Schubert Classical Music
Composer Franz Schubert, a tormented genius, produced many musical masterpieces of profound universal beauty during his short lifetime. Anthony Hawkins explores his life and work...
Franz Schubert (born Vienna, 31 January 1797; died there, 19 November 1828):
Schubert, too, wrote for silence; half his work
Lay like a frozen Rhine till summers came
That warned the grass above him. Even so
His music lives now with a mighty youth.
-- George Eliot
Franz Schubert, Composer. Portrait by Wilhelm August Rieder
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Many a quote has Schubert cast in a divine realm: Franz Schubert – the god of Purity – who, in works lasting only minutes, can capture a whole universe of emotions, a universe of pure spirit that expresses mankind’s rich and varied emotional world:
...this heaven-inspired clairvoyant who, as it were, simply shook his most glorious things out of his sleeve – Karl von Schönstein
Truly, in Schubert there is a divine spark – Ludwig van Beethoven
To me he is like a child of the gods, who plays with Jupiter's thunder… but he plays in such a region, at such a height, to which the others are far short of raising themselves... – Johannes Brahms
...the composer nearest to God – Arthur Schnabel
Think what the first appearance of these godlike pieces must have been! It was the rising of the Sun! He is now an everyday sight to us; but how was it the first time that he burst in all his brightness on the eyes of mortals? – Sir George Grove
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Our romanticized postmortem persona of a cherub-faced, curly-haired, bespectacled genius often suggests only the jovial and carefree character, a little “Prince of Song” and, in the words of his friend, Josef von Spaun, a man “'incapable of malice, friendly, grateful, modest, and sociable”. However, Schubert was also possessed of a tragic self-awareness, blighted by severe depressions and deviant proclivities – “the cleavage in his souls… of which one pressed heavenwards and the other bathed in slime” (as described by his friend, Josef Kenner), tormented by “a black-winged demon of sorrow and melancholy”. Perhaps then, even the invocation of godhead status is too flippant for our hero, given the deeper understanding we now have of Schubert’s dual nature; and perhaps, in a more earthbound epitome, it was Franz Liszt who described him best – “the most poetic musician ever”.
When his syphilitic infection was diagnosed in 1822, a deep, dark sadness began to invade his life (there is much speculation as to Schubert’s sexuality and, indeed, about the gender of the prostitute from whom he allegedly contracted the disease). On 31 March 1824, he penned a despairing and fatalistic letter to his painter friend, Leopold Kupelwieser, in which he describes himself as:
… the most unhappy, the most wretched man in the world. … a man whose health will never be sound again and who, out of sheer despair over that, does anything to make matters constantly worse instead of better … a man whose brightest hopes have come to nothing, to whom love and friendship at best offer only pain, someone whose response (creative response at least) to all that is beautiful threatens to vanish … “My peace is gone, my heart is heavy; never, but never again, shall I find peace.” That could be my daily song now, for each night when I go to sleep I hope never to wake again, and each morning brings me back to yesterday’s grief…
Franz Schubert was born in Vienna, 1797. His early training took place amidst a musical environment at home, with his brothers and his schoolmaster father (the Schuberts had eleven children, of whom only three, including Franz, survived infancy). He went on to study at the Staatskonvikt, an institution he attended as a member of the choir of the Imperial Chapel. The young Schubert was hailed as a genius: "He has learned everything," said one of his first music masters, "God has been his teacher."; Antonio Salieri, the choirmaster and composition teacher, declared, “Schubert can do everything!”
When his voice broke in 1812, Schubert returned to live at home, avoiding military service, and became assistant teacher to his father; he worked begrudgingly (and not very successfully) in this capacity during the day, whilst composing prolifically by night. The next few years brought a torrential flood of music of all kinds and by the end of 1815 he had produced a truly incredible amount: three symphonies, four sonatas and smaller works for piano, over a hundred songs including the masterpieces Gretchen am Spinnrade (D118) and Erlkönig (D328) (on 15 October, 1815, he composed eight songs in one day!), three Masses (the Mass in G was completed in six days!), string quartets and many smaller instrumental pieces, the operas and singspiels Der vierjährige Posten (D.190), Fernando (D220) and Claudine von Villabella (D239), Adrast (D137) and Die Freunde von Salamanka (D326)…….. and more!
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Anne Sofie von Otter sings Erlkönig in an orchestration by Hector Berlioz. Claudio Abbado conducts the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. |
In the following years, Schubert enjoyed the company of a widening circle of friends, a Bohemian, intellectual, art-loving circle, that included the poet Johann Mayrhofer, the eminent baritone J.M. Vogl (who gave the first performance of Erlkönig) and pianist Joseph von Gahy. The group frequently gathered at Viennese coffee houses and homes, in what became known as ‘Schubertiads’, where Schubert’s latest compositions were performed to a very appreciative audience – in a letter to his brother Ferdinand, Schubert wrote, “When Vogl sings and I accompany him, we seem for a moment to be one, which strikes the good people here as something quite unheard of.” The songs poured forth (eventually Schubert was to write over six hundred), notably Der Wanderer (D493) and Die Forelle (D550) along with Rossini-inspired overtures, increasingly inventive piano sonatas and the fifth and sixth symphonies. In the summer of 1819, during a holiday in Upper Austria with Vogl, he composed the popular ‘Trout’ quintet – Piano Quintet in A (D667):
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The third movement of the ‘Trout’ quintet – performed by Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Jacqueline du Pré and Zubin Mehta. |
In the midst of an ensuing darkness, Schubert penned some of his most remarkable works. 1823 saw the appearance of his first song cycle, Die schöne Müllerin (D795) after poems by Wilhelm Müller, in which the miller of the title moves through stages of ecstasy, jealousy and bitter disillusionment. In his later works we see tremendous expansion of form and harmonic ingenuity, soaring lyricism along with greater expressions of anguish and torment, exemplified by his String Quartet in D minor ‘Death and the Maiden’ (D810), the Symphony No. 8 in B minor ‘Unfinished’ (D759) and Symphony No.9 in C ‘Great’ (D944), the Piano Sonata in B flat (D960), the colossal String Quartet in G (D887) and the sublime String Quintet in C (D956).
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Alfred Brendel performs the Andante Sostenuto from the Piano Sonata in B flat (D960) |
In what is perhaps his greatest and most profound work, Schubert set twenty-four poems by Müller in the song-cycle Die Winterreise (D991) – ‘A Winter’s Journey’ – an unrelentingly bleak journey that leads, step by step, to complete dissolution. Newman Flower has written movingly about this synthesis of composer and poet:
Müller was brilliant in the tone painting of his words. He had a rare sense of humanity. He set down with the most natural ease the atmosphere of a life. "I can neither play nor sing," he wrote. "But when I compose my poem I sing all the same and play as well. If I could express the tunes that come to me, my songs would please better than they do now. But, patience. There may be found a sympathetically tuned soul, which will discover the tunes in the words, and give them back to me."
Unknowingly, he found that soul in Schubert. The last twelve songs in the Winterreise cycle show the gloom gathering about him, the infinite sadness which, with the end of all endeavour approaching, had taken its hold on Schubert at the time he composed them. Müller died in September, 1827; Schubert was to set his last songs and pass on little more than a year later. The last Winterreise songs are an epic in sadness, the blending of two moods of beauty - both in verse and in music - overshadowed by death.
Schubert had adored Ludwig van Beethoven all his life; in his teens he sighed, “Who can do anything after Beethoven?” By his own request, Schubert was buried next to Beethoven, with the epitaph ‘Here lie rich treasure and still fairer hopes’.
Had he been granted just a few more years of creative life, who knows which heavenly enclaves Schubert’s genius would have excavated. Due to an early death at the age of 31, his last works cannot be considered ‘late works’ in that they represent not a conclusion, but rather a departure point, the seeds of new beginnings that would never be allowed to flourish.
