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Schubert's Compositions

It was now necessary that he should do something definite for his living, and being somewhat in dread of being taken off as a soldier, he became a schoolmaster at his father’s school, where he taught the lowest class. This, of course, entailed a considerable amount of drudgery, but he somehow managed to find time to pour out a constant flood of new works, and even to have lessons in composition from old Salieri, who was then Kapellmeister of the Viennese Court, and had a great reputation among his peers.

The extraordinary impulse to compose, which seems to have possessed Schubert more powerfully than any other composer known to history, drove him to try his hand in many different directions. The year after he left the Convict school he produced a mass for the Lichtenthal Church, where his old teacher Holzer still ran the choir. The work was well performed under the boy’s own direction, with some very good musicians among the performers, and was received with enthusiasm by his friends and family, including Salieri, who appears to have been complimentary, and to have publicly recognized Franz as his pupil. Another large work soon followed, which was practically an opera called Des Teufels Lustschloss, and this was followed by another mass, and various other long works.

But among these, and most important in some ways, are the first great songs, which began to make their appearance during this time. The most extraordinary thing about them is that in this line he seemed to require no preparation or education, for some of his very finest songs were produced within a year of leaving the Convict, and while he was still attempting to educate the young students at his father’s school. In some pieces, such as symphonies, he began at a rather low and uninteresting level, and went on growing and growing and gaining in mastery all through his life. But the more docile style of his instrumental music was probably due to the same causes which made his song-writing so remarkable. In instrumental music he was rather at sea at first; and from lack of education and advice he did not know what to aim for, or how to carry on the music in an interesting way. But in relation to songs the want of discipline had its advantages, for it left him all the more open to the impression which the poet produced upon him, and the music seemed to come out as a natural reaction from it. The poems themselves seemed to supply him with the principle of form upon which to build his music, and with the best musical ideas to intensify the situations; and even with a characteristic style. So Franz needed no guidance but the receptiveness of his nature to lead him at once towards his goal.

It was as early as 1815 that he produced one of his most famous and powerful songs. The subject was a weird ballad by Goethe called The Erl-King, in which a father is shown carrying his child on horseback through a wild night in winter. The terrified child thinks it sees the Erl-King, and that he is calling the child to come to him. The father tries to pacify the child, and assures him that it is nothing but the wind. The voice of the Erl-King mockingly calling the child to come is heard, and the excitement grows as the child’s terror increases, and the despairing father urges his horse and clings to the child in vain. For when he arrives at his home, the child is dead.

It was a great opportunity, and splendidly did Schubert master it, and gave it an impressiveness and a power which no reading of the poem by itself could approach. He gives the impression of the wild elements, and of the headlong journey through the night; the terror of the child, the anxiety of the father, and the mocking summons of the Erl-King; and combines it all in sounds which rush with excitement ever increasing from moment to moment, till with their arrival at the door of their home, the music, like their headlong journey, stops suddenly, and in the stillness of despair the father’s horror at finding his child dead in his arms is simply told in seven quiet words, which supply exactly the dramatic effect that is wanted. This was one of Schubert’s earliest songs, and it contains all the marks of the artistic song in complete maturity. Such an effect of the course cannot be obtained by the voice alone on the old methods, but the most elaborate resources of instrumental music have to be employed to express the terrors of the situation, while the voice at times does little more than speak the words. But Schubert never meant to degrade the voice to a secondary position, or let the song be a piano piece with a voice to explain what it was about. His instincts brought him to make use of all the opportunities at his disposal to convey the poet’s meaning in musical terms. Sometimes in other songs the voice is far more prominent musically, and the piano has little more than a subordinate accompaniment, in the usual sense of the term; but that is in cases where it seemed right and possible to him to treat the poem in such a way. In most cases where he is dealing with an impressive poem the balance between the voice and the instrument is such as to give to each the full share in conveying the poet’s meaning that it is capable of.

The story of the first appearance of "The Erl-King" has been told by Schubert’s friend Spaun, who called Franz one afternoon in 1815, and found him in a state of excitement over Goethe’s ballad, which he had only just come across. The song was finished and written out before that evening arrived, and the two boys took it to the Convict, where some of Franz’s old friends were gathered, and they tried it together. As was very natural, they were rather bewildered than pleased with it. Everything thoroughly genuine and original puzzles people at first, and in this instance the work was not only very much off the beaten path, but extremely wild and dramatic; so it is not surprising that his audience did not take it all at once. But they admired and loved Schubert too well to discourage him, and before long all his friends had learned to understand and delight in it.

The rapidity with which he wrote this famous song is characteristic of Schubert’s style. He devoured everything that came in his way in the line of lyrics, and scarcely ever paused to consider whether the poetry was good; but if it conveyed any impression to his mind, he set it at once. At one time, he lived with a poet by the name of Mayrhofer, whose acquaintance he made in 1815, and they used to sit in their room together, one writing the poetry and the other writing to music; and as Mayrhofer finished a poem he would toss it across to Schubert, who read it through, and began to set it to music directly. As a rule, this speed was almost a necessary condition of Schubert’s work in all branches of art. He had no taste for the patient balancing, considering, and rewriting one word again and again, which was a characteristic of Beethoven. The thought possessed him, and must be put to paper, and luckily in the matter of recording what was in his head he was tolerably certain of the effect he wanted. What he wrote expressed what he meant, and that was enough for him. At the same time, though he did not often alter works once they were written with a view to improve them, he greatly improved in successive works; especially in such more arduous kinds of composition as symphony and quartet, because there was in his nature an appreciation of possibilities beyond his efforts in such lines. In song writing, it was difficult to find how to do better than he did even before he was twenty years old.

He was still teaching at the school, and pouring out endless floods of music in the intervals of work, when a new friend sought him out for his genius. The man’s name was Franz von Schober, a wealthy young man who had heard some of his songs, and had been quite impressed with them. He called upon Schubert, and was much impressed by the apparent unfitness of things in a composer of such extraordinary powers devoting so much strength and so many hours daily to the education of small children; and proposed that Schubert should go and live with him, and pursue his art more freely and with less interruption. This generous proposal was accepted, and as Schubert’s temperament was for the most part easy and accommodating, the arrangement answered very well as long as it lasted. Schubert devoted himself to composition and congenial company, and his moderate wants were provided for chiefly at von Schober’s expense. He never troubled himself to think about providing for the future.

Meanwhile, his compositions were not making any money yet. His friends appreciated him fully, but the public knew next to nothing about him, and publishers would not so much as look at his works, or even accept them as a gift. The friends he made had scarcely been in a position to help him before the public, but soon after making von Schober’s acquaintance, he had the good fortune to make friends with a famous singer called Vogl, whose position in the world as a highly cultivated, enthusiastic, and intelligent man, gave him the opportunities of serving any one in whose abilities he believed. Spaun has given an account of their first meeting in Schober’s rooms. Vogl had been persuaded by Schubert’s friends to see him, and arrived one evening. Schubert, with stifling gate and incoherent stammering speech, received his visitor. Vogl, the man of the world, was quite at ease, and taking up a sheet of music paper, which lay close by, began humming the song Schubert had written on it. Then he tried one or two more, and ended by saying, "There is stuff in you, but you squander your fine thoughts instead of developing them." He was not carried away by enthusiasm all at once, and made no promise that he would come back again. But he made the acquaintance of more of the songs, and became more and more impressed with the style of the music; and then he began to go and see Schubert more often, and Schubert in turn began to pay Vogl frequent visits. Vogl gave him excellent advice, and helped him in the choice of poems, discussed and criticized, and--practically more useful than all--he began singing Schubert’s songs in the many houses in Vienna where he was welcome, and sometimes took Schubert with him to accompany him. In this way began the friendship which had a most important effect upon Schubert’s career.

This time period, or close to it, is when some of the few songs which truly reflect Schubert’s deepest expressions were written. Fragments of a diary of 1816 contain the most curious passages, such as aphorisms, exclamations, criticisms, and few biographical details. One passage, which gives a clue to his musical mood, is quite interesting. It was written on June 13th, 1816, and it reads: "This day will haunt me for the rest of my life as a bright, clear, and lovely one. Gently, and as from a distance, the magic tones of Mozart’s music sound in my ears. With what alternative force and tenderness, with what masterly power did Schlesinger’s playing of that music impress it deep, deep in my heart. Thus do sweet impressions, passing into our souls, work beneficently on our inmost being, and no time, no change of circumstances, can obliterate them. In the darkness of life they show a light, a clear, beautiful distance, from which we gather confidence and hope. Oh Mozart! Immortal Mozart! How many, and what countless images of a brighter, better world hast thou stamped on our souls!"

Three days later, Schubert writes: "Today I composed for the first time for money--namely, a cantata for the name-day festival of Herr Professor Watteroth von Dräxler. The honorarium 100 florins, Viennese currency." Then follow a whole string of general remarks which have little to do with one another, and tell nothing of his life except in so far as they illustrate the state of his mind. One example is: "Natural disposition and education determine the bent of man’s heart and understanding. The heart is ruler; the mind should be. Take men as they are, not as they ought to be. Town politeness is a powerful hindrance to men’s integrity in dealing with one another," and so on, whole pages in a single day. The marvel of it is that he could find time to write so much, when he was incessantly producing one composition after another, and at such a pace that it is wonderful how he could even put it all down.

He made an attempt every now and then to get some fixed musical appointment which might bring him a little money regularly. In 1818, he was invited to go with the family of Count Johann Esterházy, to their country-house at Zelesz in Hungary, to make himself generally helpful in musical ways, and to give the daughters music lessons. All the members of the family were musical. The Count and Countess and their two daughters all were singers, and the daughters also played the piano; and they had with them a friend, the Baron von Schönstein, who had a fine voice and sang quite well, and soon entered into Schubert’s songs. The opportunity had in it some great advantages for Schubert; the country was beautiful and healthy, and the company was good, and he had the opportunity to hear Hungarian music in its home land. He was naturally attracted by the style of Hungarian music, as many other great musicians have been; and he wrote down many of the tunes which he heard sung or played by gypsies and servants. Among other results was a very fine Divertissement à la hongroise, which is said to have been founded on some tunes he heard being sung by a kitchen-maid as he and the Baron were coming in from a walk.

But Schubert was not altogether in love with these circumstances. He was much too Viennese, and could not go on without his friends, and in the characteristic ways he used to live with them. He gives his view of things in a letter to his friend Schober: "No one here cares for true art, unless it be now and then the Countess." And after a few reflections on his work and art he sums up his company as follows: "The cook is a pleasant fellow: the ladies’ maid is thirty; the housemaid very pretty, and often pays me a visit; the nurse is somewhat ancient; the butler is my rival; the two grooms get on better with the horses that with us; the Count is a little rough; the Countess proud, but not without a heart; the young ladies are good children. I need not tell you, who know me so well, that with my natural frankness I am good friends with every one."

It is thought that from there he returned to Vienna, and his beloved friends there, around the close of 1818; and it must have been near that time that he went to live with the poet Mayrhofer. The friends were quite close, and called one another by odd nicknames, and enjoyed rough joking and banter, which showed that their animal spirits were very much alive in those days. Schubert was constantly busy producing music, and had his mind so entirely centered upon that occupation, that he is said to have slept on his spectacles, so as to be ready to begin writing the moment he awoke. He used to work until dinner time, after which he liked to go for a walk in the country; and the evening was often divided between some friend’s house, a theater, and finally a Gasthaus, where friends sat smoking and drinking beer or wine, and making merry in the manner of true Viennese until morning. From this it would seem that Schubert’s only regular working time was in the morning, into which he could squeeze five or six hours. But that did not prevent his working at other times when the mood came upon him. He wrote his songs anywhere and at any time when the thoughts came to him, or a poem moved him; and even works on a considerable scale were sometimes written on the spur of the moment in out of the way places. It sounds rather an easy, happy go lucky kind of life; but when he did work he must have worked thoroughly and rapidly, and got the best out of himself.

Owing to Vogl's advocacy, Schubert's name was brought more and more before the world; and in 1820, a comic operetta called Die Zwillingsbriider was performed in one of the Vienna theaters, and a work called the Zauberharfe was also performed later in the same year; so things must have seemed to be growing a little brighter for him. In the next year a more important event occurred, which was the first publication of some of the songs. This actualization was at last brought about owing to some concerts which were given in the house of a family called Sonnleithner, one of whom had been at school with Schubert, and had cherished his friendship, as all men seem to have done when they had once won it. At these concerts many of Schubert's works were performed, and among them some of his finest songs. The audience was so much pleased that everyone began to think a decided effort ought to be made to enable people to possess such treasures.

Schubert's friend Leopold Sonnleithner, and Gymnich, an amateur who sang Franz’s songs admirably, made up their minds to try and find a publisher. They searched in vain. The publishers thought the works too difficult, too uncommon, and that the composer's name was not known enough. Finally, in despair of succeeding any other way, Schubert's friends determined to publish sets of songs on their own account, and get the copies subscribed for among the people who came to the Sonnleithners' concerts, and other friends. A selection was made, and the publications began in April, 1821, and continued for the rest of the year at intervals. The friends did all they could to bring the songs before the public and keep the interest alive, and the result was that sufficient copies were sold to encourage the cautious publishers to go on bringing out more of them at their own expense. This to a certain extent improved Schubert's position as a composer, and the sale of copies even put him for the moment in funds; and this was perhaps the most successful financial result his compositions ever brought him, for in the whole course of his life the publishers could never be induced to give him more than the most absurdly trifling sums, even for his most attractive songs. About the highest price he ever received is said to have been 31l.(less than $15) and for some of his best, quite late in his life, he got 10d.(20¢) a piece.

After two unsuccessful operatic ventures in 1822-23, Schubert began a full-sized romantic opera, in three acts, called Fierabras. The words were put together by a man called Josef Kupelwieser, and were all about contests of Franks and Moors, and kings and knights and noble ladies. Of this Schubert really had some hopes of getting a performance, as the libretto, foolish as it seems, was already accepted by the manager of one of the theaters before he began to write the music. As soon as the words came to him he set to work and wrote at a most remarkable speed. According to the dates given he wrote the whole of the first act, which is 300 pages of manuscript, in seven days, and the whole opera, which filled up more than three times as many pages, was composed and finished in every detail between May and September; though he appears to have been so ill at some time between those two dates that he had to go to a hospital. As soon as it was finished, and before the fate of its performance was decided, he was engaged upon yet another work for the stage, called Rosamunde, the words of which were supplied by that absurd old poetical aspirant, Wilhelmina von Chezy, who wrote the words of Weber's Euryanthe. The story was called Rosamunde, the Princess of Cyprus, and was of the same preposterous romantic texture as Weber's opera, and had the same damaging effect upon the fortunes of the music associated with it. It was not so much of an opera as a play with incidental music to it, and it did not take Schubert long to write his share; but his share was a beautiful contribution, and far too good to be dragged down into oblivion by the foolishness of the words. It was performed in 1823, and the music was well appreciated; but so much depended upon the play that the combination was an inevitable failure, and the music as well as the literary part was laid aside and forgotten. Long after, in 1867, the work was found in the cupboard where it had been left, by Sir George Grove(and the young Arthur Sullivan, who had joined with Grove in the quest of lost Schubert works.), when he was hunting for relics and forgotten beauties of Schubert in Vienna; and much of the music has subsequently been revived in concert halls, and is always received with delight by all lovers of Schubert. In the same year he wrote many more beautiful songs, among which the most celebrated are a set of twenty, called Die Schöne Müllerin, upon which he was engaged at different times in intervals of work on the opera Fierabras, some of the songs being said to have been written while he was ill in the hospital.

Early in the next year the fate of Fierabras also was decided. It was returned to him unperformed, and without any prospect being held out of his ever hearing a note of it. These repeated disappointments seem at last to have seriously depressed him. Several written expressions of his about this time show how he felt them. In a letter to the brother of the friend who had put the poem of Fierabras together he pours out his grief : "I feel myself the most unhappy, the most miserable man on earth. Picture to yourself a man whose health can never be re-established; who, from sheer despair, makes matters worse rather than better; a man whose most brilliant hopes have come to nothing, whose enthusiasm for the beautiful (an inspired feeling at least) threatens to vanish altogether; and then ask yourself if such a condition does not represent a miserable and unhappy man. Your brother's opera was declared impracticable, and no demand of any sort was made for my music. Thus I have composed two operas to no purpose whatever."

Belonging to the early months of the same year there remain several entries in his diary, which tell nothing of his outward life, but express pointedly the deep sorrow and depression of his inner man. Grief and bitterness is in every line, and all the consolation which he gets is that grief is better for a man's soul than happiness, and that his best productions spring from his sorrow, and "those works which are the product of pain seem to please the great world most."

In the same year in which Fierabras was rejected he took another expedition to Zelesz in Hungary, to stay with the Esterhizys, and make music with them as before; and no doubt it did him a great deal of good. A letter to his favorite brother Ferdinand contains allusions to tears which he had shed, and former sadness, but his general frame of mind seems better. But indeed there was enough to make him depressed. The very fact that his friends believed in him so thoroughly, and had looked upon him for so many years as a favorite genius, served to throw the perpetual want of success, and the reiterated rebuffs he received, into darker relief. Few men could have borne such trials so patiently, or with such constant returns of good spirits after occasional fits of gloom; and it was probably the constant outpouring of composition which prevented his dwelling upon his position.

Nothing occurred to mark the course of his life for some time after this beyond the appearance of fresh compositions. The chief events which happened in the following years were two more attempts to gain a definite musical post, such as might supply him with a small but regular income and a definite position among his fellow-artists, but they both came to nothing. Another interesting event was the visit to Beethoven's bedside just before that great master died. Schindler, Beethoven's admirer and biographer, was a great believer in Schubert, and tried to bring them together, but had failed till the end was manifestly approaching. When Beethoven was laid up with his last illness Schindler got some of Schubert's best songs to show him. Beethoven became very much interested in them, and was much surprised when be heard what an enormous quantity of such works Schubert had produced. He is reported by Schindler to have said, "Truly Schubert has the divine fire in him." It is probable that it was owing to these favorable expressions that Schubert was persuaded to visit the great man's bedside. Very few words were said, but they must have been such as -to show Schubert that Beethoven had found out his gifts and appreciated them. He went again later, but at that time Beethoven was not able to speak, and could only make signs with his hand, and within three weeks after he was dead. At the funeral Schubert was one of the torch-bearers. When he and two of his friends were returning they stopped at a Gasthaus, and Schubert and his friends each drank one glass of wine to the memory of the great man departed, and a second to the one of the three who should first follow him. Schubert little thought then how short his own time was destined to be.

About this time he began to receive communications from publishers with a view to bringing out more of his music, and also some encouraging proposals to write work specially for sundry societies; and in the same year he was elected a member of the representative body of the Musical Society of Vienna, which he regarded as a pleasant He went on with composition with even greater devotion than ever, and by the spring of 1828 had finished his greatest symphony, the only one which was destined to be thoroughly characteristic of him and also complete; and other instrumental works, such as sonatas, and a very fine quintet for strings, a cantata called Miriam's War Song, and numbers of songs, succeeded one another rapidly. He seemed to think it was time to give less attention to songs and more to works on a larger scale, as he said to a friend that, "he hoped to hear no more about songs, but to devote himself to opera and symphony."