Heavenly!

Franz Peter Schubert lived a short life, not quite reaching his 32nd birthday. In that time, he wrote roughly one thousand pieces of music, most of them songs (usually referred to by the German word Lieder), but also a great deal of chamber music and ten or so symphonies, the exact number depending on whether you count only the completed ones. Different editions of his work number the symphonies differently, so, unlike, say, Beethoven’s they’re rarely referred to by number. Today’s piece, variously numbered 7, 9, or 10, is best known as Schubert’s Great Symphony in C (because it’s far longer than his earlier Symphony in C, now called the Little.) It was the last symphony Schubert completed, and was never performed during his lifetime, both because of its difficulty and because he had no patron to pay for it.

All the music from the this series can be found and enjoyed here.