Part 3

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?

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.

The “Rosamunde” Overture

In 1823, the same year in which Schubert brought to paper the operas _Die Verschworenen_ and _Fierrabras_ he wrote for a romantic play called _Rosamunde_, _Princess of Cyprus_, by the half-mad poetess Helmine von Chezy, a number of vocal and instrumental pieces which are perhaps the best loved samples of theatre music he ever composed. The play itself was a sorry failure, had exactly two performances (though Schubert gallantly assured the unfortunate librettist that he considered her work “excellent”) and the book was lost. The Overture we call _Rosamunde_ today and which had been written originally for _The Magic Harp_ was never used to preface the work whose name it has borne for generations—was, in fact, not entitled _Rosamunde_ till later. The one with which Schubert had prefaced Helmine von Chezy’s drama was the introduction he had used for _Alfonso und Estrella_. There are lovely and striking things in the _Rosamunde_ score—a soprano romanza, an ensemble for spirits and two other choruses as well as some ballet music and various entr’actes. The third interlude brings us that deathless melody which seems to have haunted Schubert’s imagination and reappears in the slow movement of the A minor Quartet and the B flat Impromptu for piano.

The _Rosamunde_ score disappeared from view for more than forty years and the tale of its recovery belongs to the exciting legends of music. Like most legends even this one needs to be qualified. The story usually goes that the Englishmen, George Grove and Arthur Sullivan, in 1867 came upon the manuscript in a dusty cupboard at the Viennese home of Dr. Eduard Schneider, husband of Schubert’s sister, Therese. What the two British explorers found in that famous closet were the complete orchestral and vocal parts of the score, which made clear the correct sequence of the pieces and supplied certain accompaniments which had been missing. But Grove himself records that “besides the entr’actes in B minor and B flat and the ballet numbers 2 and 9, _which we had already acquired in_ _1866_, we had found at Mr. Spina’s (the publisher) an entr’acte after the second act and a Shepherd’s Melody for clarinets, bassoons and horns.... But we still required the total number of pieces and their sequence in the drama....”

For all his difficulties and privations Schubert’s health had been, up to 1823, perhaps the least of his worries. But early in that year he had been ailing and soon his illness took a serious turn. Confined to his lodgings at first he was presently taken to the General Hospital. He became darkly despondent and wrote to his friend, Leopold Kupelwieser, a mournful letter in which he alluded to himself as “a man whose health can never be right again ... whose fairest hopes have come to nothing ... who wishes when he goes to sleep never more to awaken and who joyless and friendless passes his days.” A little later he sets down in his diary the bitter reflection: “There is none who understands the pain of another and none his joy.” Nor is this by any means his only pessimistic entry.

The exact nature of Schubert’s malady has never been definitely established, even by modern medical authorities who have studied the case. We know that his hair fell out and that till it grew in again he had to wear a wig. Some have hinted at “irregularities” of one sort or another. At different times he complained of “headaches, vertigo and high blood pressure.” His condition was to improve greatly in the course of time but he was never again wholly well.

The melancholy of Schubert was surely not lessened by his dealings with publishers, who took the most despicable advantage of his woeful inexperience in business affairs. Diabelli once persuaded him to sign over for a mere 800 Gulden _all_ his rights in a set of works. The publisher (and later his successor) made 27,000 Gulden on the _Wanderer Fantasie_ (for piano) alone. Schubert got exactly 20 (about $10)! Another Viennese firm went so far as to ask him to sell them his compositions at the most favorable starvation rate “paid a beginner,” while publishers in Germany were, if anything, even worse! Yet when Schubert had a few dollars in his pocket he thought nothing of spending a part of it on tickets for himself and his friend Bauernfeld for a concert by Paganini, whose spectacular violin playing excited Schubert quite as much as it did the rest of Vienna.

In spite of illness and discouragement many of his works at this time rank among his very greatest. There are, first of all, the 23 songs of the _Schöne Müllerin_ cycle—the unhappy story of the love of a youth for a miller’s daughter who jilts him for a green-clad hunter—containing such lyrics as _Wohin_ and _Ungeduld_, which have virtually become folksongs; the piano sonata, Op. 143; the fabulous Octet, written for an amateur clarinetist, Count Troyer (and after a few hearings put away and forgotten till 1861); and that sweetest and most tender of Schubert’s chamber music works, the A minor Quartet, with its lovely _Rosamunde_ melody, the indescribable lilt of its minuet and the Slavic and Hungarian influences in its finale.

He was to experience more of these influences the summer of 1824, for at that time he went once again to the Esterházys in Zseliz. The country air and the quiet life of the place in addition to regular meals and comfortable quarters exercised a recuperative effect. Moreover, the Countess Caroline was now a sightly young lady of seventeen. Possibly Schubert was not indifferent to her charms. But his letters to his father and his brother Ferdinand make it clear that he was homesick and often decidedly blue. Still, he wrote some admirable music at Zseliz—the _Divertissement à l’Hongroise_, the stunning _Grand Duo_ for four hands, the sonata for arpeggione and piano; and thoughts of a great symphony, more imposing than any he had composed so far, began to occupy his mind. He had heard, also, that Beethoven intended to give a concert at which his Ninth Symphony would be produced. And he wrote to Kupelwieser: “If God wills, I am thinking next year of giving a similar concert!”

In May, 1825, Vogl invited Schubert to accompany him on an outing which proved to be the longest trip he was ever to take. Franz brought with him a number of compositions, finished and unfinished, among them settings of songs from Sir Walter Scott’s _The Lady of the Lake_, of which the _Ave Maria_ is one of the best loved things he ever wrote. The friends revisited the haunts of their previous journey, but this time Vogl took Schubert further—to Gmunden, on the Traunsee in the Salzkammergut; to Salzburg; then southward as far as Bad Gastein. All along the way there was no end of music making, charming new acquaintances, hospitable folk who threatened to kill the travellers with kindness. Schubert cut up all manner of musical capers on occasion (one of his favorite pranks was to give a performance of _Der Erlkönig_ on a comb covered with paper!). He was careful not to forget his parents. In an affectionate letter to his father he asks, chaffingly, if his brother, Ferdinand, “has not been ill seventy-seven times again” and surmises that he has surely imagined at least nine times that he was going to die. “As if death were the worst thing that could befall one!”, he suddenly exclaims, growing serious; “could Ferdinand only look on these divine lakes and mountains which threaten to crush and overwhelm us he would no longer love this puny human life but deem it a great happiness to be restored for a new life to the inscrutable forces of the earth”! It is a question how pleased Father Schubert was with this pantheistic declaration of his son’s; when Franz was in Zseliz, Ferdinand had warned him against discussing religious matters when writing to his parent.

Curiously enough, Schubert passed through Salzburg without any allusion to his idol, Mozart. In Gastein he found time to complete the great piano sonata in D and to write several songs, one of them a setting of Ladislaus Pyrker’s _Die Allmacht_—a grandiose musical duplication of that statement of faith he had fearlessly written his father. At this health resort, furthermore, Schubert is supposed to have completed that famous _Gastein Symphony_ of which nobody has ever been able to find a trace. All manner of theories have been advanced with respect to this mysterious work. Some of Schubert’s intimates have insisted that the composer worked on it in the summer of 1825 and intended it for a benefit concert by the Vienna Society of the Friends of Music. Others charge the Society with negligence resulting in the loss of the score, while still other investigators have imagined that the _Grand Duo_, composed a year earlier, might be an unorchestrated version of the missing score; or else that Schubert had merely contemplated a revision of the early Sixth Symphony, with which he had never been satisfied. Whether the hypothetical _Gastein_ or the subsequent C major of 1828 represents the “great symphony” to which Schubert aspired we have no way of knowing.

In 1826 a conductor’s post had become free and although Schubert had not long before turned down an organ position offered him (probably because he did not like the idea that his freedom might be curtailed) he did apply for this conductorship, attracted by the moderate salary it promised. It was not Schubert who got it but the popular mediocrity, Josef Weigl. How little Schubert harbored jealousy is clear from his satisfaction that the job had gone to “so worthy a man as Weigl.” Then a vacancy occurred at the Kärntnertor Theatre. The candidate for a minor conductor’s post had to submit a specially composed dramatic air for the singer, Nanette Schechner, and of course Schubert did so. But the Schechner, we are told, demanded changes in the music and Schubert peremptorily refused to make them. In spite of passionate entreaties and a spectacular fainting fit by the soprano, the composer pocketed his score and walked off coldly announcing: “I will change nothing.” So things remained about as they were. True, the Friends of Music in 1825 had permitted him to substitute for a viola player at some of their concerts—after first rejecting his plea to do so on the ground that he “made a living of music” and that professionals were ineligible! Thus when in the summer of 1826 he would have liked to go once more to Linz there was no money for him to go anywhere. He had to content himself with the suburb of Währing and to aggravate matters it rained for a month.

All the same, 1826 was a year of significant works. In June Schubert composed within ten days his last string quartet, the vast and almost orchestrally colored one in G major. During the preceding winter he had written what is undoubtedly the most familiar of his quartets, the D minor, the slow movement of which consists of those variations on his song _Death and the Maiden_ which are among the supreme variations of musical literature. Further, there were the melodically blooming B flat Trio for piano, violin and cello, the lovely G major piano sonata, the “Rondo Brilliant,” for violin and piano and numerous songs, among them the two Shakespearean settings _Hark, hark, the Lark_ and _Who is Sylvia?_ Almost everybody who has ever interested himself in Schubert is familiar with the fable about the origin of _Hark, hark, the Lark_—how one day Schubert picked up a volume of Shakespeare in a Währing beer garden and how, after skimming through _Cymbeline_, he suddenly exclaimed: “A lovely melody has come into my head—if only I had some music paper!”; whereupon a friend drew some staves on the back of a bill of fare and the song was instantly written. Unfortunately for legend, the song was written originally _not_ on a bill of fare but in a small note book including a number of other compositions—one of them on the reverse side of the very page containing _Hark, hark, the Lark_. What seems a likelier story is that Schubert wrote it in Schwind’s room, while the latter was trying to draw his picture.

March, 1827, was the date of Beethoven’s death. Schubert was one of the torchbearers at the funeral. Back from the Währing cemetery he went with some friends to a coffee house in the “Inner Town.” The gathering was in a solemn yet exalted mood. Schubert lifted his glass and drank a toast “To him we have just buried,” then another “To him who will be next.” Did that strange clairvoyance in which Michael Vogl once said he composed his music show him in mystic vision that his own sands had just twenty months more to run?

But before this he still had a little worldly journey to make—and a pleasant one. Karl Pachler, a cultured and musical lawyer, and his wife, Marie Leopoldine Koschak, an accomplished pianist whom Beethoven admired, invited Schubert to visit their home in Graz. The honored guest was to have been Beethoven but shortly after his passing Marie Koschak expressed a desire to know Schubert, whose importance she fully realized. So accompanied by his friend Jenger (who some years earlier had brought him his notice of membership in the Styrian Musical Association) he went in September, 1827, to Graz. In the home of the Pachlers, Schubert passed a happy, carefree, inspiring time. There was no end of sociability, music, picnics, excursions. He was even introduced to a local celebrity named Franz Schubert, who had a reputation as a folksong singer and who rendered Styrian folk melodies for his Viennese namesake. The Music Society gave a concert in honor of its visiting member, who also went to the theatre with Anselm Hüttenbrenner to hear an early opera of Meyerbeer’s—though after the first act he protested: “I can’t stand it any longer, let’s get out into the air.” He played his own _Alfonso und Estrella_ to an operatic conductor, who made wry faces over its “difficulties” so that Schubert ended by leaving the score with Pachler, who kept it till 1841. Several songs were composed at Graz, also a quantity of waltzes and galops. Franz left Graz promising to come back another year—which was never to dawn.

It is probably unlikely that, at the gathering of the Schubertians on New Year’s Eve, Schubert realized as poignantly as some may imagine that he was standing on the threshold of his last year on earth. But the winter was hard, there was little or no money and it seems likely that the good stepmother up in the Rossau schoolhouse had to help out with occasional pennies from the household stocking. To be sure, a little earlier the Friends of Music had elected Schubert a member of the Representative Body of the Society and the composer felt much honored. But such “honor” would not buy a meal. Even when half starved Schubert contrived to work. Between January and November, 1828, he turned out some of the most incomparable songs he ever composed (yes, even though planning to give up such trifling matters as _Lieder_!) issued posthumously under the collective title _Schwanengesang_; the _Great Symphony_ in C major “of the heavenly length” (the score is dated March, 1828); a cantata, the three wonderful piano sonatas in A, C minor and B flat; that towering monument of chamber music, the C major String Quintet; the Mass in E flat (he had written a so-called _Missa Solemnis_ in A flat as far back as 1820 besides a quantity of smaller masses) and much else. He devoted himself to the E flat Mass with such intensity that Josef Hüttenbrenner described him as “living in his Mass.” The supreme Lieder—one is tempted to say the most grandiose and prophetic of all the odd 600 he wrote—are the settings of six poems from Heinrich Heine’s _Buch der Lieder_, which had just come to his notice. They are _Am Meer_, _Der Doppelgänger_, _Die Stadt_, _Der Atlas_ and _Ihr Bild_, anticipations of the whole song technic of the nineteenth century!