25th Anniversary Season
The Bard Music Festival will explore Schubert both as he was known in his own time and as he came to be understood by posterity.
August 8–10—Weekend One: The Making of a Romantic Legend
August 15–17—Weekend Two: A New Aesthetics of Music
Franz Schubert (1797–1828) has long been among the most revered and influential composers in the Western tradition. In a fashion unprecedented in history, the music that made him world famous came to light only decades after his death at age 31. Schubert's biography is shrouded in myth and mystery, and his character and personality remain elusive. He never really left Vienna and its immediate environs; in his lifetime he acquired the one reputation he would never lose: as the defining exemplar of Vienna and Viennese culture. Even his remarkable and gifted close-knit circle of friends was not aware of the grandeur and scope of his compositional achievement.
This year—2014— is a fitting one to honor Schubert. It marks the bicentennial of his early masterpiece, the setting of Goethe's Gretchen am Spinnrade, composed on October 19, 1814, a date often called the "birthday of the German Lied." By the time Schubert died, he had become justly revered for his songs and two- and four-hand keyboard music. But as more of his music was discovered posthumously, it became clear that his ambitions went well beyond songs and dances. In time, an astonished public discovered all the symphonies, the last two string quartets and string quintet, the three final piano sonatas, as well as hundreds of songs, dances, keyboard and sacred choral works, and even full-scale operas.
Visit: http://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/ for festival calendar
