Berio: Rendering for Orchestra

Composer Luciano Berio writes:

During the last several years, I have been asked once again to do "something" with Schubert. I always declined this kind but cumbersome invitation until I received a copy of the sketches that the 31-year-old Franz had been accumulating during the last few weeks of his life in preparation for a Tenth Symphony, in D major (D.936a). These sketches are fairly complex and of great beauty: they add a further indication of the new paths that were taking Schubert away from Beethoven's influence. Seduced by those sketches, I therefore decided to restore them: restore and not complete or reconstruct.

I have never been attracted to those operations of philological bureaucracy which sometimes lead musicologists to pretend they are Schubert (if not Beethoven) and "complete the Symphony as Schubert himself might have done." This is a curious form of mimesis that has something in common with those picture restorations sometimes responsible for irreparable damage, as in the case of the Raphael frescoes at the Farnesina in Rome. As I worked on Schubert's sketches, I set myself the target of following those modern restoration criteria that aim at reviving the old colours without, however, trying to disguise the damage that time has caused, often leaving inevitable empty patches in the composition (as in the case of Giotto in Assisi).

The sketches as left by Schubert are almost in pianistic form. They bear occasional instrumental indications but are at times written almost in shorthand; I had to complete them predominantly in the internal and bass parts. The orchestration didn't present particular problems. I used the same instrumentation as in the "Unfinished" (two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, three trombones, timpani and strings) and in the first movement (Allegro) I tried to safeguard the obvious Schubert colour. But not always. There are brief episodes in the musical development which seem to lean towards Mendelssohn and the orchestration naturally follows suit. Furthermore, the expressive climate of the second movement (Andante) is stunning: it seems to be inhabited by Mahler's spirit.

In the empty spaces between one sketch and the next, I have composed a kind of connective tissue constantly different and changing, always pianissimo and "distant," intermingled with reminiscences of the late Schubert (the Piano Sonata in B-Flat, the Piano Trio in B-Flat, etc.) and crossed by polyphonic textures based on fragments of the same sketches. This delicate musical cement, commenting on the discontinuities and gaps between one sketch and another, is always announced by the sound of a celesta.

During his last days Schubert took counterpoint lessons. Music paper was expensive and it was perhaps for this reason that amongst the sketches for the Tenth Symphony I found a brief and elementary counterpoint exercise (a canon in contrary motion). I couldn't refrain from orchestrating this as well, integrating it into the impressive journey of the Andante.

The final Allegro is equally impressive and certainly the most polyphonic orchestral movement Schubert ever wrote. These last sketches, although very fragmentary, are of great homogeneity and they show Schubert in the process of testing different contrapuntal possibilities for one and the same thematic material. The sketches alternately present the character of a Scherzo and of a Finale. This ambiguity, which the young Schubert might possibly have solved or worked out in some new way, attracted me particularly: in fact, here my "cement-work" aims, amongst other things, to make that ambiguity structurally expressive.

I wrote this homage to Schubert between 1989 and 1990 for the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

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