Twelve Waltzes, Op.18, D.145

schubert: waltzes D145

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Twelve Waltzes, Op.18, D.145

It seems scarcely credible that, in a life so short and so abundant in masterpieces in most areas of the repertoire, Schubert also found the time to write well over four hundred waltzes, Ländler, Deutsche, écossaises and other sociable dances. But even that must be a mere fraction of the number he improvised for the amusement of his friends and pupils. The fact is that, popular though they were - more than two hundred of them were printed in his lifetime or shortly afterwards - he did not himself prize them very highly. He took little time over them and he seems to have been quite unconcerned about how they were presented to the public. The Walzer, Ländler and Ecossaises published by Cappi & Diabelli as Op.18 in Vienna in 1823, for example, were compiled from no fewer than nine different manuscript collections written at various times between 1816 and 1821. Not one of them, incidentally, is identified in the manuscript as a Walzer - not that Schubert himself made any consistent distinction between what historian somewhat glibly classify as the urban waltz and its country cousins, the Deutsche (German dance) and the Ländler (country dance).

Even so, the twelve dances grouped together by Diabelli as Walzer in Op.18 are in general slightly longer and more sophisticated in matters of rhythm and harmony than the Ländler. The first of them, written like Nos. 2 and 3 for a house party at Schloss Atzenbrugg in 1821, is comparatively extended and particularly interesting in the way the rhythmic emphasis is occasionally and unpredictably displaced from the first to the third beat of the bar. The most captivating in that rhythmic respect is No.5 in B minor, which is so subtly insistent on emphasising the third beat of the bar, and sometimes the second, that it could almost be a Chopin mazurka. There is another anticipation of Chopin in No.8 in E flat minor, though waltz-time Chopin in this case. While Schubert’s dances are nowhere near as demanding as even the most modest of Chopin’s, there is the occasional technical challenge, like the scalic agility required of the right hand in No.9 in F sharp minor and the trumpet-call brilliance and the distant echoes evoked for the conclusive gestures of No.12 in E major.