Schubert and Chopin - Compare and Contrast

Franz Schubert and Frederic Chopin were both Romantic-era composers. As a consequence of this, both had some similarities in the musical style that they wrote in, but they also had some characteristics that were unique to them during the time that they lived in.

Background

Franz Schubert was born in Austria, in the year 1797. Frederic Chopin was born in Poland some years later, during the year 1810, though he would eventually settle in France for the rest of his life and would never return due to political instability in his native country. Both had fragile health, which would sadly result in the short lives that they had lived.

Genres

Both nationalism and exoticism in music were popular trends during the Romantic era. Composers would either show pride of their country through their music (nationalism), or would draw inspiration from countries outside their nation (exoticism). Chopin, for example, wrote music based on folk genres from his native Poland, writing polonaises (Polish dance in triple time), mazurkas, and such. Schubert, in contrast, drew inspiration from German poems and wrote German Lieder (German art song, usually written for voice and piano), even though he was from Austria.

Musical Style

Both had unique approaches to writing music, but they did this in different ways. Schubert wrote music so that each instrument portrayed a certain type of character/personality. The German Lied Erlkönig (based on the German legend of the Erlking) is an example of this, with the piano playing the octave triplets in the right hand representing the horse carriage being drawn along, and the baritone singing 4 voices, each voice representing either of the 4 characters: the narrator, son, father, or the Erlking. Chopin also wrote lyrical music for the piano, but he also went further and used extensive rubato, and incorporated some of his own original pianistic features. We can also see that both Schubert and Chopin used very different harmonies that even today sounds very weird to our ears (e.g. augmented fourth for the son’s cries of fear and panic, and Chopin’s extensive chromaticism in Polonaise in Ab Major).

As you can see, although both composers were from the Romantic era, they were also different in some surprising ways.