I listen to a lot of music, but some works I go back to more than others. The big C major quintet (the string quartet with an extra cello one) is in my opinion the greatest piece of chamber music ever written, and I don't even like string music.
The recording with the Emerson quartet and Rostropovich is probably my favourite.
Another work I always return to are Petterssons 7th symphony, preferably the recording with the orchestra I work in. Norrköpings Symphony orchestra together with Leif Segerstam. Way before my time, but wow what a symphony. I never understood why Pettersson is never mentioned among other Scandinavian composers such as Nielsen or Sibelius. His seventh symphony deserves to be played world wide.
> The recording with the Emerson quartet and Rostropovich is probably my favourite.
Wow, I know "me too!" is not approved of on Hacker News, but I'm very glad to share this opinion with some otherwise unknown to me internet commenter :D
There isn't really a modern equivalent, which is more or less the point. Not even jazz, which is distantly related.
But you can get a remote sense from something like Damien Hirst's Verity Statue, which starts from some familiar expectations of public sculpture and subverts and undermines them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jrvX2ZrDvk
The difference is Hirst evokes horror and a Capitalist Gothic aesthetic.
Schubert is superficially more reassuring now. But at the time he was influenced by what used to be called the Sublime - which doesn't just mean excellent as it does today, but used to mean a complex state of emotion and experience that was so intense and rich it was overwhelming.
That's what's buried in Schubert's use of harmony and dissonance.
https://wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html
"When equal temperament became the dominant tuning after 1917, the aural quality of every key became the same, and therefore these affective characteristics are mostly lost to us"
Also competing tunings on various instruments mean that the situation was never a "fix" target.
I am not saying tunings don't play a role, in fact you can hear that John Frusciante sometimes has played with slightly detuned guitar strings for effect. But it its also not so simple as such compilations of key - and - purpose might make you want to believe.
Just to give a sense of context, try this exercise:
1. Pick any modern pop song.
2. Write down every seemingly superficial aspect of the song you hear: vocoder overuse, why an cheesy electric guitar sound accompanies a certain lyric, whether a given sound is employed for irony's sake, which sounds or lyrics are allusions to other songs, etc.
3. Continue until you literally cannot think of anything else significant in the music.
If you're exhaustive you should come up with dozens of bullet points for even a short song.
Now realize that wrt Schubert, you've mentioned a single such bullet.
That is to say-- we're all missing most of the grammar of those bygone eras.
Woah Man on a mission
I don't plan to start looking for more agony in his later works than his earlier ones. The 'Unfinished', written in the fall of 1822 (he moved into his parent's home, unable to leave until the following spring) has none. Similarly for the Rosamunde music, written before the Dec. 1823 premiere.
Then there's the Great Symphony, written 1825-26. Everywhere countless ideas and themes; In 1840 Schumann said of it "this work reveals life in every fiber, color down to the finest shading, significance everywhere, the most acute expression of individual detail ..." To what should we attribute the frightful 'battle' in the Andante? This isn't program music.
In the late chamber works, yes, I feel some deep regret - and anger. A great tragedy - but - his disease certainly was not his master.
Flaggers: please don't flag submissions that don't break the site guidelines! This article is obviously on-topic (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). If it isn't your cup of tea, there are plenty of other things to read. If you run out, the 'past' link at the top will take you to arbitrary amounts of reading material that you missed.
Schubert's Sonata D959 Andantino was also featured in a remarkable film, "La Pianiste" (2001), which explores many of the same themes described in the article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOUNRRAFozA&ab_channel=Murra...
His three late Sonatas are extremely long though, almost 45 minutes each. I haven't had the time to actually listen to all three in one go.
