Franz Schubert and His World
Page 36
For truly he’ll outlast our deepest sorrows
In realms beyond which ever to us call,
Where earlier another master went,
Who now he may approach to his content. (SDB, 841)
Obituaries appeared in the Viennese and foreign press, the most illuminating of which were written by friends, including Spaun, Sonnleithner, Bauernfeld, and Johann Mayrhofer.133 Many mentioned Beethoven and some, such as Spaun’s, made a concluding remark about Schubert’s grave and its proximity to Beethoven:
That heart of his, so rich in benevolence as in music, now reposes in the cool of the grave prepared for the deceased next to Beethoven’s. A memorial stone, erected by friends and admirers, will show posterity who reposes here and how much we loved him, so that we shall not be subjected to the same reproach as our forebears, who neglected to mark for us the grave which encloses the bones of Mozart.134
As in the aftermath of Beethoven’s death the previous year, albeit to a lesser extent, memorial poems, compositions, and concerts commemorated Schubert’s passing, with some of the honors used to raise money for the monument. A brief poem appeared in the Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode, written by Schubert’s friend Franz Xaver von Schlechta, that began: “The Muses weep, one favorite joins another: Wherefore thou too, so young, so full of hope?”135 Bauernfeld wrote a poem, beginning with the death dates of both composers and continuing: “Who gives us another Eroica? / Who fresh Miller songs? / The reign of glorious Music / is over and shall not return.”136 Diabelli released two keyboard fugues that used as a subject “the name of the too soon departed composer,” one by Simon Sechter and the other by Abbé Stadler. Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who had published a musical obituary for Beethoven (Nachruf an Beethoven), now did the same for his friend, basing it on the opening of the Piano Sonata in B-flat.137
As we saw earlier, the success of Schubert’s 26 March concert had led to plans for repeating it, but the event ultimately became a posthumous benefit, half of the proceeds going to the monument. Anna Fröhlich organized a concert held on the eve of what would have been Schubert’s thirty-second birthday, 30 January 1829 (Figure 5). The Friday evening concert featured most of the performers involved with the original 26 March program, again took place at the Musikverein, and again featured the E-flat Trio as the centerpiece. The program began with the premiere of Mirjams Siegesgesang, sung by Tietze and chorus with a two-piano accompaniment. There followed flute variations by Johann Wilhelm Gabrielsky, played by Ferdinand Bogner (Barbara Fröhlich’s husband), Die Taubenpost (Schubert’s last completed work), and Aufenthalt, sung by Vogl. The trio was again performed by Böhm, Linke, and Bocklet. Johann Karl Schoberlechner (rather than Vogl) sang Die Allmacht, and Tietze repeated Auf dem Strom, but this time with Linke playing the obbligato horn part on the cello. The evening ended with the first-act finale from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The successful concert was to be repeated on 21 February but due to Anna Fröhlich being ill was postponed until 5 March.138
Figure 5. Program for Anna Fröhlich’s concert, 30 January 1829.
These concerts, sales of Hüttenbrenner’s Nachruf an Schubert and of a lithograph of Schubert by Josef Teltscher,139 combined with other contributions, funded the memorial stone and a cast-iron bust of the composer, a rarity in Vienna at the time. The monument was based on a design by Schober and the bust sculpted by Josef Alois Dialer, a young artist who had known Schubert and who may have based the sculpture on the death mask.140 Grillparzer sketched five epitaphs, one of which alluded to Beethoven: “He was placed near the best ones when he died, and yet he was still scarcely halfway in his career.”141 In collaboration with Schober and Jenger, the poet helped administer the project and in July 1830 wrote an announcement that was not published but may have been distributed: “All Schubert’s friends and admirers, but especially those who have actively shown their feelings for him by contributions to his monument, are informed that this memorial, very successfully executed by a skilled hand and adorned with a good likeness of the deceased in the form of a cast-iron bust, has been completed and erected in the churchyard of Währing, where it is open to general inspection.”142 The Vienna Allgemeiner musikalischer Anzeiger published an image of the grave in November 1830, noting that the “tombstone is simple—as simple as [Schubert’s] songs; but it conceals a profound soul, as they do” (SDB, 907; see Figure 1 above).
Währing Cemetery was destined to become a pilgrimage site (Figure 6). Schumann visited Vienna in the fall of 1838, the trip on which he received the music for the “Great” C-Major Symphony from Ferdinand. His deep love for Schubert’s music grew as he learned more, prompting him to remark concerning the epitaph that it is “pointless to guess at what more [Schubert] might still have achieved. He accomplished enough; and let those men be praised who strove and accomplished as did he.”143 When he visited the cemetery he “gazed long on those two sacred graves, almost envying the person buried between them—a certain Count O’Donnell [sic].”144 Earlier that year his future wife, Clara Wieck, had concertized in Vienna and he had asked her: “Will you not pay a visit to our Schubert? And Beethoven? And take with you some sprigs of myrtle, bind them together in two, and place them on the graves. Speak softly your name and mine as you do so—not another word. You understand me?”145 Schumann had been aware of Schubert’s music from a distance when the composer was still alive—the eighteen-year-old “cried all night” upon learning of his death,146 and he became a great advocate in the decades to come as Schubert’s fame grew. He continued to be particularly drawn to Schubert’s “immortal Trio.” He not only wrote a review of the piece but also offered a kind of criticism of the work in music through his own early Piano Quartet in C Minor (1829), Piano Quartet in E-flat, Op. 44, Piano Quintet in E-flat, Op. 47, and other compositions.147
Figure 6. Nineteenth-century photograph of the graves of Beethoven and Schubert in Währing Cemetery.
All the while ever more of Schubert’s unknown music was performed and/or published for the first time, including late works like the Piano Trio in B-flat (published in 1836), last piano sonatas (published in 1839 with a dedication to Schumann), C-Major Symphony (premiered in 1839), C-Major String Quintet (published in 1853), E-flat Mass (published in 1865), and “Unfinished” Symphony (premiered in 1865). This activity further enhanced Schubert’s artistic stature, turning the screw yet again on Grillparzer’s epitaph as “far fairer hopes” were realized. Even Grillparzer’s funeral oration came to be reinterpreted: a passage about the other great German artist still living (Goethe), was over time reinterpreted by some as referring to Schubert.148 Comparisons with Beethoven accelerated as their names became ever more wedded—an apt word that also registers the frequent gendered comparisons made between them.149 David Gramit and Scott Messing have explored this aspect of Schubert’s reception, so I will mention only a comment in connection with their graves. In October 1863 their bodies were exhumed so as to secure them in metal coffins, at which time their skulls were measured and compared.150 Gerhard von Breuning, who had known them both, remarked that “it was extremely interesting physiologically to compare the compact thickness of Beethoven’s skull and the fine, almost feminine thinness of Schubert’s, and to relate them, almost directly, to the character of their music.”151 The comparisons were popularized in the biography of Schubert that was published in late 1864 (dated 1865) by Kreissle, who also weighed in on the epitaph:
Nowadays, when the greater part of Schubert’s treasures has been revealed to us, Grillparzer’s epitaph, which gave offense so many years ago, sounds to our ears still more strangely, and we may hope that over Schubert’s future resting place there will be nothing carved but the name of the composer. As does the simple “Beethoven” over that great man’s grave, the word “Schubert” will speak volumes.152
And this, uncannily, is what happened. Währing Cemetery was deconsecrated and the bodies of Beethoven and Schubert were transferred in 1888 to the “Grove of Honor” in Vie
nna’s new Central Cemetery. The monument there reads simply “Franz Schubert.” The tombstones in Währing remain there as cenotaphs in what is now the Schubert Park—all the graves having long been removed, so that the monuments to Beethoven and Schubert now stand side by side.
NOTES
The genesis of this essay was a re-creation of Schubert’s 26 March 1828 concert that I helped produce at the Schubertiade of New York’s 92nd Street Y on 26 March 1997. It was in connection with this project that some of the implications of the works on the program and the importance of the anniversary date of Beethoven’s death first struck me. In the years since I have had the chance to present versions of this essay at various universities and conferences, and I appreciate the many helpful responses I have received. I am particularly grateful to early suggestions from Scott Burnham and James Sobaskie. This current version, part of a larger project examining events surrounding the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert, benefited from comments by Byron Adams, Luis Garcia-Renart, John M. Gingerich, Dana Gooley, John Halle, Kristina Muxfeldt, and Irene Zedlacher. I am grateful to Dr. Otto Biba and the Archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde for providing some of the illustrations, previously unpublished.
1. On Music and Musicians, ed. Konrad Wolff, trans. Paul Rosenfeld (New York, 1946), 121.
2. John Daverio, Crossing Paths: Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms (New York, 2008), 20.
3. Ibid., 20; see also Marie Luise Maintz, Franz Schubert in der Reception Robert Schumanns (Kassel, 1995), 26–33.
4. Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 30 (10 December 1828), 837ff, reprinted in Till Gerrit Waidelich, ed. Franz Schubert Dokumente 1817–1830, vol. 1 (Tutzing, 1993), No. 654; hereafter cited as FSD and the number of the document, rather than the page number; a second volume of commentary and additional documents was published in 2003, edited by Ernst Hilmar. The translation concerning the fourth movement is adapted from Daverio, Crossing Paths, 20.
5. J. E. Westrup, “The Chamber Music,” in Schubert: A Symposium, ed. Gerald Abraham (London, 1946), 104. Similar comments are abundant in popular biographies and program notes; for example, Robert Haven Schauffler remarks that “the Andante con moto begins with a long cello cantabile. Schubert is said to have taken it from a Swedish folk song…. This mournful melody, with its spectral, oddly accented accompaniment, suggests a funeral march,” in Schubert: The Ariel of Music (New York, 1949), 209–10.
6. Lawrence Kramer, Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song (Cambridge, 1998), 152–72. See as well his chapter “Ghost Stories” in Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (Berkeley, 2002), 265.
7. Leo Treitler, “Language and the Interpretation of Music,” in Reflections of Musical Meaning and its Representations (Bloomington, IN, 2011), 21. The chapter earlier appeared in Jenefer Robinson, ed., Music and Meaning, (Ithaca, NY, 1997), 23–56.
8. Allgemeiner musikalischer Anzeiger 6 (7 February 1829), 21, 24; repr. in FSD, No. 695.
9. See Michael R. Fling, Musical Memorials for Musicians: A Guide to Selected Compositions (Lanham, MD, 2001); and Alec Robertson, Requiem: Music of Mourning and Consolation (London, 1967).
10. Christopher Reynolds, Motives for Allusion: Context and Content in 19th-Century Music (Cambridge, MA, 2003).
11. Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 29 (25 April 1827), 289; hereafter cited as AMZ.
12. Beethoven’s assistant, violinist Karl Holz, states that Schubert never missed a concert; see Otto Erich Deutsch, Schubert: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom (London, 1946), 536; hereafter cited as SDB.
13. See Christopher H. Gibbs, “Performances of Grief: Vienna’s Response to the Death of Beethoven,” in Beethoven and His World, ed. Scott Burnham and Michael P. Steinberg (Princeton, 2000), 227–85. The most detailed study concerning Beethoven’s death and its immediate aftermath is Artemio Focher, Ludwig van Beethoven, 26–29 marzo 1827 (Lucca, 2001).
14. Der Sammler 19 (14 April 1827), 179–80 (complete English translation in Gibbs, “Performances of Grief,” 264–66); see as well the Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 4 (23 May 1827), 167–68. Eduard von Bauernfeld’s diary states that he went to the funeral with Schubert (SDB, 622).
15. Ernst Hilmar, “Ferdinand Schuberts Skizze zu einer Autobiographie,” in Schubert-Studien: Festgabe der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zum Schubert-Jahr 1978, ed. Franz Grasberger and Othmar Wessely (Vienna, 1978), 94–95; and Gibbs, “Performances of Grief,” 243.
16. Heinrich Anschütz, as well as his brothers Eduard and Gustav, knew Schubert. See Otto Erich Deutsch, Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends, trans. Rosamond Ley and John Nowell (London, 1958), 222–24; hereafter cited as SMF; and Rita Steblin, Die Unsinnsgesellschaft: Franz Schubert, Leopold Kupelwieser und ihr Freundeskreis (Vienna, 1998). Concerning Grillparzer’s relationship with Schubert, see Otto Erich Deutsch, “Schubert und Grillparzer,” Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 32 (1977): 497–505.
17. The oration exists in several slightly different variants and has been translated many times; see, for example, Beethoven: A Documentary Study, ed. H. C. Robbins Landon (New York, 1970), 395–96; Elliot Forbes, ed., Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, rev. ed. (Princeton, 1967), 1057–58; Johann Aloys Schlosser, Beethoven: The First Biography, ed. Barry Cooper, trans. Reinhard G. Pauly (Portland, OR, 1996), 113–18 and 179–81; Gerhard von Breuning, trans. Henry F. Mins and Maynard Solomon, Memories of Beethoven: From the House of the Black-Robed Spaniards, ed. Maynard Solomon (Cambridge, 1992), 109–10 and 141–42. The last two sources discuss variants of the speech, as do the notes to Franz Grillparzer: Sämtliche Werke, ed. Peter Frank and Karl Pörnbacher, vol. 3 (Munich, 1964), 1325. Grillparzer objected to the publication of the address without his permission in the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung and elsewhere, and published a notice to that effect in the Theaterzeitung (19 June 1827); see 3:883.
18. Quoted in Michael Musgrave, The Music of Brahms (New York, 1994), 78.
19. SDB, 286. Elizabeth Norman McKay’s Franz Schubert: A Biography (Oxford, 1996) summarizes Schubert’s medical history, 319–31.
20. Franz Schubert: Todesmusik, ed. Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn, Musik-Konzepte 97/98 (Munich, 1997).
21. SDB, 825; a facsimile of the letter is in Franz Schubert: Ausstellung der Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek zum 150. Todestag des Komponisten, ed. Ernst Hilmar and Otto Brusatti (Vienna, 1978), 93.
22. Schubert’s grave was number 323 and Beethoven’s 290; in between were the Hardtmuth and Schlechta families, and then that of Johann Count O’Donell (SDB, 828). Many illustrations depict the graves as side by side or with just one separating them, no doubt for symbolic reasons. See Otto Erich Deutsch, ed. Franz Schubert: Sein Leben in Bildern (Munich, 1913), 64–65.
23. Ernst Hilmar rightly notes that Grillparzer was echoing the view of many contemporaries, including some of Schubert’s closest friends. See “Zu Grillparzers Inschrift auf Schuberts Grabdenkmal,” Schubert durch die Brille 29 (2002): 125–28.
24. John M. Gingerich, “Unfinished Considerations: Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony in the Context of His Beethoven Project,” 19th-Century Music 31 (2007): 99–112.
25. SMF, 383; the comment is in a review in Die Presse from 11 March 1862, see Eduard Hanslick: Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Dietmar Strauss, vol. 1:6 (Vienna, 2010), 60.
26. SDB, 64. Although Schubert’s comment is sometimes considered as reflecting a resistance to Beethoven, I have offered another view in Gibbs, “Writing Under the Influence? Salieri and Schubert’s Early Opinion of Beethoven,” Current Musicology 75 (2003): 113–40.
27. In comparison with most nineteenth-century composers, relatively few of Schubert’s letters survive (most are in SDB). He rarely commented on other composers, but there are a few references to Beethoven, for example, in SDB, 265 and 339.
28. Nicholas Temperley, “Schubert and Beethoven’s Eight-Six Chord,” 19th-Century Music 5 (1981): 142–54.
29. SMF, 66. Maynard Solomon has considered the
evidence concerning their personal relationship in his article “Schubert and Beethoven,” 19th-Century Music 3 (1979): 114–25; see as well Walther Dürr, “Wer vermag nach Beethoven noch etwas zu machen? Gedanken über die Beziehungen Schuberts zu Beethoven,” in Franz Schubert, Musik-Konzepte Sonderband (Munich, 1979), 10–25.
30. SMF, 325; see also 366. Schindler recounts the story in the 1860 third edition of his biography of Beethoven, but, as Solomon notes, did not report this information in the first two editions of his book (“Schubert and Beethoven,” 121).
31. SDB, 232. As Solomon has observed, Hüttenbrenner is unlikely to have risked making up such a glowing recommendation when Peters could confirm the reference directly with Beethoven; but, Solomon adds, it still may not reflect what Beethoven actually said, only what Hüttenbrenner thought he had said (“Schubert and Beethoven,” 115).
32. In 1823, for example, Beethoven’s nephew Karl wrote in a conversation book: “They greatly praise Schubert, but it is said that he hides himself” (SDB, 288). The observation comes around the time of Schubert’s illness and hospitalization. Three years later Karl Holz asked, “Do you know Erlkönig? [Schubert] always talked very mystically” (SDB, 536; also 341).