In the year following _Gretchen am Spinnrade_ there came into being (and
once more in his father’s school in the Säulengasse) what is, in some
ways perhaps, the most famous of Schubert’s songs—_Der Erlkönig_. Spaun,
who went to visit his friend one afternoon, found him “all aglow,” a
book in hand, reading Goethe’s ballad. Schubert walked up and down the
room several times, suddenly seated himself at a table “and in the
shortest possible time the splendid ballad was on paper.” Franz having
no piano, the pair hastened down to the Konvikt where the song was tried
out that very evening. Several listeners objected to the sharp
dissonances of the accompaniment to the child’s cry but it was none
other than old Ruziczka who showed himself the best “modernist” of them
all, actually championing the “cacophony,” explaining its artistic
function and praising its beauty. Schubert himself had a pair of sore
wrists from the unmerciful triplets of the piano part! Not everywhere,
one regrets to say, did _Der Erlkönig_ create such a stir. At the
insistence of his friends Schubert sent it, along with some other songs,
to Goethe with an appropriate dedication. His Excellency in Weimar did
not even deign to acknowledge it. Meanwhile the publishing firm of
Breitkopf und Härtel, to whom Spaun also dispatched the ballad, thought
that someone was playing a practical joke. Before deciding what to do
with “wild stuff” they addressed themselves to a Dresden violinist who
chanced also to be called Franz Schubert (he composed a trifling piece
called _The Bee_, which some fiddlers still play) and asked his opinion.
The Saxon Franz (or François) Schubert exploded, insisted he had never
composed the “cantata” in question but would see who was misusing his
good name for such a patchwork and promptly bring the miscreant to book!
[Illustration: Engraving by Franz Weigl for the second edition of _Der
Erlkönig_.]
Piano composition—Ecossaises, German Dances (“Deutsche”), variations,
sonatas—a number of string quartets and other chamber music swelled the
ever-increasing output. The quantity of songs mounted like a tidal wave.
And although nothing had come of _Des Teufels Lustschloss_ (part of
which the composer, moved by purely artistic impulses, even went so far
as to rewrite), Schubert continued the woeful job of piling up unwanted
operatic scores. He wrote _Der vierjährige Posten_ (the story of a
sentry who was posted and not relieved on the departure of his regiment
and who, when it returned four years later, still stood on duty);
_Fernando, a Singspiel_; _Claudine von Villa Bella_; _Die Freunde von
Salamanka_ and _Adrast_ (texts by Johann Mayrhofer).
And, while we are on the operatic subject, let us look ahead into the
years of Schubert’s maturity and list what other operas he wrote (it
should be understood, by the way, that certain of these are more on the
order of operettas than what we understand by lyric dramas). In 1819 he
composed _Die Zwillingsbrüder_, which has a plot along _Comedy of
Errors_ lines; in 1820 a “magic and machine” comedy called _Die
Zauberharfe_ (“The Magic Harp”), the overture of which is familiar to us
as the _Rosamunde_—though the overture which Schubert used three years
later to the musical play of that name was the introduction that
prefaced a full-length romantic opera, _Alfonso und Estrella_, dated
1821. An _actual_ overture to _Rosamunde_ was never written. The piece
known universally by that title was not so designated till 1827, when it
was published in an arrangement for piano duet. Other operatic works we
may cite in passing are _Die Verschworenen_, a treatment of the
“Lysistrata” motive; and the large-scale “heroic-romantic” opera,
_Fierrabras_, composed in the summer of 1823. After 1823 Schubert let
opera alone—at least temporarily. On his deathbed he was still planning
another, a _Graf von Gleichen_, to a book by his boon companion, Eduard
von Bauernfeld. But the project had never gotten beyond some sketches.
Mayrhofer, whom we just mentioned, had made Schubert’s acquaintance in
1814, when the composer set to music his poem _Am See_. A close
friendship immediately sprang up between them though Mayrhofer—the older
of the two by ten years—was of a moody, brooding nature (he subsequently
committed suicide by jumping out of a window). By 1819, Schubert, having
grown heartily sick of schoolmastering some time before, went to share
for a while the sombre, dilapidated quarters of Mayrhofer in the
Wipplinger Strasse (the danger of the army draft was now over) and the
pair, for all their temperamental differences, hit it off famously.
Although Schubert composed pretty much anywhere and everywhere he
accomplished a prodigious amount of creative work in Mayrhofer’s
depressing room. The poet on opening his eyes in the morning used to see
Franz, clad only in shirt and trousers, writing vigorously at a rickety
table. His favorite working hours were from six in the morning till
noon, though he was in the habit of sleeping with his spectacles on in
case the lightning of inspiration should strike him the minute he awoke.
If any visitor came unannounced Schubert would greet him, without
looking up from his work, with the words: “Greetings! How are you?
Well?”—whereupon the intruder realized it was an invitation to
disappear.
After writing all morning Schubert, like a true Viennese, usually went
to enjoy the incomparable relaxation of a coffee house, drinking a
_Mélange_ (café au lait), eating _Kipferl_ (crescents, if you prefer!),
smoking and reading the newspapers. In the evening there was the opera
and the theatre (provided one had money or somebody bought the tickets)
or else the gatherings of the clans at the various “Gasthäuser,”
“Stammbeisel” and taverns. The friends discussed questions of the day,
literature, plays, music. They criticized each other’s work with
unsparing frankness. Schubert’s uncommonly keen musical opinions were
relished by everybody.
Although Schubert wished to have done with teaching as soon as possible
he attempted (perhaps to placate his father) to obtain a pedagogical
post in a normal school at Laibach. He was turned down in favor of some
local applicant, which was no doubt just as well. Had it been otherwise
the brilliant coterie of “Schubertians” might have been nipped in the
bud and the term “Schubertiads,” as they called their revels and their
discussions had it entered the dictionary at all, might have had another
meaning.
Who were these “Schubertians,” this group of younger and older
intellectuals and Bohemians held together, somehow, by the indefinable
attraction of Schubert’s personality? They came and went with the years
and when one or another vanished a different one would generally take
his place. “Kann er was?” (“What’s he good at?”) was Franz’s usual query
if a newcomer appeared—a question which earned him the nickname
“Kanevas”! Virtually all who stepped into the charmed circle were good
at something. Among the most prominent were Spaun, Mayrhofer, Stadler,
Senn, and later Moriz von Schwind, the painter; the Kupelwieser
brothers, Leopold and Josef, Josef Gahy, Karl Enderes, the poet
Matthaeus Collin, the blue-stocking novelist, Karoline Pichler, Eduard
von Bauernfeld, Franz von Schober—to cite only a handful that come to
mind. Schober, particularly, who wrote, drew, acted and was in every
sense a clever man of the world, played a considerable role in
Schubert’s life—some even hint a rather nefarious one. Still, he was
well-to-do, his rooms were at Franz’s disposal whenever he needed them
and he introduced the composer to the great Michael Vogl.
The latter, whom Schubert had long worshipped at the opera, was not only
one of the greatest baritones of his time, but a singular and romantic
creature, who became a social favorite on the strength of his handsome
face and figure, developed some harmless affectations yet remained a
mystic at heart. He passed much of his spare time reading the Bible,
Plato, Epictetus and other ancient and mediaeval poets and philosophers.
He greeted Schubert in the condescending manner assumed by some popular
artists when they first met aspiring beginners. He seemed unimpressed on
glancing over the first song or two Schubert put before him, but after
reading through _Der Erlkönig_ he patted the composer on the back,
remarking as one not wholly dissatisfied: “There’s something in you, but
you’re too little of an actor or a charlatan. You squander your fine
thoughts without developing them.” Yet before long he had become
Schubert’s chief interpreter and propagandist, and spoke grandly of
“these truly god-like inspirations, these revelations of musical
clairvoyance.”
The chamber music concerts given on Sundays at the Schubert homestead in
Lichtental had outgrown their strictly domestic character quite some
time before Father Schubert had been transferred (late in 1817) to a new
school in the neighboring Rossau district. The string quartet had
expanded into a small orchestra and now performed symphonies and such in
the homes of several musical acquaintances, lastly in that of a wealthy
landowner, Anton Pettenkofer, who lived in the Inner Town, not far from
St. Stephen’s. It was for this amateur orchestra that Schubert composed
at least four of his early symphonies. The occasional absence of drums
and trumpets (in the Fifth, for instance) indicates the constitution of
the orchestra at different times. Schubert himself occupied a viola desk
delighting, like Mozart and Bach before him, to be “in the middle of the
harmony.”
Up to 1818 there had not been what one might describe as public
performances of Schubert’s works other than church music. On March 1
there occurred the first of these, at a Musical-Declamatory Academy
(that is to say, a miscellaneous concert) organized by a violinist,
Eduard Jaell. One of Schubert’s pieces heard was a so-called _Italian
Overture_. It was surprisingly well received by the critics and in less
than three weeks other Schubert overtures were heard in Vienna, at
similar entertainments. One aristocratic hearer prophesied in type (and
correctly, as it proved) that Schubert’s works “would occupy an
advantageous place among the productions of the present day.” Only a
little earlier Franz had the satisfaction of seeing a composition of his
appear for the first time in print! It was a setting of Mayrhofer’s poem
_Am Erlafsee_ and it was published in a kind of pictorial guide “For
Friends of Interesting Localities in the Austrian Monarchy.”
Financially, Schubert reached in the spring of 1818 a rather desperate
pass, as he was earning nothing and could not depend everlastingly on
his friends. So when the father of the singer, Caroline Unger,
recommended him to Count Johann Esterházy, of Galantha, as piano teacher
for his two young daughters, Schubert accepted out of sheer need, much
as he detested teaching of any kind. The summer estate of this branch of
the Esterházy family was at Zseliz, in Hungarian-Slovakian frontier
land, actually not far from Vienna but for Schubert the farthest away he
had ever been. The pay was not generous but at least board and lodging
were free, the country was a relief after the summer heat in Vienna, the
Esterházys and their friends were not unmusical. The daughters, Maria
and Caroline, were thirteen and eleven, respectively, whom Schubert
found “amiable children.” He is now and then represented as having been
in love with Caroline. If he really was it could only have been on his
second visit to Zseliz, in 1824, when she had become a young lady of
seventeen. Like Haydn, Schubert was quartered with the servants, which
does not seem greatly to have irritated him, despite the boorishness of
certain grooms (a pretty chambermaid, he wrote home, “sometimes kept him
company”). The chief annoyance came from the cacklings of a nearby flock
of geese.
[Illustration: Title-page of Schubert’s _Fantasia for Piano and Four
Hands_ (opus 103), dedicated by the composer to Countess Caroline
Esterházy.]
One man whom Schubert met at Zseliz was destined to become as inspired
and outstanding an interpreter of his songs as Vogl—Karl Freiherr von
Schönstein, whose singing of Schubert later drew tears of emotion from
Liszt. He brought to the more lyrical songs an extraordinary artistry,
sensitiveness and devotion. The _Schöne Müllerin_ cycle in particular
was to be his specialty. And Zseliz, both now and a few years
afterwards, enriched Schubert still further by fertilizing his
inspiration with Slavic and Hungarian folk music. “I compose and live
like a god,” he wrote his brother, Ferdinand, though to Schober he
speaks in a less exuberant strain. However, the Esterházys and
Schönstein sang not a little of Schubert’s music and also ventured on
more or less of Haydn’s _Creation_ and _Seasons_ as well as upon the
whole of Mozart’s _Requiem_. Strangely enough, though he had far more
time to write songs during these carefree months than he had some years
earlier, he wrote appreciably fewer. His maturing genius was about to
take other directions.
Schubert returned to Vienna in November in a jubilant mood. This was the
period when Josef Hüttenbrenner—brother of the shrewder Anselm and
sometimes rather irritating to the composer by the injudiciousness of
his enthusiasm (“Everything I write seems to please him,” said Schubert
querulously)—made it his business to collect from near and far every
manuscript of Franz he could lay his hands on. In this manner Josef
recovered fully a hundred songs—a fortunate thing for posterity though
at the time it buttered no bread and paid no bills. Anselm, for his
part, went with Schubert (in a remote gallery seat) to the first
performance of the latter’s opera _Die Zwillingsbrüder_. The applause
warranted the composer’s appearance for a curtain call, but he declined
to take it because of the shabby coat he wore. Anselm wanted Franz to
put on his for a moment, but Schubert declined, glad, perhaps, to escape
even a brief lionizing. So he merely sat back and smiled wistfully when
Vogl came forward to tell the audience that the author was “not in the
house.”
One of Schubert’s most influential acquaintances about this time was
Leopold Sonnleithner, a member of a noted Viennese musical family. It
was through Sonnleithner that Schubert came to know the poet Heinrich
von Collin and in his circle the composer met men like the so-called
“music count” Dietrichstein, the poet and bishop, Ladislaus Pyrker,
Patriarch of Venice, court secretary Ignaz von Mosel and others well
qualified to be his patrons and helpers had he but exerted himself to
gain their assistance and good will. Better still, Sonnleithner
introduced him to the four enchanting Fröhlich sisters, whose father had
been a merchant of considerable means. Josefine, Käthi, Barbara and Anna
Fröhlich, Viennese to the core, were uncommonly musical. All four sang
well, three of them taught and Barbara painted miniatures. One prominent
guest of this delightful household was the poet, Franz Grillparzer, who
long outlived Schubert and wrote his epitaph. Sonnleithner cleverly
brought some of Schubert’s songs to the Fröhlich home before introducing
the composer in person and whetted the curiosity of the sisters to such
a degree that the stage was ideally set for his entrance.
Käthi Fröhlich tells of Schubert’s joy when music—not necessarily his
own—particularly pleased him. “He would place his hands together and
against his lips and sit as if spellbound.” Once, after hearing the
sisters sing, he exclaimed: “Now I know what to do” and shortly
afterwards brought them a setting of the Twenty-third Psalm for four
women’s voices and piano. Another time, Anna Fröhlich appealed to
Schubert to set some verses of Grillparzer’s as a birthday serenade to
one of her pupils, Luise Gosmar. Schubert glanced at the poem a couple
of times, murmuring “how beautiful it is” and then announced: “It is
done already. I have it.” A few days later he returned with the serenade
“Zögernd leise” and the charming piece was sung shortly afterwards
beneath Luise Gosmar’s window. Characteristically, Schubert forgot to
come and he almost missed his work on a later occasion when it was sung
at a concert devoted wholly to his compositions. When he finally did
hear it he seemed like one transfixed. “Truly,” he murmured, “I did not
think it was so beautiful!”
The “Sketch Symphony”
The “Schubertiads” were not invariably indoor affairs. In spring and
summer they took the shape of longer or shorter excursions, jaunts into
the suburbs or even farther out into the country, with picnicking,
dancing, ball-playing, charades and what not. If music of one sort or
another was needed, Schubert was always ready to provide it. One of the
most charming sites of these frolics (which sometimes lasted several
days) was the hamlet of Atzenbrugg, an hour or so from Vienna, and it
was here that Schubert produced a delightful set of dances, the
_Atzenbrugger Deutsche_. It may have been at Atzenbrugg, as well, that
Schubert composed in August, 1821, a symphony in four movements,
sketched out but never completed. This is not, of course, the
two-movement torso which the world calls the _Unfinished_. The _Sketch
Symphony_ in E major (with a slow introduction in E minor), is
unfinished in a different sense. The first 110 measures are complete in
every detail. The rest of the work is carried out only melodically,
though with bar lines drawn, tempi and instrumentation indicated,
harmonies, accompaniment figures and basses inserted and each subject
given in full. The autograph remained at Schubert’s death in the keeping
of his brother Ferdinand who later gave it to Mendelssohn, whose
brother, Paul, presented it to Sir George Grove. He, in turn, permitted
his friend, the English composer, John Francis Barnett, to complete the
work and in this form it was first produced in London, in 1883. Only a
little over ten years ago the late Felix Weingartner finished it
according to his own lights but in a style far less Schubertian than
Barnett’s conscientious piety.
We have no means of knowing why Schubert never bothered to carry out in
full so elaborately projected a work. Nor have we of his failure to
complete the immortal _Unfinished_. Whatever theories may be advanced
are purely speculative. Schubert left large quantities of unfinished
work—chamber music, piano sonatas, operas; so why not symphonies? In
some cases he may simply have forgotten certain of his creations (as he
had a manner of doing), in others he may have lost interest, for others,
still, lacked time. Explanations may be plausible yet wholly wide of the
mark. Is the _Unfinished Symphony_ unfinished because it has only two
movements? Are Beethoven’s two-movement sonatas in any manner
“unfinished”? That a 130-bar fragment of a scherzo exists does not mean
we have a right to decide it would have been “inferior”—we have no way
whatever of knowing _what_ Schubert would have done with a partial
sketch. For that matter, piano sketches of the first and second
movements of the _Unfinished Symphony_ have actually come down to us.
Could we, from an examination of them, tell what the final product would
be like if we were not familiar with it?
From what we can judge of the _Sketch Symphony_ its style proves it a
bridge between the six early symphonies of Schubert and the two later
ones. We say two—were there, peradventure, three? Yes, if there was
indeed a _Gastein Symphony_, of which nobody has ever found a trace
though some serious Schubert students have believed and still believe in
it. Many have been confused by the manner that has prevailed for years
of numbering the last two of Schubert’s symphonies—the _Unfinished_ and
the great C major of the “heavenly length.” Why is the C major sometimes
called the Seventh, sometimes the Ninth, the _Unfinished_ now the
Eighth, now the Seventh?
[Illustration: Title-page of a collection of dances arranged for the
piano by leading composers of the period. Included were three of
Schubert’s early pieces.]
In reality, the answer is simple. In order of composition the _Sketch
Symphony_ is the Seventh, the _Unfinished_ the Eighth, the C major of
1828, the Ninth. In order of publication the great C major is the
Seventh, the _Unfinished_ (which was not discovered till 1865), the
Eighth, the _Sketch Symphony_ (not published till 1883), the Ninth. The
consequence of leaving the _Sketch Symphony_ out of one’s calculations
is obvious. However, if we maintain that Schubert _did_ write a _Gastein
Symphony_ in 1825, we find ourselves obliged to number that legendary
opus Nine, whereupon the C major becomes Number Ten!
The “Unfinished”
As for the B minor Symphony, the sweet, grief-burdened, nostalgic
_Unfinished_, the fable has prevailed for years that it was written as a
thanks offering to the Steiermärkischer Musikverein of Graz, which had
elected Schubert to membership and of which Anselm Hüttenbrenner was
artistic director. As a matter of fact, the date on the title page of
the manuscript is October 30, 1822. But not till April 10, 1823, was
Schubert proposed for membership in the society and not till September,
1823, was the composer informed of his election. He wrote a letter to
Graz promising to send the Musikverein, as a token of his gratitude, the
score _of one of his symphonies_. But it was not until a year later
that, prodded by his father, who was shocked by the idea that a son of
his had waited so long to thank the society “worthily,” he gave Josef
Hüttenbrenner the score of the B minor Symphony to deliver to Anselm in
Graz.
So much for facts! We may as well pursue the epic of the _Unfinished_ to
its close. We do not know whether Anselm ever showed the symphony to the
society and there is no record that he mentioned it to a soul, though he
is said to have made a piano arrangement of the symphony for his own
use. Not till 1860 did Josef Hüttenbrenner speak of it to Johann
Herbeck, conductor of the Vienna Society of the Friends of Music, and
five more years were to elapse before Herbeck, on a visit to Graz,
obtained the score from Anselm on the plea of wanting to produce some
“new” works by Hüttenbrenner, Lachner and Schubert. On December 17,
1865, Vienna heard the _Unfinished_ for the first time. The autograph
shows no trace of any dedication to the Graz Music Society or to anybody
else! But from the start the symphony was acclaimed an undefiled
masterpiece.