Our great composer, from the peculiar constitution of his gifts, the
passionate subjectiveness of his nature, might be supposed to have
been peculiarly sensitive to the fascinations of love, for it is in
this feeling that lyric inspiration has found its most fruitful root.
But not so. Warmly susceptible to the charms of friendship, Schubert
for the most part enacted the _rôle_ of the woman-hater, which was not
all affected; for the Hamlet-like mood is only in part a simulated
madness with souls of this type. In early youth he would sneer at the
amours of his comrades. It is true he fell a victim to the charms of
Theresa Gröbe, a beautiful soprano, who afterwards became the spouse
of a master-baker. But the only genuine love-sickness of Schubert was
of a far different type, and left indelible traces on his nature, as
its very direction made it of necessity unfortunate. This was his
attachment to Countess Caroline Esterhazy.
The Count Esterhazy, one of those great feudal princes still extant
among the Austrian nobility, took a traditional pride in encouraging
genius, and found in Franz Schubert a noble object for his generous
patronage. He was almost a boy (only nineteen), except in the
prodigious development of his genius, when he entered the Esterhazy
family as teacher of music, though always treated as a dear and
familiar friend. During the summer months, Schubert went with the
Esterhazys to their country seat at Zelész, in Hungary. Here, amid
beautiful scenery, and the sweetness of a social life perfect of its
kind, our poet's life flew on rapid wings, the one bright, green spot
of unalloyed happiness, for the dream was delicious while it lasted.
Here, too, his musical life gathered a fresh inspiration, since he
became acquainted with the treasures of the national Hungarian music,
with its weird, wild rhythms and striking melodies. He borrowed the
motives of many of his most characteristic songs from these
reminiscences of hut and hall, for the Esterhazys were royal in their
hospitality, and exercised a wide patriarchal sway.
The beautiful Countess Caroline, an enthusiastic girl of great beauty,
became the object of a romantic passion. A young, inexperienced
maiden, full of _naïve_ sweetness, the finest flower of the haughty
Austrian caste, she stood at an infinite distance from Schubert,
while she treated him with childlike confidence and fondness, laughing
at his eccentricities, and worshipping his genius. He bowed before
this idol, and poured out all the incense of his heart. Schubert's
exterior was anything but that of the ideal lover. Rude, unshapely
features, thick nose, coarse, protruding mouth, and a shambling,
awkward figure, were redeemed only by eyes of uncommon splendour and
depth, aflame with the unmistakable light of the soul.
The inexperienced maiden hardly understood the devotion of the artist,
which found expression in a thousand ways peculiar to himself. Only
once he was on the verge of a full revelation. She asked him why he
had dedicated nothing to her. With abrupt, passionate intensity of
tone Schubert answered, "What's the use of that? Everything belongs to
you!" This brink of confession seems to have frightened him, for it is
said that after this he threw much more reserve about his intercourse
with the family, till it was broken off. Hints in his letters, and the
deep despondency which increased after this, indicate, however, that
the humbly-born genius never forgot his beautiful dream.
He continued to pour out in careless profusion songs, symphonies,
quartets, and operas, many of which knew no existence but in the score
till after his death, hardly knowing of himself whether the
productions had value or not. He created because it was the essential
law of his being, and never paused to contemplate or admire the
beauties of his own work. Schubert's body had been mouldering for
several years, when his wonderful symphony in C major, one of the
_chefs-d'oeuvre_ of orchestral composition, was brought to the
attention of the world by the critical admiration of Robert Schumann,
who won the admiration of lovers of music, not less by his prompt
vindication of neglected genius than by his own creative powers.
In the contest between Weber and Rossini which agitated Vienna,
Schubert, though deeply imbued with the seriousness of art, and by
nature closely allied in sympathies with the composer of "Der
Freischütz," took no part. He was too easy-going to become a volunteer
partisan, too shy and obscure to make his alliance a thing to be
sought after. Besides, Weber had treated him with great brusqueness,
and damned an opera for him, a slight which even good-natured Franz
Schubert could not easily forgive.
The fifteen operas of Schubert, unknown now except to musicians,
contain a wealth of beautiful melody which could easily be spread over
a score of ordinary works. The purely lyric impulse so dominated him
that dramatic arrangement was lost sight of, and the noblest melodies
were likely to be lavished on the most unworthy situations. Even under
the operatic form he remained essentially the song-writer. So in the
symphony his affluence of melodic inspiration seems actually to
embarrass him, to the detriment of that breadth and symmetry of
treatment so vital to this form of art. It is in the musical lyric
that our composer stands matchless.
During his life as an independent musician at Vienna, Schubert lived
fighting a stern battle with want and despondency, while the
publishers were commencing to make fortunes by the sale of his
exquisite _Lieder_. At that time a large source of income for the
Viennese composers was the public performance of their works in
concerts under their own direction. From recourse to this, Schubert's
bashfulness and lack of skill as a _virtuoso_ on any instrument helped
to bar him, though he accompanied his own songs with exquisite effect.
Once only his friends organised a concert for him, and the success was
very brilliant. But he was prevented from repeating the good fortune
by that fatal illness which soon set in. So he lived out the last
glimmers of his life, poverty-stricken, despondent, with few even of
the amenities of friendship to soothe his declining days. Yet those
who know the beautiful results of that life, and have even a faint
glow of sympathy with the life of a man of genius, will exclaim with
one of the most eloquent critics of Schubert--
"But shall we, therefore, pity a man who all the while
revelled in the treasures of his creative ore, and from the
very depths of whose despair sprang the sweetest flowers of
song? Who would not battle with the iciest blast of the
north if out of storm and snow he could bring back to his
chamber the germs of the 'Winterreise?' Who would grudge the
moisture of his eyes if he could render it immortal in the
strains of Schubert's 'Lob der Thräne?'"
Schubert died in the flower of his youth, November 19, 1828; but he
left behind him nearly a thousand compositions, six hundred of which
were songs. Of his operas only the "Enchanted Harp" and "Rosamond"
were put on the stage during his lifetime. "Fierabras," considered to
be his finest dramatic work, has never been produced. His church
music, consisting of six masses, many offertories, and the great
"Hallelujah" of Klopstock, is still performed in Germany. Several of
his symphonies are ranked among the greatest works of this nature. His
pianoforte compositions are brilliant, and strongly in the style of
Beethoven, who was always the great object of Schubert's devoted
admiration, his artistic idol and model. It was his dying request that
he should be buried by the side of Beethoven, of whom the art-world
had been deprived the year before.
Compared with Schubert, other composers seem to have written in prose.
His imagination burned with a passionate love of Nature. The lakes,
the woods, the mountain heights, inspired him with eloquent reveries
that burst into song; but he always saw Nature through the medium of
human passion and sympathy, which transfigured it. He was the faithful
interpreter of spiritual suffering, and the joy which is born thereof.
The genius of Schubert seems to have been directly formed for the
expression of subjective emotion in music. That his life should have
been simultaneous with the perfect literary unfolding of the old
_Volkslied_ in the superb lyrics of Goethe, Heine, and their school,
is quite remarkable. Poetry and song clasped hands on the same lofty
summits of genius. Liszt has given to our composer the title of _le
musicien le plus poétique_, which very well expresses his place in
art.
In the song as created by Schubert and transmitted to his successors,
there are three forms, the first of which is that of the simple
_Lied_, with one unchanged melody. A good example of this is the
setting of Goethe's "Haideröslein," which is full of quaint grace and
simplicity. A second and more elaborate method is what the Germans
call "through-composed," in which all the different feelings are
successively embodied in the changes of the melody, the sense of unity
being preserved by the treatment of the accompaniment, or the
recurrence of the principal motive at the close of the song. Two
admirable models of this are found in the "Lindenbaum" and "Serenade."
The third and finest art-method, as applied by Schubert to lyric
music, is the "declamatory." In this form we detect the consummate
flower of the musical lyric. The vocal part is lifted into a species
of passionate chant, full of dramatic fire and colour, while the
accompaniment, which is extremely elaborate, furnishes a most
picturesque setting. The genius of the composer displays itself here
fully as much as in the vocal treatment. When the lyric feeling rises
to its climax it expresses itself in the crowning melody, this high
tide of the music and poetry being always in unison. As masterpieces
of this form may be cited "Die Stadt" and "Der Erlkönig," which stand
far beyond any other works of the same nature in the literature of
music.