Symphony No. 6 in C, D.589

Franz Peter Schubert was born in Liechtental, a Vienna suburb, on January 31, 1797, and died in Vienna on November 19, 1828. According to dates on the manuscript, he began his Symphony No. 6 in October 1817 and completed it in February 1818, when he was 21; it was played that year under Otto Hatwig with an amateur orchestra that had grown out of the Schubert family string quartet. The first public performance was given on December 14, 1828, by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of the Friends of Music) in Vienna, less than a month after the composer’s death. Schubert’s Great C major symphony, the last of his completed symphonies, was originally scheduled for that occasion, but Schubert substituted this “little” C major symphony, the Sixth, when the larger work proved too difficult; he died before the Sixth was put into rehearsal. (If we are to number Schubert’s symphonies in accordance with the scholarship, the Unfinished becomes the Seventh and the Great C major becomes the Eighth; see below.)

The Sixth Symphony is scored for 2 each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, 2 horns, 3 trumpets, timpani, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses).

Schubert’s last two symphonies, the so-called Unfinished and the Great C major, neither of which he heard in his lifetime, still sound so daringly original and innovative—the Unfinished in its truly Romantic approach to orchestral colors, textures, and mood-painting, the Great C major in its combination of rhythmic energy with a length previously unattempted in the symphonic literature—that their overshadowing the composer’s earlier six is in no way surprising. Schubert’s first three youthful and energetic symphonies—the First composed while he was a student, the Second and Third during his years of schoolmastering—are given occasional airings. No. 4 in C minor (the Tragic) and the Fifth in B-flat are heard semi-regularly, the Sixth hardly at all.

For no apparent reason—or for what can only be considered its failure to receive proper attention—Schubert’s Sixth Symphony has been generally regarded as the least successful of the eight. Maurice J.E. Brown, in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, dismisses it as “a transitional work…inhibited by…the language of his earlier symphonies.” Others have faulted it for its suggestions of what they view as watered-down Rossini. The Italian composer’s operas were the rage of Vienna at this time, and it is true that some of the thematic materials, and the woodwind writing in particular, in the second and last movements of Schubert’s Sixth do suggest the operatic stage. But there is more here of Schubert than there is of Rossini; for Schubert writing in the manner of the other composer, listen rather to his C major overture In the Italian Style, D.591, composed November 1817 while the Sixth Symphony was still in progress.

In the slow introductions to his first three symphonies, Schubert had already demonstrated the ear for orchestral color that is immediately apparent in this symphony’s Adagio introduction, especially in the clear separation of string and woodwind sonorities. Another important stylistic trait which harks back to those three earlier symphonies is the sectional organization of the second and fourth movements, which are built upon the alternation of thematic materials rather than upon their development. But however clear the stylistic ties to the First, Second, and Third symphonies, much more telling is what emerges from a consideration of the Sixth with regard to the Fourth and Fifth, both composed in 1816. The Fourth Symphony, the Tragic, Schubert’s first in the minor mode, may be regarded as a study in mood and color. The Fifth, Schubert’s only symphony besides the Unfinished without a slow introduction, and also his most lightly scored—there are no trumpets or drums, and the wind section omits clarinets—is marked by lightness, grace, and an economy of means. 

With the Sixth, the composer seems to be aiming at a new kind of symphonic weight, especially in the first-movement Allegro, where the two cut-time beats per bar are pointedly measured and frequently accentuated with sforzando accents. Significant too, in this regard, is the Sixth Symphony’s third movement: Schubert’s first symphonic scherzo is broadly enough conceived to include a “new theme” for woodwinds in thirds in its middle section, and the expansive contrasting Trio, in addition to its slower pace, exploits the same sort of harmonic contrast by third-related keys that Schubert uses in the corresponding movement of the Great C major. Harmonic contrast by third-related keys is also crucial in helping to support Schubert’s lengthy finale, which offers each of its multi-sectional themes twice through. There are also, in this finale, some striking anticipations of the Great C major’s last movement: in the woodwind tune (again in thirds) of the second thematic block, in the persistent dotted-rhythm string figure that supports that tune, and in the fanfare-like pronouncements of the coda. And there is another striking anticipation of the Great C major in the first-movement coda of the Sixth, which, like the first-movement coda of the Great, brings a faster tempo and an integration of material from the slow introduction into the main body of the Allegro.

At this point one wants the logical jump to the Great C major, but here, unfortunately, the system breaks down: the symphony as a musical form seems to have become troublesome for Schubert. The Sixth was completed in February 1818. There are sketches for a symphony in D from May 1818, and for one in E from August 1821. The date October 1822 appears at the beginning of the Unfinished Symphony’s full score. And, according to the research, Schubert began the Great C major in the summer of 1825—seven years after the “little” C major Sixth. The fairly smooth flow of symphonies up to the Sixth leads, then, to the two abortive efforts mentioned above, followed by the Unfinished, whose musical language proved so startlingly novel that Schubert ended up abandoning it after two movements. Only several years later did Schubert arrive at the biggest “classical” symphony that has come down to us.

So the Sixth represents an ending point in the first long stage—perhaps the only period that can even be viewed as a stage—of Schubert’s development as a symphonist. It is a work of consolidation, invention, and anticipation, but one that also stands worthy of attention in its own right, for its fascinating blend of symphonic and operatic styles with Schubert’s own individual approach to instrumentation and musical form, and not least for its sense of humor, which informs particularly the woodwind banter and trumpet-and-drums panoply of the final pages.

Marc Mandel

Marc Mandel, former Director of Program Publications for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, joined the staff of the BSO in November 1978 and managed the orchestra’s program book from 1979 until his retirement in July 2020. 

The first American performance of the Schubert Sixth was given at Theodore Thomas’s Summer Nights Concerts in New York’s Central Park Gardens on June 22, 1875. 

The first Boston Symphony Orchestra performances of Schubert’s Sixth Symphony were led by Wilhelm Gericke in November 1884 and January 1886. Nearly 100 years passed before Sir Colin Davis reintroduced it to the BSO repertoire in Boston and at Carnegie Hall in March/April 1981.