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 Hamletlike 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
Grobe, a beautiful soprano, who afterward 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 the exercise of
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 Esterhazy s 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 _naive_ 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 worshiping his genius, lie 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 splendor 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 organized
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 reveled 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 Thrâne?'"
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. Poe-try 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 "Haideroslein," 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 color, 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.