Franz Schubert

“ WITTECZEK, Joseph von, imperial councillor in Vienna, died about 1859, became acquainted with Franz Schubert through Spaun. [1] Impressed by the great musical genius of the inspired youth he endeavoured to collect all Schubert's compositions, manuscript or printed, with extracts from newspapers and biographical notices, concerning him, and also drew up several thematic lists of his vocal and instrumental music, etc. ”

“ So you see that almost everything made Franz Schubert think of music. He wrote many, many songs and much other music, and although it is almost a hundred years since he died, his name and his works will live as long as men love melody. The greatest singers in the world use his songs over and over because rich and poor alike love them, and whenever singers want to be very sure of pleasing they sing some of the songs of him who was once a boy in old Vienna, Franz Schubert. ”

“ Franz's father was a schoolmaster, and so was Franz himself for three years.
He taught the little children of Vienna their A-B-C's, and how to do sums. Of course, he helped them to learn to read.
Sometimes we find it quite hard to take one piano lesson or violin lesson a week.
But from the time when Franz Schubert was a very little boy he had lessons every week for violin, voice, and piano. ”

“ It was the pure longing of the true musician to make mankind at large partakers of his heavenly gift. Let us remember this of Franz Schubert, because it is absolutely true of him, and because it helps us to understand his true nature.
Schubert's determination was put to a severe test on leaving the Convict, for he had hardly returned home ere the dread summons for enlistment was placed in his hands. The Continental law of conscription admits of no distinction such as that which Nature confers upon an individual by the gift of genius ”

“ Beside this there is a marble tablet fastened above the doorway, which says that Franz Schubert was born in this house. At the right of his name is placed a lyre crowned with a star, and at the left a laurel wreath within which is placed the date, January 31, 1797.
This then was the birthplace of the "most poetical composer who ever lived," as Liszt said of him; the man who created over six hundred songs, eight symphonies, operas, masses, chamber works and much beautiful piano music, and yet only lived to be thirty-one. It is almost unbelievable. ”

“ Many gifted composers have put their most felicitous fancies into this fireside [111] form, but although some have sung more impassionedly, and others have placed their melodies in richer settings, no one has been so uniformly adequate as Franz Schubert. Schumann, Franz, and Jensen always please, and they often excite our wonder by the beauty and adaptability of their song conceptions, but Schubert's songs do not express, they embody, moods and sentiments. His flow of melody was so fresh and strong that in instrumental compositions it often carried him to uncommon length. ”

“ Our pianists scarcely realise what a glorious treasure they have in Schubert's pianoforte compositions. Most pianists play them over en passant, notice here and there repetitions, lengthinesses, apparent carelessnesses, and then lay them aside. It is true that Schubert himself is somewhat to blame for the very unsatisfactory manner in which his admirable piano-forte pieces are treated. He was too immoderately productive, wrote incessantly, mixing insignificant with important things, grand things with mediocre work, paid no heed to criticism, and always soared on his wings. ”

“ Perhaps none of the great composers deserve our pity more than Franz Schubert. Poor as the legendary church mouse, obliged to eke out a scanty living in the uncongenial and poorly paid occupation of teaching school, he was unknown by musicians and not understood by publishers. ”

“ Well, Franz Schubert also lived for a time with the Esterhazy family. He was piano teacher to the children of Count Johann. Franz was then twenty-one years old.
In what year was he twenty-one?
A good friend of Schubert's was Michael Vogl. He was a famous singer, who did all he could to make Schubert's songs known.
They took little vacation trips together and were good companions. When you read more about this singer's friendship for Franz Schubert you will like him for being so kind to one who had very little pleasure in life. ”

“ There never has been one like him, and there never will be another.
His death, and the letters of the elder Franz and of Ferdinand, bring out the family relations in a very pleasant light. The poor pious bereaved father, still at his drudgery as 'school teacher in the Rossau,' 'afflicted, yet strengthened by faith in God and the Blessed Sacraments,' writing to announce the loss of his 'beloved son, Franz Schubert, musician and composer'; the good innocent Ferdinand, evidently recognised as Franz's peculiar property, clinging to his brother as the one great man he had ever known ”

“ He played on that occasion Weber's Invitation à la Valse, with his own effectual, free, final cadenza, his Chromatic Galop (which causes all nerves to vibrate) , and a few of his transcriptions of Schubert's songs—those genuine pearls, the richness and colouring of which none can show so well as himself, being a unique and most perfect master of the art of touch. And, finally, in order to show something at least of his immense bravura, he played a little concert piece. ”

“ KREISSLE VON HELLBORN, Heinrich, Dr. juris, Imperial-finance-Secretary at Vienna, and Member of the Direction of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, finds a place here for his Lives of Schubert, viz. 'F. Schubert, eine biografische Skizze, von Heinrich von Kreissle' (small 8vo. Vienna, 1861) , a preliminary sketch; and 'Franz Schubert' (8vo. Vienna, Gerold, 1865) , a complete and exhaustive biography, with a portrait. The latter has been translated in full by Mr. Arthur Duke Coleridge, 'The Life of Franz Schubert ... ”

“ The "King of Song," as we sometimes call him, was a man unselfish and true. To the last days of his life he was poor. He never complained, nor was he sad on this account.
In many respects, Franz Peter Schubert had a different life from most other great composers. He never played at the courts of queens and emperors. He was never given diamonds or other costly presents. He seldom played at concerts. He never had the joy of hearing his compositions cheered again and again. He never saw an audience sit silent under the charm of his music.
Many songs that Schubert wrote have never been published. ”

“ Nearer akin to the warm but contemplative enthusiasm of Schumann than to the passionate spontaneity of Schubert, Franz's songs are anything but cold, nor do they in any case smell of the lamp; they are reticent rather than outspoken, timid rather than bold, pathetic without conscious pathos, eloquent without studied rhetoric; always true, giving more than they seem to give, saying more than they seem to say; frequently naïf yet far from trivial, here and there profound, rarely ecstatic or voluptuous, not once perverse or dry or commonplace. ”

“ Some of the pieces are mere parodies, as 'Tannenhäuser,' 'Dinorah, oder die Turnerfahrt nach Hütteldorf.' One, 'Franz Schubert,' is founded on the life of Schubert, and contains five of his songs. The only pieces of Suppe's known out of Germany are 'Fatinitza,' produced at Vienna, Jan. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fatigue and indisposition prevented the artist from giving the concert promised for the next day. In the meantime a musical festival was prepared for him, that will never be forgotten by Liszt himself or the others present. The giver of the festival (Felix Mendelssohn) had selected for performance some compositions unknown to his guest: Franz Schubert's symphony (in C) ; his own psalm, As the Hart Pants; the overture, A Calm Sea and a Prosperous Voyage; three choruses from St. Paul; and, to close with, the D-minor concerto for three pianos by Sebastian Bach. ”

“ F. Schlegel 19; Klopstock 19; Körner 16; Schober 15; Seidl 15; Salis 14; Claudius 13; Walter Scott 10; Rellstab 9; Uz 8; Ossian 7; Heine 6; Shakspeare 3; Pope 1; Colley Cibber 1; etc. etc.
Compared with the literature on other composers that on Schubert is not extensive.
Biographical.—The original sources are scattered in German periodicals and elsewhere.
1. The first place must be given to Ferdinand Schubert's sketch, entitled 'Aus Franz Schuberts Leben,' four short papers which appeared in Schumann's periodical, the 'Neue Zeitschrift für Musik,' in Nos. 33–36 (April 23–May 3) , 1839. ”

“ The genial musician, Franz Lachner, declares from personal knowledge that half a dozen numbers of the "Winterreise" were written in a single day and sold for a franc apiece! If Schubert had lived longer there would probably have been an improvement in this state of things. The greatness of his posthumous fame is liable to make us forget that his life was ended at an age when the most brilliant men are usually just beginning to win their earliest laurels. ”

“ Not the least remarkable thing about Father Schubert was the fact that, despite the endless grind of making a living, teaching and raising a family, he should have found time to cultivate music. Yet he was a tolerable amateur cellist and his great son’s first music teacher. After giving the boy “elementary instruction” in his fifth year and sending him to school in his sixth he taught Franz Peter at the age of eight the rudiments of violin playing and practised him so thoroughly that the boy was “soon able to play easy duets fairly well.” ”

“ FROM SCHUBERT'S SONG "TROUT." Listen
Play it or have someone play it to you.
Is it not worth remembering all one's life?
Schubert composed many kinds of music, but his songs are most loved by everybody.
They are sung all over the world.
And just because he never let a song come from his lips that did not first come from his heart.
Is not this a jolly one?
FROM SCHUBERT'S SONG "WANDERING." Listen
[Pg 4] Schubert's full name was FRANZ PETER SCHUBERT.
He was born in Vienna, in a very simple house that looks quite old-fashioned. ”

“ Harmony, freshness, power, grace, dreamings, passion, soothings, tears and flames pour forth from the depths and heights of thy soul, and thou makest us almost forget the greatness of thine excellence in the fascination of thy spirit!——
Let us limit our edition of Schubert's pianoforte compositions to 2 Sonatas, the G major Fantasia (a Virgilian poem!) , the splendid "Wanderer"-dithyramb (C major Fantasia) , 2 books of Impromptus, Moments Musicals and all his Valses (among which there are gems of the first water) . All this will be sent to you forthwith; and in addition Weber's Polonaises. ”

“ Schubert's father was the parish schoolmaster at Lichtenthal, Vienna. He was twice married, and had a large family, of whom ten survived. Franz Peter, a child by the first marriage, was born January 31, 1797. As every child in Germany learns at school something of music, he very early picked up the rudiments of it, and at eight years of age his father began to teach him the violin. ”

“ However, not all the parental thundering could keep nature from taking its course, even if it temporarily embittered Franz’s young life. Father Schubert at one stage went so far as to forbid his son to enter his house. The lad had been in the habit of going home on Sundays and holidays and there taking part in string quartet concerts with his father and his brothers, Ignaz and Ferdinand, Schubert 9 himself occupying the viola desk and being the real director of the ensemble. ”

“ Mendelssohn's Songs, the "Tannhauser-March," the "Rienzi-Fantasia," etc.' being sold singly—in the same small 8vo form which, candidly speaking, I always like best. As long ago as the year '39 I induced Haslinger to publish Schubert's songs in an edition of this kind—and at that time it seemed rather a doubtful innovation. Also about placing the words below the music. ”

“ 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 22 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. ”

“ This performance seems to have aroused even more enthusiasm and good will than the first. Salieri proudly pointed to the boyish composer as his own pupil and Franz Theodor, now that he knew his son safely caged in a classroom, made him a present of a five-octave piano. The Mass itself, a tenderly felt, lyrical, simple work, is sensitive and promising rather than something epoch-making, such as the composer was soon to achieve in the less pretentious province of the solo song.
A word about Therese Grob, who more or less properly figures in Schubert’s story as his first love. ”