Schubert

Julian Horton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781472439376
• eBook ISBN: 9781351549967
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The collection of essays in this volume offer an overview of Schubertian reception, interpretation and analysis. Part I surveys the issue of Schubert's alterity concentrating on his history and biography. Following on from the overarching dualities of Schubert explored in the first section, Part II focuses on interpretative strategies and hermeneutic positions. Part III assesses the diversity of theoretical approaches concerning Schubert's handling of harmony and tonality whereas the last two parts address the reception of his instrumental music and song. This volume highlights the complexity and diversity of Schubertian scholarship as well as the overarching concerns raised by discrete fields of research in this area.

Part I
History and Biography

[1]

“Poor Schubert”: images and legends of the composer

Christopher H. Gibbs

“Poor Schubert.” Ever since his death on November 19, 1828, this expression appears over and over again in the writings of Schubert’s friends, critics, and biographers.¹ One reason, of course, is that he died so young, at the age of thirty-one. More prosaically, the adjective refers to the composer’s precarious financial state throughout his life, although he was far from the destitute artist later sentimentalized in novels, operettas, and movies. The tag also conveys the sense that Schubert was neglected, that his gifts went largely unrecognized.

How and why did these recurring images of Schubert come about? Their outlines are remarkably consistent, from initial portrayals found in his friends’ reminiscences, to the first entries in German encyclopedias of the 1830s, to accounts in even the Encyclopaedia Britannica at the turn of the century and in college textbooks today.

One can easily pick out a few more brush strokes in the established portrait: Schubert is viewed as a natural and naïve genius who wrote incomparable songs - the Liederfürst (“Prince of Songs”). And then there are his festive friends in the background. Even if the public at large ignored him, at least he enjoyed the loyal support of his circle. Always the best man, never the groom, Schubert is seen as unlucky in love. Early death meant that his artistic mission was left unfinished. Even with so many miserable circumstances, Schubert’s music laughs through its tears, and the maudlin conflation of his life and works in myriad biographies and fictional treatments makes readers past and present weep. Poor Schubert.

Rather than rehearse once more the narrative of Schubert’s life, this chapter seeks to chart its contours in relation to pervasive images and legends that adhere to that life. The discussion does not pretend to present the “true” man and composer, but rather seeks to examine critically some of the most persistent legends, and if not to reject them all out of hand, then at least to question their appeal and resiliency. After identifying the principal verbal, visual, and musical sources that inform images of Schubert, and then touching on some of the outstanding features and events of his life, the chapter will explore some of the fundamental tropes of his mythology.

“Our Schubert”: sources of mythmaking

There is an intriguing psychological phenomenon whereby every listener constructs his or her own image of the composer. (In the language of psychoanalysis one might even refer to this process as something like the “transference” with the composer.) The affectionate expression “our Schubert,” commonly used by Schubert’s family and friends, captures a possessiveness often directed toward beloved figures, although in Schubert’s case the proprietary qualities are especially pronounced.² The writer Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, for example, described meeting Schubert for the first time and registered his disappointment at the composer’s ordinariness: Schubert “is absolutely not different from any other Viennese; he speaks Viennese, like every Viennese he has fine linen, a clean coat, a shiny hat and in his face, in his whole bearing, nothing that resembles my Schubert” (SMF 285; cf. 328). This remark shows that even Schubert’s contemporaries sometimes conceived of him in ways at odds with “reality,” and it points as well to the problematic nature of the factual sources for critical biography. Whom does one trust? Where does our knowledge of Schubert come from, and how should the evidence be weighed and balanced?

Information derives not only from written documents. To start with, posterity cares about Schubert because of the music he created, and that music powerfully informs images of its creator. One tries to envision what kind of artist would compose such pieces. As with Beethoven’s image - or Bach’s, Mozart’s, or Wagner’s - the art colors the perception of the man. Eduard Bauernfeld wrote in his memorial tribute to Schubert in 1829: “So far as it is possible to draw conclusions as to a man’s character and mind from his artistic products, those will not go astray who judge Schubert from his songs to have been a man full of affection and goodness of heart” (SMF 31).

Visual representations complement Schubert’s music by supplying concrete representations of its creator and his milieu. Some portraits of the composer were executed by artists who knew him personally,³ and many later illustrations are based on Wilhelm August Rieder’s famous watercolor, considered to be “the most like him” by Schubert’s friends.⁴ Schubert’s affectionate nickname “Schwammerl” (often translated “Tubby,” literally “little mushroom”) is reinforced by the famous caricature of the diminutive composer waddling behind the towering singer Johann Michael Vogl.⁵

However powerfully music and illustrations underlie perceptions, verbal documents provide the prime information about the narrative of Schubert’s life and the disposition of his character. Schubert’s own writings sound initial themes that were later varied by family and friends. The first to apply the word “poor” was Schubert himself. To end his earliest surviving letter, written while away at school in 1812, the fifteen-year-old student signed: “your loving, poor, hopeful and again poor brother Franz” (SDB 28). Schubert’s disarmingly candid letters play an essential role in defining his image, partly because of their tone, and also because of the rarity of authentic utterances. For, in contrast to the abundant letters, journals, memoirs, criticism, essays, and the like by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and many other composers, fewer than a hundred Schubert letters survive, supplemented by a few pages of diary entries from 1816 and some fragments from 1824.⁶ Those letters written during particularly troubled times, or the famous final communication to Franz von Schober just one week before Schubert died, therefore gain additional significance.

If Schubert’s own words are rare, those of his family and friends are extensive and have proved indispensable for biographers. The “fun-loving friends,” so familiar from fictional depictions, helped to establish a pattern of assessing Schubert while he was alive, and then sought to perpetuate certain views of him after his death. While the intimacy of his collaborators and champions resulted in lively, detailed accounts, many chroniclers had an interest in presenting a favorable picture of their roles. Some reports date from Schubert’s lifetime, others came in memorial tributes immediately following his death, but most appeared many decades later and must be viewed especially critically. We may never know whether Erlkonig was written in a few hours one afternoon, as Josef von Spaun reports and posterity repeats (SMF 131), but this story went a long way toward establishing Schubert as a composer, like Mozart, who took divine dictation rather than as one, like Beethoven, who continually struggled over compositional problems.

As Spaun’s story demonstrates,’ reminiscences not only purport to impart facts about Schubert’s life, but also contain anecdotes that enliven simple facts. How much more effective - and memorable - is telling a story of Schubert writing his most famous song in a matter of hours than dispassionately reporting that he composed quickly.⁷ The core Schubert stories remain all too familiar: his shyness made him avoid his hero Beethoven (SMF 66, 75, 325, 366); he wrote songs so spontaneously, on the back of menus and the like, that he would later not even recognize them (SDB 539; SMF 214, 217, 296, 302); he fell in love with Therese Grob, but she married a wealthier man (SMF 182). Repeated so often, these tales crystallize Schubert’s personality by entering into a canon of biographical representations. History progresses through anecdote to become legend.

Some Schubert legends, of course, are true; ingredients of many others rest on solid documentation. Not only accuracy, but also interpretation are at issue. That Schubert enjoyed especially rich and significant friendships, for example, is not in doubt. More pertinent is how such facts affect posterity’s views. Furthermore, it would be a mistake to discount the “aesthetic truth” of certain fictions.⁸ A new anecdote about the composer often arises from, and therefore reflects, the need of a given time to create the legend in the first place. Why, for example, did it take some thirty years before anyone thought to write down the quite interesting news that Schubert visited the dying Beethoven? Probably because the incident never happened.⁹ But history needed such a story by mid century. We could view this invented meeting near death as an anecdotal corollary to the exhumation of Beethoven and Schubert some decades later, and their reburial together in the “Grove of Honor” at Vienna’s Central Cemetery. As Schubert’s image, reputation, and music became increasingly cast in relation and opposition to Beethoven’s, this reception found its poetic expression in story and legend, and ultimately in a physical transferral of their bodies in a solemn ceremony.¹⁰

Schubert’s unknown years, first fame, and illness

Unlike the careers of famous prodigies whose activities proved sufficiently interesting to warrant early testimony - most notably the phenomenon of the Wunderkind Mozart - the unfolding of Schubert’s less exceptional early career is not particularly well documented. He probably began composition in 1810, at the age of thirteen. The inception of Schubert’s public career might be variously dated from the first performance of a significant composition (the Mass in F [D105] in October 1814), the mention of his name in the press (1817; SDB 68–69), or the appearance of a work in print (Erlafsee [D586] in 1818).¹¹ More decisively, it started with a highly acclaimed performance of Erlkönig in 1821 and the publication of the song as Op. 1 shortly thereafter. Until this point, Schubert’s activities, opportunities, and reputation - although not his actual compositions - are commensurate more with a fine talent than an exceptional genius, and attracted minimal public notice.

Young Schubert had benefited from the best musical training available in Vienna after winning a position in the choir of the Imperial Court Chapel, whose ten choristers were provided with free education at the prestigious Stadtkonvikt. Report cards and testimonials attest to Schubert’s general musical abilities and skill as a performer: “He shows so excellent a talent for the art of music” (SDB 18); but his com...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• PART I HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY
• PART II RECEPTION AND INTERPRETATION
• PART III HARMONY AND TONALITY
• PART IV INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC
• PART V SONG
• Name Index