Schubert
AND HIS WORK
The most lovable and the shortest-lived of the great composers, Franz
Seraph Peter Schubert was doubly a paradox. He was the only one of the
outstanding Viennese masters (unless one chooses to include in this
category the Strauss waltz kings) actually born in Vienna; and, though
there has never been a composer more spiritually Viennese, Schubert
inherited not a drop of Viennese blood. His ancestry had its roots in
the Moravian and Austrian-Silesian soil. His grandfather, Karl Schubert,
a peasant and a local magistrate, lived in one of the thirty-five towns
called Neudorf in Moravian-Silesian territory and married the daughter
of a well-to-do farmer, acquiring by the match a large tract of land and
ten children of whom the fifth, Franz Theodor Florian, was destined to
beget an immortal.
At eighteen Franz Theodor, who was born in 1763, determined to follow
the example of his elder brother, Karl, and become a schoolmaster. He
went to Vienna and secured a post as assistant instructor in a school
where Karl had already been teaching for several years. In spite of
starvation wages he married (1785) Maria Elisabeth Vietz, from
Zuckmantel, in Silesia, the very town whence the Schuberts had
originally emigrated to Neudorf. She was a cook, the daughter of a
“master locksmith,” and she was seven years older than her husband. The
couple had fourteen children, nine of whom died in infancy. The
survivors were Ignaz, Ferdinand, Karl, Therese and our Franz Peter, who
came twelfth in order.
A year after his marriage father Schubert was appointed schoolmaster of
the parish of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, in Lichtental, one of the
thirty-four Viennese suburbs (or _Vorstädte_), located at greater or
lesser distances from the “Inner Town,” which in those days represented
Vienna proper. The schoolhouse (unless it has been demolished in the
late war) still stands. Franz Theodor took lodgings for himself and his
family a few steps away at the House of the Red Crab (_Zum rothen
Krebse_), Himmelpfortgrund 72, now Nussdorfer Strasse 54 and since 1912
a Schubert museum, owned by the municipality of Vienna. Here Franz
Seraph Peter was born on January 31, 1797, at half past one in the
afternoon.
Father Schubert’s position was far from lucrative; in fact, it offered
no salary at all, nothing but a tax of one gulden a month per child
levied on the parents. And yet this inflexible, God-fearing pedagogue,
imposed such merciless economies and Spartan discipline on himself, his
family and his pupils that he not only managed to make both ends meet
but, when Franz Peter was four, to buy the schoolhouse where he taught
and to take up his quarters there. In modern times the little house had
become a garage, though a memorial tablet placed on it in 1928 reminded
the passerby that Schubert lived and taught there for several years
besides composing under its roof a number of his works, among them _Der
Erlkönig_.
Not the least remarkable thing about Father Schubert was the fact that,
despite the endless grind of making a living, teaching and raising a
family, he should have found time to cultivate music. Yet he was a
tolerable amateur cellist and his great son’s first music teacher. After
giving the boy “elementary instruction” in his fifth year and sending
him to school in his sixth he taught Franz Peter at the age of eight the
rudiments of violin playing and practised him so thoroughly that the boy
was “soon able to play easy duets fairly well.”
The youngster was next handed over to his elder brother, Ignaz, who gave
him some piano instruction. But here an uncanny thing happened! The
child showed such an instinctive grasp of everything his brother tried
to teach him that Ignaz, nonplussed, confessed himself hopelessly
outstripped. Franz, for his part, declared he had no need of help but
would go his own way in musical matters. Thereupon his parents entrusted
him to the choirmaster of the nearby Lichtental parish church, one
Michael Holzer, who knew something about counterpoint and consumed more
alcohol than was good for him. It was not long before poor Holzer was
experiencing with his pupil the same difficulties as Ignaz. He had the
little fellow sing and was delighted by his bright voice and his musical
accuracy. He let him accompany hymns on the organ, had him improvise and
modulate back and forth, taught him a little piano and violin,
familiarized him with the viola clef and a few principles of
thorough-bass. But in the end his labors were largely superfluous.
Holzer admitted that “the lad has harmony in his little finger.” A
nearby shop of a piano maker offered a more fertile field for
experiments in harmony. Released from the organ loft Franz Peter hurried
to this shop and spent hours there forming chords on the keyboard.
He Joins the “Sängerknaben”
It is not impossible that Schubert may have made a few attempts at
composition at this stage, though there is no actual proof. But a real
turning point came on May 28, 1808. On that date there appeared in the
official journal, the _Wiener Zeitung_, an announcement that two places
among the choristers of the Imperial Chapel (the so-called Sängerknaben)
had to be filled. Father Schubert saw his chance. A chorister who showed
the necessary qualifications could enjoy free tuition, board and lodging
at the Imperial Konvikt (or Seminary); and if the boy distinguished
himself “in morals and studies” he might remain even after his voice had
changed. The Konvikt was a former Jesuit school reopened in 1802 by the
Emperor Franz and supervised by a branch of the Jesuits called the
Piarists. In addition to ten choristers there were pupils of middle and
high school standing. The Konvikt occupied a long, cheerless building
which in modern times looked quite as bleak as it did in Schubert’s day.
The tests took place on September 30, 1808, and the examiners consisted
of Antonio Salieri, a prolific opera composer, an intimate of Gluck and
Haydn, a teacher of Beethoven and an implacable enemy of Mozart; the
Court Kapellmeister Eybler; and a singing teacher at the school, Philip
Korner. Schubert presented himself for the examination wearing a grayish
smock, which caused the other boys to jeer and call him a miller. But as
millers were popularly supposed to be musical the young mockers agreed
that he could not fail. They were right. Not only did he meet all the
requirements but his voice and musicianship aroused the surprise and
enthusiasm of the committee. Schubert was promptly accepted. In other
subjects required, as well as in music, he easily surpassed the other
competitors. Not in vain was he his father’s son!
So the boy shed his “miller’s” vesture and put on the fancy,
gold-braided togs of the Sängerknaben. In a few days he was settled at
the Konvikt. He was amenable to discipline—having learned it plentifully
at home—and does not appear to have suffered the tribulations of some
other Konvikt scholars who were less conformable and more adventurous.
The shyness which clung to him more or less throughout his life made him
shun his fellow students as much as he conveniently could. The food was
poor and scanty and even four years later we find him appealing
pathetically to his brother Ferdinand for a few pennies a month to buy a
roll or an apple as a fortifying snack between a “mediocre midday meal
and a paltry supper” eight hours later! The music room at the school was
left unheated, hence “gruesomely cold” (anyone who has experienced the
unheated corridors of a Viennese house in winter can shudder in
sympathy!). But there was plenty of music and the school orchestra, in
which Schubert occupied the second desk among the violins, delighted
him.
Every evening this orchestra played an entire symphony and ended up with
“the noisiest possible overture.” The windows were left open in summer
and crowds used to collect outside, till the police dispersed them
because they obstructed traffic. The concerts were conducted by a
singularly lovable old Bohemian organist, viola player and teacher,
Wenzel Ruziczka, who at an early date defended and explained some of the
boldest “modernisms” in Schubert’s compositions. The orchestra performed
a good deal of trivial music but every now and then there would be works
by Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini, Méhul and even some of the less taxing
scores of Beethoven. Schubert on these occasions felt himself in heaven!
He was “entranced” by the slow movements of Haydn, but his god was
Mozart. With a subtlety of perception almost uncanny in a boy of twelve
he said that the G minor Symphony “shook him to the depths without his
knowing why.” He called the overture to the _Marriage of Figaro_ the
“most beautiful in the whole world,” then quickly added “but I had
almost forgotten that to the _Magic Flute_.” It is certain that this
student orchestra was a most valuable factor in Schubert’s musical
education. It was with these young players in mind that he composed his
First Symphony in October, 1813, at the age of sixteen.
At a first violin desk in front of Schubert there played another youth,
some nine years older, a student of law and philosophy from Linz, Josef
von Spaun, and thus began one of those Schubertian friendships that was
to last for life and play an important part in Schubert’s story. Amazed
by the beautiful playing he heard behind him, Spaun looked around and
saw “a small boy in spectacles.” Not long afterwards he surprised the
youngster in the freezing music room trying a sonata by Mozart. Franz
confided to his sympathetic new friend that, much as he loved the
sonata, he found Mozart “extremely difficult to play” (another acute
observation!). Then, “shy and blushing,” he admitted that he “sometimes
put his thoughts into notes.” However, he trembled lest his father get
wind of the fact, for while Franz Theodor had no objection to music as a
pastime and also had every reason to be satisfied that it paid for his
son’s education and kept a roof over his head, he had other plans for
him in mind. The real business of the young man’s life was to be
schoolmastering. No two ways about it!
So Franz Peter had need to be wary. Besides, there was another obstacle
to his composing. Music paper was scarce and costly. He did, it is true,
rule staves on paper himself but even ordinary brown paper was not
plentiful. So the generous Spaun, though of a rather restricted budget,
bought paper out of his own allowance and did not remonstrate when
Schubert used up the precious commodity “by the ream.” The only
difficulty, now, was that Franz composed in study hours and fell back in
his school work, a fact that was not slow in coming to his father’s
notice. And yet the records of the Konvikt do not show that Schubert was
a poor student. At various times certificates signed by the school
director, Father Innocenz Lang, pronounce him “good” or “very good” in
almost everything, while in Greek he is even described as “eminent.”
Somewhat later when at normal school, preparing to teach in his father’s
schoolhouse, his weaker subjects were mathematics, Latin and “practical
religion.”
However, not all the parental thundering could keep nature from taking
its course, even if it temporarily embittered Franz’s young life. Father
Schubert at one stage went so far as to forbid his son to enter his
house. The lad had been in the habit of going home on Sundays and
holidays and there taking part in string quartet concerts with his
father and his brothers, Ignaz and Ferdinand, Schubert himself occupying
the viola desk and being the real director of the ensemble. He roughly
scolded his brothers when they blundered, but cautiously corrected Franz
Theodor’s errors with nothing more scathing than: “Herr Vater, something
must be wrong here.” Now this diversion was denied him and he suffered.
Not until May 28, 1812, was he permitted to return to the Lichtental
roof-tree and then only because a tragic event softened the paternal
heart. On that Corpus Christi day Franz’s mother died of typhus (or, as
they called it then, “nerve fever”), the same malady which sixteen years
later was to carry off Franz himself. In due course the chamber music
sessions were resumed and in time they outgrew their humble environment.