Talk:Symphony No. 9 (Schubert)

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Please could you elaborate on the how the meaning of the nickname has changed? An encycopedia is no place for cute riddles.

I'm unable to help you directly, but if anyone can answer a little question of my own (any professional orchestral violinists will be able to help here) then this may serve to answer your own query.

I heard a snippet of commentary on Classic FM (the UK commercial classical music radio station) mentioning that a given symphony was micknamed "The 'C' Monster" by violinists because of the sheer physical effort involved in playing it. Unfortunately my attention was diverted before I could learn the identity of the composer and which of that composer's works had thus been nicknamed. However, given the sheer size of Schubert's No. 9 (the Coda alone is an immense 180 bars - more information here) and Robert Schumann's exclamation in a letter to his wife that he had found "a symphony of heavenly length" among Schubert's papers, this leads to the possibility that this work was originally nicknamed "The Great" upon account of the fact that it is a colossal piece of music, but "The Great" now refers to the fact that it is regarded as Schubert's crowning glory among his symphonies. In the meantime, could any violinists please tell me if this piece is indeed the one nicknamed "The 'C' Monster"? The size of this work would fit it nothing else, plus it is described in the web page link I gave earlier as containing passages for staccato violins, and I can imagine that maintaining continuous staccato violin playing for many bars would indeed require considerable physical effort! Calilasseia 05:37, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

The name 'Great C major' is nothing more than a way of contrasting Schubert's 9th Symphony (in the modern numbering) from his 6th Symphony in the same key, which could then be referred to as the 'Little C Major'. The issue, then, is the fact that both works have the same home-key, NOT that the later symphony is 'long', 'colossal', 'a glorious masterwork', or exhausting to play.

Pf.