Symphony No.1 in D major, D.82

One of the best things about the Stadtkonvikt in Vienna, which Schubert attended as a boarder in his early teens, was the school orchestra. It met every evening and, although it had a whole range of scores by Haydn, Mozart and even Beethoven at its disposal, it apparently always needed more. It was presumably with the school orchestra in mind that Schubert wrote at least the beginning of a Symphony in D major in 1811 and it was definitely for that ensemble that he actually completed his Symphony No.1 in D major in October 1813. As a leading violinist in the orchestra by this time, he might even have directed its first performance.

If a wiser musician offered the young composer any criticism of the work it might well have been that he was trying too hard to impress. Certainly, he did cut a few bars out of the first movement and he did reduce his ambitions when he came to write the Second and Third Symphonies two or three years later. Anyone would have had to agree, however, that while it is obviously indebted to the great Viennese symphonists of the day, Mozart above all, Schubert’s First Symphony in D major is an astonishingly accomplished work for a boy of sixteen. It is not unoriginal either.

One of the most striking features of the first movement is that the dramatic Adagio introduction is recalled at the beginning of the recapitulation of the Allegro vivace, but with its note values doubled so as to avoid a change of tempo. Another interesting feature is the consistently adventurous scoring for woodwind. Yet another is the attention Schubert gives to the development of his themes - not only in the development section itself, which is devoted exclusively to the Beethovenish second subject, but also in the exposition and even in the hard-pressed coda.

The Mozart influence shows through most clearly perhaps in the two middle movements. The attractive main theme of the Andante seems to derive from the Andante (also in G major) of the “Prague” Symphony and, although the disturbing episode in E minor is prophetic of the later Schubert, the ending of the movement is pure Mozart. But if the inspiration for the Menuetto was the Symphony No.40 in G minor - said to have been Schubert’s favourite Mozart symphony at this time - the bassoon solo in the central Trio section could almost have been written by Haydn.

The first three notes of that bassoon tune figure prominently also in the main theme of the Allegro vivace finale. It is not clear at this stage whether the allusion is deliberately made but when the same three notes appear also at the head of the second subject, introduced by …

[The remainder of this note was lost to file corruption in the original document.]