or both Mozart and Schubert, death came way too soon: thirty-five and thirty-one respectively. Mozart's death was quite unexpected, Schubert's likely less so. He was felled by either syphilis (contracted six or seven years earlier) or typhus or a combination of one exacerbated by the other. The great and maddening unknown in both cases is the extent of our cultural loss due to the premature exit of each composer. One mustn't waste too much time, though, on such speculation since what we do have as an inheritance from their too brief lives is so rich, so varied, so inimitable, so exhaustive in its exploration of the human condition, and so, well, beautiful, that to want more is perhaps to be just plain greedy.

Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828) was one of twelve children (eight of whom died in infancy) born to a musical Viennese schoolmaster and his wife. Franz was the youngest of the four who survived to maturity. His father taught him to play the violin and piano, but strongly disapproved of music as a career choice. His most important teacher was Salieri (Mozart's purported nemesis), whose instruction Schubert never failed to praise. Salieri, returning the compliment, said his student knew "all that there was to know about music."

Lacking the virtuoso abilities of a Mozart or the self-promotional inclinations of other young musical lions, Schubert's reputation never traveled much beyond the precincts of Vienna during his lifetime. At his death only a single symphony of the nine he completed, none of his fifteen operas, only one of his nineteen quartets, only one of his seven masses, and only 187 of his more than 600 songs had been published. It was not until the latter part of the century that his genius began to be recognized, due in large part to the efforts of George Grove, who published a splendidly comprehensive and adulatory article on Schubert in the first edition his Dictionary of Music, in 1879.

If Beethoven was the first of the great composers to distance himself from the constraints of 18th century aristocratic patronage, Schubert can perhaps be characterized as the first of the bohemian musicians. Though he wrote for the church and for the emerging medium of the concert orchestra and for the lyric stage, he never enjoyed the wealthy backing that his gifted predecessors sought — as liberating, but often oppressive, not to mention humiliating, as that backing could on occasion be. It is difficult to imagine, though, how he could have been any more prodigiously productive even if he had been exclusively indentured to a noble family. And his output was his own; he mostly wrote the music he wanted to write, not what a patron ordered up.

In the New Grove Dictionary, Robert Winter makes reference to Schubert's "miracle years," citing specifically a one year, three month period beginning in the Fall of 1814, when the seventeen-year-old composed Lieder at the rate of more than one every three days apart from any other type of composition. During this period also, according to Winter, Schubert notated approximately sixty-five measures of music every single day, with about half of that scored for orchestra. Impressive enough for a full-time composer, but even more staggering when considering that Schubert in this period was a full-time, year-round teacher in his father's school and was also studying composition with Salieri.

The works being performed in this concert span a roughly thirteen-year period, beginning in Robert Winter's reference period,1815, and continuing to the year of Schubert's death, 1828.

Schubert was a religious man, that is if the number and merit of his works written for the church count as credentials for such a claim. Masses, motets and works on religious themes are constants throughout his creative years. There are a number of non-liturgical choral works that speak to religious themes, as well. This concert begins with five of them.

Gott im Ungewitter (God in the Thunderstorm), from 1827, which opens the concert, is a two-part work of distinctly Beethovenian profile. In the first part, an angry God of thundering demeanor rages and threatens; the contrasting second part (thankfully) shows a more merciful and patient side to the Almighty.

It would be hard to find a more startling contrast to Gott im Ungewitter than Schubert's hauntingly pastoral setting of one of the most beloved of all psalms, the 23rd. Composed in 1820, and scored for four-part women's voices and piano, this harmonically rich and lavishly melodic setting for voices is embellished by an obbligato piano part of such delicacy, distinction, and beauty that it could well stand by itself as a solo work.

Begräbnisslied, or Funeral Song (1815), is an almost unspeakably intimate musing on the sadness of farewell tempered by the hopefulness of faith about what lies beyond the grave. That this profoundly serious piece reflects the views on mortality of an eighteen-year-old is worth pondering.

Osterlied (Easter Song) is a straight-forward, chorale-like statement of the facts of the resurrection. Chor der Engel carries the idea one step further, making use of Goethe's rich imagery and stressing the inclusiveness of the resurrection. Here again, Schubert gets inside the text giving a deeply personal gloss-a reading that gets seriously between the lines.

Schubert loved Handel (and so do we!). In the last year of his life, among the many other musical tasks he undertook, he took care to create a very special cantata on a favorite Old Testament theme, the Jewish escape from Egypt. This was, of course, one of Handel's favorite stories, as well, and Israel in Egypt has consistently been, next to Messiah, Handel's most popular oratorio. Mirjams Siegesgesang (Miriam's Song of Triumph) is scored for solo soprano, chorus, and piano — Schubert had apparently intended to orchestrate the work, but death, alas, intervened. No one who knows Handel's music well would mistake the Song of Triumph for a work of his. It does make use of oratorical devices that are reminiscent of Handel's, but harmonically, especially in relation to sudden key changes, it arises from a different world. Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, tells the gripping tale. She not only tells it, she must impart to her followers the importance of the adventure so that it will be remembered and passed on to succeeding generations. There are very few high Cs in Schubert; one of them is given here to Miriam. The chorus, as in Handel, is an active participant: they thrill, tremble, shout, and worry along with the warrior princess. The piano is protagonist and abettor, a virtual orchestra in terms of power and color.

From Schubert's more than 600 solo songs, Mr. Hite has chosen for this performance five with night themes.

Die Sterne (The Stars) is a song of pure delight; we hear the delight of the stargazer, but also the delight of the stars whose simple unending task it is to send out pulses of dancing light. The key changes suggest the stars in a moving axis, all of which seems a pre-ordained journey, as surprising in its variety and unexpected beauty as a voyage into space might be.

Wanderers Nachtlied II (Wanderer's Night Song) combines the work of two sublime geniuses. Goethe's poem is considered by many to be among his finest miniatures, and Schubert's setting, only fourteen bars long, is a masterpiece of compression, possessed of the economy of great genius-wondrously deep.

Der Wanderer an den Mond (The Wanderer's Address to the Moon) partakes of the nature of folksong, but what a folksong this is! In equal parts simple and subtle, the song is perfectly consistent with the singer, a man of no permanent address and no possessions-a wandering philosopher on comfortable speaking terms with an equally rootless wanderer in the sky.

Nachtstück (Nocturne) is a song of farewell, sung by an old man strumming his harp in the comforting solitude of enveloping-Holy- night. The solemn overture is reminiscent of a slow introduction to string quartet by Haydn or Mozart. Acceptance of the natural world and the reward of becoming one with it at the end of life's journey is the theme.

Abendstern (Evening Star) is one of five Schubert settings of Mayrhofer's poetry that, in 1824, marked the end of the collaboration and the friendship between these two artists, who had once shared both friendship and lodging. A haunting ambivalence between major and minor keys points to a poignant resignation and perhaps a hoped-for reconciliation: "I sow no seed, I see no shoot, and remain here, silent and mournful."

This concert continues with a group of choral songs dating from various times in that thirteen-year period mentioned above, and ends with a dazzlingly evocative tone painting for tenor soloist and male chorus that stands at the very peak of Schubert's creative achievements. There is also a good deal of diversity as to text source and musical style in these works.

An die Sonne (O Sun, Queen of the World) is a relatively early work in three parts, the third a recapitulation of the first. "Regal" is a word that comes quickly to mind in characterizing the stately, affirmative, and optimistic first part: The sun does indeed lighten our emotional darkness. In part two, which is itself subdivided into two sections of contrasting musical material, a more reflective tone is set as the speaker anticipates the time when that bright light no longer illuminates. But Schubert won't let us linger there, and ends with the radiant hope of the song's beginning.

Amateur singing groups flourished in early 19th century Vienna (rather like Boston in the 21st !) Schubert and others happily provided these enthusiastic choirs with material and one can imagine that he and other composers scaled the difficulty of the pieces to the prevailing levels of sophistication and capability of the groups. Mixed choirs and single sex choruses were numerous.

Widerspruch (Contradiction) is one of those pieces scored for men's voices. And what a "guy thing" this piece is. He wants the wide open spaces, the leafy bower, the mountain heights — until he gets them; and then, oh, maybe it's the tiny, comfortable room that he wants after all. The women respond with a dirge to a fallen warrior, Coronach (Mourning Song), a setting of Sir Walter Scott's eloquent eulogy, somber in key and tone. But they refuse to remain too downcast. Das Leben ist ein Traum (Life is a Dream) proposes a brighter prospect. "Happy is he who, after the night of the grave, awakens joyfully . . ." they sing in a strophic song of open optimism. And then everyone puts on their dancing shoes for Der Tanz.

Our concert ends with one of Schubert's most radiantly beautiful works, Nachthelle (Bright Night). The tenor soloist and the four-part men's chorus contemplate in tones of hushed wonder the prospect of a distant village bathed in moonlight, a scene of shimmering brightness. Within the speaker a torrent of emotions wells up as he reflects on this transcendent quietness. Maybe only music can describe this scene, and maybe only a Schubert can tell us what it means.

Sir Donald Tovey, the great English musicologist, said of Schubert, that he "died so young that his ripest work ought to be considered as early." That being the case, then, we have only last works, not late ones, from both Mozart and Schubert. This leaves us with a sense of deprivation and enrichment in roughly equal parts - deprived at the thought of what masterworks longer years might have enabled, but enriched by the prodigious quantity of beauty that each composer in a tragically brief life was able to contribute to the moral health and esthetic well-being of us all. In the latter sense, we are indeed their highly blessed beneficiaries.

William Hite, tenor, and Jessica Cooper, soprano, were guest soloists with the Chorus of The Boston Cecilia, Barbara Bruns, pianist, Donald Teeters conducting, in this concert at All Saints Church in Brookline on April 29, 2006.

© 2006 Donald Teeters. All rights reserved.