William Henry Hadow

“ Mozart said of him, “He is the father, we are the children”; the best part of Haydn’s training was derived from a study of his work; Beethoven expressed for his genius the most cordial admiration and regard. This position he owes mainly to his clavier sonatas, which mark an important epoch in the history of musical form. Lucid in style, delicate and tender in expression, they are even more notable for the freedom and variety of their structural design ”

“ Four more of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons grew to manhood and became musicians. The eldest of them, Wilhelm Friedermann Bach (1710–1784) was by common repute the most gifted; a famous organist, a famous improvisor and a complete master of counterpoint. But, unlike the rest of the family, he was a man of idle and dissolute habits, whose career was little more than a series of wasted opportunities. Educated at Leipzig, he was appointed in 1733 organist of the Sophienkirche at Dresden, and in 1747 became musical director of the Liebfrauenkirche at Halle. ”

“ It is unfair to call them imitative, but at the time when he wrote them he was saturated with Mozart, and early Beethoven, and he spoke what was in his mind with a boy’s frankness. The Andante of the Tragic Symphony (No. 4) strikes a more distinctive note, but the fifth is but a charming adaptation of a past idiom, and the sixth, on which Schubert himself placed little value, shows hardly any appreciable advance. It is a very different matter when we come to the later works. ”

“ Gahy, an excellent pianist, played his sonatas and fantasias; the Sonnleithners, a rich burgher family whose eldest son had been at the Convict, gave him free access to their home, and organized in his honour musical parties which soon assumed the name of Schubertiaden. The material needs of life were supplied without much difficulty. No doubt Schubert was entirely penniless, for he had given up teaching, he could earn nothing by public performance, and, as yet, no publisher would take his music at a gift ”

“ A pianoforte fantasia, thirty-two close-written pages, is dated April 8–May 1, 1810: then followed, in 1811, three long vocal pieces written upon a plan which Zumsteeg had popularized, together with a “quintet-overture,” a string quartet, a second pianoforte fantasia and a number of songs. His essay in chamber-music is noticeable, since we learn that at the time a regular quartet-party was established at his home “on Sundays and holidays,” in which his two brothers played the violin, his father the 'cello and Franz himself the viola. ”

“ For twenty years he was the most popular musician in England, his dramatic works, produced at the King’s theatre, were received with great cordiality, he was appointed music-master to the queen, and his concerts, given in partnership with Abel at the Hanover Square rooms, soon became the most fashionable of public entertainments. ”

“ In his Masses, for instance, he seems to chafe at the contrapuntal numbers and pours out his whole soul on those which he found suitable for lyrical treatment. In his symphonies the lyric and elegiac passages are usually the best, and the most beautiful of them all is, throughout its two movements, lyric in character. ”

“ Despite his preoccupation with the stage and later with his official duties he found time during these years for a good deal of miscellaneous composition. The Mass in Ab was completed and the exquisite “Unfinished Symphony” begun in 1822. The Müllerlieder, and several other of his best songs, were written in 1825; to 1824, beside the works mentioned above, belong the variations on Trockne Blumen and the two string quartets in E and Eb. There is also a sonata, for piano and “Arpeggione,” an interesting attempt to encourage a cumbersome and now obsolete instrument. ”

“ In 1738 he took his degree, but at once abandoned all prospects of a legal career and determined to devote himself to music. A few months later he obtained an appointment in the service of the crown prince of Prussia, on whose accession in 1740 he became a member of the royal household. He was by this time one of the first clavier-players in Europe, and his compositions, which date from 1731, included about thirty sonatas and concerted pieces for his favourite instrument. ”

“ Opera was represented by no less than five works, of which three were completed — Der Vierjährige Posten, Fernando and Claudine von Villabella — and two, Adrast and Die beiden Freunde von Salamanca, apparently left unfinished. Besides these the list includes a string quartet in G minor, four sonatas and several smaller compositions for piano, and, by way of climax, 146 songs, some of which are of considerable length, and of which eight are dated Oct. 15, and seven Oct. 19. “Here,” we may say with Dryden, “is God's plenty.” ”

“ Of these works the two former are written on a scale which would make their performances exceedingly difficult (Fierrabras, for instance, contains over 1000 pages of manuscript score) , but Die Verschworenen is a bright attractive comedy, and Rosamunde contains some of the most charming music that Schubert ever composed. In 1822 he made the acquaintance both of Weber and of Beethoven, but little came of it in either case, though Beethoven cordially acknowledged his genius. Von Schober was away from Vienna; new friends appeared of a less desirable character ”