or a patron’s idea, the combination of clarinet, bassoon, and horn with violin, viola, cello and double bass proved to be so effective that twenty-five years later Schubert was commissioned specifically to emulate it.

The main difference between the scoring of the two works is not so much Schubert’s addition of a second violin to the ensemble as the prominence of the clarinet in the Octet and of the violin in the Septet. The authority of the violin - played by Ignaz Schuppanzigh in the first performances in 1799 and 1800 - is established at an early stage in its elaborate line in the Adagio introduction and in its claim on the first use of all the main themes of the Allegro con brio. Although the beautifully scored and expressively developed Adagio cantabile restores the balance in favour of the wind instruments, not least the clarinet, and although the horn has an increasingly dramatic role in the next three movements, the dominance of the violin is confirmed not only by its extended cadenza towards the end of the concluding Presto but also by its frenetic activity in the coda.