Part 2
A word about Therese Grob, who more or less properly figures in Schubert’s story as his first love. Her family was refined and musical and Franz Peter, who was a visitor at the Grob household, may have found there some of the same sympathy and understanding the young Beethoven did in the home of the von Breunings. Certainly, he composed a number of things for Therese and her brother, Heinrich. His friend, Holzapfel, declares that Therese was “no beauty, but shapely, rather plump, with a fresh round little face of a child.” In after years Schubert told Anselm Hüttenbrenner that he had loved her “very deeply.” She was not pretty, he said, and was pock-marked but “good to the heart.” He had “hoped to marry her” but could find no position which would insure him the means to support a wife. Her mother having decided it was no use to wait for a penniless composer to become a somebody made her take a well-to-do baker instead. Poor Schubert told his friend this had greatly pained him and that he “loved her still,” but added philosophically “as a matter of fact, she was not destined for me.” Did Schubert, we may ask, really contemplate marriage? If he did how are we to understand an entry he made in his diary in 1816: “Marriage is a terrifying thought to a free man...”? Actually, Schubert’s life was devoid of what might be described as urgent affairs of the heart—outwardly, at least. One will seek vainly in his case for the periodic transports of a Beethoven or even the passing dalliances of a Mozart. Friendships rather than passionate ardors were Schubert’s specialties—and his friendships with women were quite as sincere as with men and had the same basis of sentimental conviviality. Hüttenbrenner had small reason to chaff his companion (as he once did) for being “so cold and dry in society toward the fair sex.” Certainly, the delightful Fröhlich sisters (whom we shall meet shortly) did not find him “dry.” It is so easy to mistake shyness for coldness—and if Schubert was anything he was diffident, sometimes tragically so!
Opera had exercised a strong attraction on Franz Peter even while he was a student at the Konvikt. He used to accompany Spaun to the Kärntnertor Theatre whenever holidays or the state of Spaun’s purse permitted. The friends sat in the top gallery and heard operas like Weigl’s _Schweizerfamilie_, Spontini’s _Vestale_, Cherubini’s _Medea_, Boieldieu’s _Jean de Paris_ and Gluck’s _Iphigenia in Tauris_. Among the great singers Schubert heard in this way were Pauline Milder and Johann Michael Vogl. Both artists were soon to become his friends—Vogl, indeed, the high priest of his songs.
What wonder, then, that Schubert planned an opera of his own? In May, 1814, while at the St. Anna School, he completed a “natural magic opera” in three acts called _Des Teufels Lustschloss_ (“The Devil’s Pleasure Palace”). The libretto was by a popular dramatist of the time, August Kotzebue, who could hardly have attached much importance to it or he would never have permitted an unknown beginner to compose it. The piece was the first of a pageant of ugly ducklings, an operatic progeny of sorrow destined to span Schubert’s life from his schooldays to his grave. If we add up his works for the stage—completed, fragmentary, partly sketched or lost—in less than a decade and a half we shall arrive at the astonishing total of eighteen. And today there is almost nothing to show for all this heartbreaking industry because an ancient (and largely untested) tradition calls Schubert’s operas “undramatic” and otherwise “poor theatre.” Possibly they are. But how many now living can speak of a Schubert opera from actual experience?
_Des Teufels Lustschloss_ was never performed in Schubert’s Vienna, though Prague was once on the point of staging it. The plot has to do with the adventures of an impecunious Count Oswald who, on the way to his tumbled-down castle with his wife, stops at a wayside inn. There the peasantry of the neighborhood entreats the knight to free a nearby ruin from ghosts and other spooky visitants. He consents and, together with his squire (a kind of Sancho Panza), penetrates the infested premises. The spectres take him captive and subject him to grisly tests—the worst of which is a command to marry a “ghostly” but extremely substantial Amazon who suddenly appears on the scene. In despair Oswald springs into the abyss and lands—in the arms of his wife! Her wealthy uncle, it transpires, being displeased with his niece’s marriage to the penniless Count has “arranged” the whole ordeal as a test of Oswald’s fidelity, with the help of his gardener’s buxom daughter—the “Amazon”—and “machines of all kinds brought at considerable expense from foreign parts.”
It should be remembered, however, that such extravagances were habitual ingredients of innumerable “magic” plays and comedies which for generations, indeed for centuries, formed the stock-in-trade of the Viennese suburban theatre and the most sublimated outgrowth of which was Mozart’s _Magic Flute_. Moreover, not the effect of such a wild tale in the _reading_ but in _performance on the stage, in a theatre, before an audience_ is the proof of the pudding. The same with the text—a specimen of the poetry of _Des Teufels Lustschloss_ is the ensuing of Count Oswald’s squire:
_“I’m laughing, I’m crying, I’m crying, I’m laughing,_ _I’m laughing, ha, ha, ha,_ _I’m laughing, hi, hi, hi,_ _I’m laughing, ho, ho, ho,_ _I’m laughing, hu, hu, hu”..._
The test of such a thing is not the verbiage but the composer’s treatment of it. There is no question here of a masterpiece any more than there is in the mass, or indeed, in the various orchestral or chamber works, he had produced thus far. It was different, however, with the song (_Lied_) which he was turning out in effortless abundance. He had made settings among other things of poems by Schiller, Fouqué, Mattheson (_Adelaide_, for one, though smoother, more lyrical and less varied in its mood than Beethoven’s famous song). Then, on October 19, 1814—“the birthday of the German Lied” it has been called—there comes like a bolt from the blue the epoch-making _Gretchen am Spinnrade_, from Goethe’s _Faust_. It is a simple, plaintive melody above a murmuring spinning wheel figure and a pulsing rhythmic throb, but nevertheless a marvel of jointless form and a miracle of psychology, the emotional experience of ages concentrated into one hundred bars of music of such infinite art and uncanny perfection that it almost defies analysis.
As if a gigantic dam had burst, a torrent of immortal mastersongs now begins to pour forth. Not everything, to be sure, either now or later is a deathless creation but the number of those that are will probably remain baffling to the end of time. Schubert frequently made two, three or more settings of one and the same text, differing in greater or lesser degree from the earlier one though not invariably better than the preceding version. Of the more than six hundred Lieder Schubert composed almost a third are such resettings. It was nothing unusual for him to turn out four, five, six songs a day. “When I finish one I begin another,” was his carefree way of describing the incredible process. Sometimes he even forgot which songs were his own. “I say, that’s not a bad one; who wrote it?” he once asked on hearing something he had composed only a few days before. He was careless, too, about what became of some of his manuscripts and there is no telling how much posterity may have lost as a result. Once he came near ruining a page on which he had written his song _Die Forelle_ by pouring ink instead of sand over the wet writing; being sleepy, he did not bother to notice which receptacle he had picked up.
Der Erlkönig
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!
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.
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.