- Born January 31, 1797, in Vienna

- Died November 19, 1828, in Vienna

- Composed in 1828

- Duration: 18 minutes

Schubert wrote around 30 works for piano duet or four hands, but the Fantasie in F minor stands out from the rest as a kind of Janus piece, looking both backward and forward, as the composer struggled against time. Written in January of 1828, and perhaps performed that same month at the last Schubertiad gathering during his lifetime, it is one of his final compositions. By that time Schubert had been living with the effects of syphilis for half of the decade, teetering between hospitalizations and attempts to exist as normally as possible. He could either live with the disease for many years or fade more quickly—it was an unknown that surely haunted his thoughts. 

Looking back, the F minor seems to summon two significant details from Schubert’s youth. First, it recalls the genre of his first composition, the Fantasy in G Major for four hands, D.1, written around age 13. Second, its dedication to Caroline Esterházy alludes to a pivotal moment in his professional career. 

Caroline was one of Schubert’s students. Her father, Count Johann Karl Esterházy, a relative of Haydn’s patrons, extended an offer to the 21-year-old Schubert to tutor his daughters in their countryside summer estate. At the time, Schubert was at a crossroads. Though he had studied with the legendary Salieri, sang as a member of what is now the Vienna Boys Choir, and composed hundreds of works (sometimes reaching a volume average of 65 measures per day), he had chosen to become certified to teach at his father’s school. It proved unsatisfactory as he itched to delve into music again. He wrote in a letter, “Thank God I live at last, and it was high time, else I should have become nothing but a thwarted musician.” After a few more years of wavering between teaching and composing, he was invited to tutor the Esterházy girls again, and he finally dedicated himself to a life in music. 

Looking forward, the Fantasie hints at a direction in which Schubert hoped to go. With its impressive scale at nearly 20 minutes in length, it not only displays tremendous sophistication in interweaving free-flowing material with more structured sonata form over the course of four movements, but it also includes an impressive fugue section in the final movement. Later the same year of its composition, in early November, Schubert expressed to his friend and fellow composer Joseph Lanz an interest in gaining greater proficiency at counterpoint, saying he mostly studied scores with Salieri and wanted to perfect double fugues. Lanz later noted in his personal recollections that he agreed because he felt Schubert’s fugue in the Fantasie was weak, and so they went for a lesson with theorist Simon Sechter. The following week Schubert and Lanz were scheduled for a second lesson, but Lanz went alone, as Schubert was feeling ill. Less than two weeks later, Schubert had died.

Program note © Kathryn Bacasmot