Night 11: "Music of a Young Old Age" Schubert: Fantasia in F Minor, D 940

A piece I encountered that day

I first encountered this work when I was in elementary school. I was obsessed with listening to a CD of a piano duet by Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia over and over again.
Of course, there was no way I could understand the depth of this work at that time. I was simply captivated by the overwhelming sound overflowing from a single piano and the breathless flow of the music. "What a cool piece." That pure admiration was my first encounter with this work.

However, strangely enough, this fantasia shows me a different expression every time I listen to it.

During my student days, I was amazed by its magnificent structure. I realized that the music, which sounded as if it were flowing freely, was actually designed with surprising precision, and every time I opened the score, I had new discoveries. And after I began to face it as a performer, I became moved by the quiet lyricism and human warmth behind its construction. Eventually, this work changed from a "favorite piece" to a "piece I want to perform someday."

That wish came true after I graduated from university, at a duo recital I held with a fellow pianist. I was in charge of the secondo part. The work I had longed for was even deeper than I had imagined.
This music will never come to life just by playing the notes accurately. You have to feel your partner's breathing, nurture a single sound, and weave a single great span of time together. You need to walk through it while looking over not just the melody, but the center of gravity of the harmony, the shifting of the sound, and the overall structure that spans about twenty minutes.
When I finished the performance, the feeling that "I will be with this piece for the rest of my life" remained in my heart more strongly than the thought that "it was a difficult piece."
I didn't know it back then. That this work was also, for Schubert himself, a place he had reached at the end of his life.

What was left behind in the last year of his life

Schubert completed the "Fantasia in F Minor" in 1828. It was just a few months before he passed away, in the last year of his life. The work was published the following year, in 1829. However, the autograph score already had the opus number 103 written on it, which shows that preparations for publication were underway even while he was alive.

The dedication was made to Caroline, the daughter of the Esterházy family, whom he had served as a music teacher in his younger days. It is impossible to know what thoughts were contained in that dedication. Was it romantic love, admiration, or some other emotion that could not be put into words?
However, the fact that he entrusted this final masterpiece to her while quietly gazing at the end of his own life remains unchanged even now.

That stillness, strangely enough, can be felt overlapping with the air that flows throughout this entire work.

The trajectory of creation told by the drafts

So, how did this work reach its current form? The drafts that remain to this day answer that question quietly.

Henle edition editor Willi Kahl painstakingly reads the path of creation from the existing drafts. The magnificent double fugue that adorns the finale was not there from the beginning. The concept of the third part was also different from what it is now, and changes were also made to the tempo markings of the movements.

However, what is interesting is that, except for those, the differences from the completed manuscript are surprisingly small. The skeleton of the piece had already been formed in the early stages.

This fantasia is not a work born from bold revisions. It is a work that was brought to completion by quietly polishing every detail while holding a firm concept in his heart.

What two materials illuminate

On the other hand, Kozo Asari views this work as a crystallization of Schubert's spirit in his final years, and reads the composer's deep thoughts into the dedication to Caroline.

The Henle edition tells "how" the work was born, and Mr. Asari looks at "why" it was born.

One depicts the trajectory of creation, and the other depicts the trajectory of the composer's heart.

These two different perspectives seem to be quietly connected within this single work, the fantasia.

Architecture named Fantasia

Knowing the history of the work in this way, the next thing the ear turns to is the music itself. From the title "Fantasia," one might imagine music that is free and improvisational. However, it is rare to find a fantasia with such solid structural integrity as this work.

The four sections are played without a break, and in the finale, the opening theme returns quietly. At its peak, a magnificent double fugato is built, where two different themes are developed simultaneously. It is not only a high-level contrapuntal technique but also a single great pillar that supports the entire work. There is a beauty to it, as if a cathedral were gradually revealing itself under a precise design.

Yet, that architecture is by no means cold stone. There is a warmth like a human voice and a softness like the light of dusk.

Strict composition and deep lyricism

I believe that the beauty unique to this fantasia lies in the fact that these two seemingly contradictory elements coexist without the slightest conflict.

Music of a young late life

However, no matter how much one knows about the background of the work or understands its structure, the charm of this music ultimately transcends explanation.

There is a limit to what documents can tell us. There are things that only the music left behind continues to speak to us even now.

Every time I listen to this fantasia, I am enveloped in a strange sensation.

The person there is not a 31-year-old youth. It is a human being who has walked a long life, known many joys and sorrows, and yet quietly accepts the world. In that sound, there is more acceptance than despair, and more compassion than grief. That is why, while listening to this work, I sometimes think:

Perhaps Schubert did not live for only 31 years. Perhaps, within this single piece, he lived a longer life than anyone else.

As a boy, I listened to this work as "cool music."

When I became a young man and performed it, I lost my way many times within its massive structure.

And now, while rereading the documents, I am listening intently to this work once again.

Strangely, the music has not changed at all from those days.

What has changed is me, the one listening to it.

That is why I will likely continue to return to this fantasia at various points in my life. I believe that each time, I will discover yet another landscape that I could not see in my boyhood.

What Schubert entrusted to his short 31-year life is by no means music of a "late life." It is a world of a surprisingly mature spirit that a young man who lived a limited time reached within that short life.

That is why I am inclined to call this work "music of a young old age."