Contextual Processes in Schubert’s Late Sacred Music
ORCID
Sobaskie: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9083-3425
MSU Affiliation
College of Education; Department of Music
Creation Date
2026-04-29
Abstract
The late sacred music of Franz Schubert offers insight into the composer’s spirituality. Simple yet subtle contextual processes animate the Schlussgesang and ‘Das Gebet des Herrn’ of Schubert’s Deutsche Messe, directing attention towards quietly foretold goals. A different quest unfolds within Schubert’s Hymnus an den heiligen Geist, where no fewer than eight keys allude to the achievement and confirmation of a most distant one. The Sanctus and Agnus Dei of Schubert’s sublime Mass in E ♭, as well as his last two sacred essays, the Tantum ergo and Offertorium: Intende voci , uniquely portray processes of transformation via gradual metamorphoses of striking harmonic events heard at the outset of each work which communicate impressions of transfiguration and reconciliation. Written during an extraordinarily productive period when Schubert’s health may have prompted meditation on his own mortality, the contextual processes of these sacred compositions suggest that the composer may have contemplated transcendence and redemption as he faced what inevitably would come.
Publication Date
9-22-2016
Publication Title
Rethinking Schubert
Publisher
Oxford University Press
First Page
295
Last Page
332
Recommended Citation
Sobaskie, James William, 'Contextual Processes in Schubert’s Late Sacred Music', in Lorraine Byrne Bodley, and Julian Horton (eds), Rethinking Schubert (New York, 2016; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 Sept. 2016), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190200107.003.0016.
