Franz Schubert and His World

by Gibbs, Christopher H. , Solvik, Morten

  98. Maynard Solomon, Beethoven, 69; also 71–72, 138, 263.

  99. This quotation has been noticed at least once before by Stephen E. Hefling and David S. Tartakoff in “Schubert’s Chamber Music” in Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music, ed. Stephen E. Hefling (New York, 2004), 119.

  100. Since so few sketches for Schubert’s music survive, it is hard to generalize, but he customarily did not include this sort of accompanimental detail in the sketching process, nor is he here presenting material that relates thematically to what has preceded, which suggests that the final quotation was planned from the outset.

  101. Elaine Sisman, “Memory and Invention at the Threshold of Beethoven’s Late Style,” in Beethoven and His World, 51–87; and Janet Schmalfeldt, In the Process of Becoming: Analytic and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in Early Nineteenth-Century Music (New York, 2011), 143–46.

  102. For discussions of cyclic aspects of the entire trio see Gerhard, “Franz Schuberts Abschied von Beethoven?”; James William Sobaskie, “A Balance Struck: Gesture, Form, and Drama in Schubert’s E-flat Major Piano Trio,” in Le style instrumental de Schubert: Sources, analyse, contexte, évolution, ed. Xavier Hascher (Paris, 2007), 115–46; and Schmalfeldt, In the Process of Becoming, 144–57.

  103. Maurice J. E. Brown, Schubert: A Critical Biography (London, 1958), 201.

  104. Treitler, Reflections of Musical Meaning, 21.

  105. Kramer, Franz Schubert, 157–58.

  106. Gingerich, Schubert’s Beethoven Project, 292–93.

  107. Schubert told Probst that “the cuts indicated in the last movement are to be scrupulously observed” (SDB, 774). The first cut simply omits the repeat, the second omits mm. 358–407, and the third mm. 463–513. The complete original version of the trio was first published in 1975 and since then it has become increasingly common for musicians to play it; most scholars who have written about the original version feel it is superior to the abbreviated one published in 1828 and therefore best known; see Werner Aderhold, ed., Neue Schubert-Ausgabe, series VI, vol. 7 (Kassel, 1975); also Dietrich Berke and Dorothee Hanemann, “Zur formalen Organisation des Schlußsatzes aus Franz Schuberts Klavier-Trio in Es-dur op. 100 (D929),” in Festschrift Arno Forchert zum 60. Geburtstag am 29. Dezember 1985, ed. Gerhard Allroggen and Detlef Altenburg (Kassel, 1986), 200–207.

  108. Treitler, Reflections of Musical Meaning, 22–23.

  109. Kramer, Franz Schubert, 157.

  110. Daverio, Crossing Paths, 28.

  111. Schubert’s dedications are given in SDB, 947–49.

  112. See Gibbs, “Performances of Grief,” 246–47.

  113. See Christopher Gibbs, Life of Schubert (Cambridge, 2001).

  114. Brian Newbould, “A Schubert Palindrome,” 19th-Century Music 15 (1992): 209–10.

  115. It is usually assumed that the G-Major Quartet was played, most likely because of Deutsch’s influential conjecture. Ernst Hilmar and Otto Brussati mention Landon’s finding in Franz Schubert, 86.

  116. See Christoph Wolff, “Schubert’s ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’: Analytical and Explanatory Notes on the Song D 531 and the Quartet D 810,” in Schubert Studies, 143– 71; and Gingerich, Schubert’s Beethoven Project, 85–104.

  117. Schubert’s only other concerted Lied is the much more famous Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (D965) with clarinet, one of his last compositions.

  118. Hallmark, “Schubert’s ‘Auf dem Strom,’” 25–46.

  119. The song was published in 1829 specifying “Waldhorn oder Violoncelle (obligat).” The instrumentalist who performed the part, Josef Lewy, was with his brother Eduard one of the leading horn virtuosos in Vienna during the 1820s. Linke performed the piece on 30 January 1829 at one of the memorial concerts to raise money for Schubert’s gravestone. Whether the cello scoring had Schubert’s authority is not known, but when played on the string instrument the similarity to the E-flat Trio is of course more striking. Christopher Reynolds links the use of horn to Beethoven’s trombone Equale played at his funeral in Motives for Allusion, 126.

  120. Translation from Richard Wigmore, Schubert: The Complete Song Texts (London, 1988), 57–58.

  121. The manuscript for Auf dem Strom reveals an alteration Schubert made to the poem that renders it more personal. Rufus Hallmark considers the change in text from vom to zum, making the line “no song can penetrate from the shore” become “no song can penetrate to the shore,” thus “identifying the persona as the singer of the song, and thus as a composer whose creative life is at an end.” “Schubert’s ‘Auf dem Strom,’” 46.

  122. Ibid., 40. Hallmark cites Alfred Einstein’s comment that “if any of Schubert’s songs was inspired by the spirit and ‘sentiment’ of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte, it is this one.” See Einstein, Schubert: A Musical Portrait (New York, 1951), 302–3.

  123. Larry Hamberlin, “The Beethoven Allusions in ‘Auf dem Strom’ (D. 943),” in The Unknown Schubert, ed. Barbara M. Reul and Lorraine Byrne Bodley (Aldershot, 2008), 137–45.

  124. Hallmark, “Schubert’s ‘Auf dem Strom,’” 45.

  125. Schubert was apparently long enamored with the Eroica and commentators have remarked on other pieces of his that they feel owe it a debt. In this instance an anecdote concerning a lost “Eroica Fantasy” that he allegedly wrote in 1825, long dismissed as apocryphal, assumes more interest and should perhaps be taken more seriously. According to Albert Böhm, “One day I found, among the dust in the loft, a hitherto entirely unknown manuscript, bearing, on the front, the title ‘Fantasie by Franz Schubert’ and, as signature, the name ‘Watzl.’ Experts, like Professor [Julius] Epstein, Anton Bruckner and others, to whom I played the Fantasy, did not raise the least doubt as to the authenticity of the work, which revealed Schubert’s individuality throughout, and they found it extremely interesting and attractive. It consists of three movements: Allegro vivace, Adagio assai and Presto, the two end movements being in E-flat Major and the middle in C Minor. Surprisingly, each of the three movements is built out of one of the main themes of Beethoven’s Eroica, that is, it is Beethoven’s Eroica translated, as it were, into Schubert’s musical language” (SMF, 248).

  126. Discussing the unexpected middle Andante sostenuto section of the C-Major Quintet’s third movement, Martin Chusid remarks that the “impression … as a whole is that of a funeral march, not unlike the slow movement of the Eroica Symphony with which it shares an important melodic element”; see Chusid, “Schubert’s Chamber Music” in Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (Cambridge, 1997), 185. See also Xavier Hascher, “Eine ‘traumhafte’ barcarola funebre: Fragmente zu einer Deutung des langsamen Satzes des Streichquintetts D956,” in Schubert und das Biedermeier: Beiträge zur Musik des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts (Festschrift für Walther Dürr zum 70. Geburtstag), ed. Michael Kube, Werner Aderhold, and Walburga Litschauer (Kassel, 2002), 127–38; and Christian Strehk, “Letzte Antwort auf Beethoven? Zur Entstehung von Schuberts Streichquintett C-Dur (D956)” Schubert-Jahrbuch 1998 (Duisburg, 2000), 133–50.

  127. Othmar Wessely, “Zur Geschichte des Equals,” in Beethoven-Studien: Festgabe der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zum 200. Geburtstag von Ludwig van Beethoven, ed. Erich Schenk (Vienna, 1970), 341–60. In an intriguing article, Daniel Jacobson and Andrew Glendening argue that Schubert, who as a torchbearer that day heard these Equale repeated again and again, was inspired to incorporate them into his haunting “Tenth” Symphony (D936A). See “Schuberts D.936A: Eine sinfonische Hommage an Beethoven?” Schubert durch die Brille 15 (1995): 113–26; although this was challenged by Brian Newbould, “Schuberts D.936A: Eine sinfonische Hommage an sich selbst?” Schubert durch die Brille 16/17 (1996): 123–29.

  128. Steblin, “Hoechle’s 1827 Sketch of Beethoven’s Studio: A Secret Tribute to Schubert?” Beethoven Forum 8 (2000): 22.

  129. See Scott Messing, Schubert and the European Imagination (Rochester, NY, 2006).

  130. SMF, 299. The reading of the quartet allegedly took place on
14 November. Ferdinand Schubert reported that the last music his brother heard was Ferdinand’s own Requiem on 3 November (SDB, 920). The cover of Ferdinand’s Requiem, when it was published, included an illustration of Schubert’s grave.

  131. This letter is not in SDB, but is included in the German edition. Kreissle first published it in Franz Schubert, 460–61. On 27 November the Church Music Society in St. Ulrich presented Mozart’s Requiem in Schubert’s honor.

  132. Walburga Litschauer, ed., Neue Dokumente zum Schubert-Kreis: Aus Briefen und Tagebüchern seiner Freunde, vol. 2 (Vienna, 1993), 104.

  133. Most are collected in SMF, 9–39, and SDB, 852ff.

  134. SDB, 879. Bauernfeld’s memorial article notes that “Schubert’s frame lies in the grave prepared for the departed next to that of Beethoven, the master he so greatly venerated, and a modest memorial stone will show our descendants who reposes side by side with the great master, and who it was we deemed worthy of such a resting place” (SDB, 893).

  135. SDB, 838. Schlechta’s memorial poem for Beethoven was sung at his funeral, Leipzig AMZ 29 (25 April 1827), 290; Gibbs, “Performances of Grief,” 247.

  136. SDB, 829. For a list of the other poems, see SDB, 925, the German originals of which are given in FSD.

  137. FSD, No. 456; this and other memorial pieces are reproduced in Deutsch, Franz Schubert: Sein Leben in Bildern, 236, 370, 478.

  138. On the second concert Fanny Sallamon replaced Bocklet as the pianist in the trio (FSD, Nos. 705 and 723); Schuppanzigh still did not perform. The most complete report of the concert is FSD, No. 703 from the Monatbericht der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (March 1829), 41–46.

  139. See Margret Jestremski, “Unveröffentlichte Dokumente aus dem Nachlass Anselm Hüttenbrenners,” Schubert durch die Brille 15 (1995): 95–99.

  140. Kreissle, Franz Schubert, 463. Josef Kenner states that Schober did the design (SMF, 89), working with architect Christian Friedrich Ludwig Förster, and it was executed by Anton Wasserburger (SDB, 848). Deutsch observes that such a bust was very unusual at the time (SDB, 907).

  141. SDB, 899.

  142. SDB, 907; see facsimile in Franz Schubert: Ausstellung der Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, 98.

  143. Schumann, On Music and Musicians, 118.

  144. Ibid., 107. As mentioned above, in between were the Hardtmuth and Schlechta families—Count O’Donell had died on 31 January 1828.

  145. Letter of 7 February 1838, Schumann Briefedition, series 1, Familienbriefwechsel, 4:1, ed. Anja Mühlenweg (Düsseldorf, 2010), 215.

  146. Daverio, Crossing Paths, 14.

  147. Ibid., 13–46.

  148. Deutsch, “Schubert und Grillparzer,” 503; SDB, 822.

  149. Gramit, “Constructing a Victorian Schubert: Music, Biography, and Cultural Values,” 19th-Century Music 17 (1993): 65–78; and Messing, Schubert in the European Imagination, vol. 1 (Rochester, NY, 2006), 8–102.

  150. The results are reported in Actenmässige Darstellung der Ausgrabung und Wieder-beisetzung der irdischen Reste von Beethoven und Schubert (Vienna, 1863). The second disinterment is described in reports of Vienna’s Anthropological Society; see Bericht über die am 21. Juni 1888 vorgenommene Untersuchung an den Gebeinen Ludwig van Beethoven’s gelegentlich der Uebertragung derselben aus dem Währinger Orts-Friedhofe auf den Central-Friedhof der Stadt Wien (Vienna, 1888); and Bericht über die am 22. September 1888 vorgenommene Untersuchung an den Gebeinen Franz Schuberts gelegentlich der Uebertragung derselben von dem Währinger Orts-Friedhofe nach dem Central-Friedhofe der Stadt Wien (Vienna, 1888); excerpts from both 1863 and 1883 reports appear in Hans Bankl and Hans Jesserer, Die Krankheiten Ludwig van Beethovens: Pathographie seines Lebens und Pathologie seiner Leiden (Vienna, 1987), 89–101. See also Karl Adametz, Franz Schubert in der Geschichte des Wiener Männergesangvereines (Vienna, 1938), 49–58.

  151. Breuning, Memories of Beethoven, 116.

  152. Kreissle, Franz Schubert, 464; translation by Arthur Duke Coleridge in The Life of Franz Schubert (London, 1869), 2:150.

  Schubert in History

  LEON BOTSTEIN

  When Franz Schubert died in 1828, the extent of his influence, fame, and popularity would have been hard to predict. His posthumous musical legacy in the nineteenth century and the controversies surrounding his biography in the twentieth would have astonished his contemporaries.1 Our understanding of Schubert the man and his music represents a remarkable case of historical reassessment and scholarly revision.

  The impetus behind twentieth-century revisionist Schubert scholarship was the double-edged image of Schubert bequeathed to posterity at the end of the nineteenth century. The Schubert who persisted well into the modern era of recording and cinema was as much a mid-nineteenth-century mythic construction as an authentic historical figure from the 1820s.2 The myth-making was inspired only in part by posthumous discoveries of unknown major works, primarily in the 1850s and 1860s. Already in the 1850s, independent of these discoveries, Schubert’s stature in music history had begun to rise as a function of political and cultural change. However, in the six decades between the publication of the “Unfinished” Symphony in 1867 and the 1928 centenary of Schubert’s death, Schubert and his music achieved a status unique in the popular culture of German-speaking Europe, particularly in Vienna.

  Schubert contra Wagner

  In the 1850s the critical reception of Schubert became a battleground for protagonists in the mid-century culture war within Europe over the character and destiny of music. This conflict is frequently reduced to a split between Wagnerians and anti-Wagnerians. But the issues in the cultural conflict in which Wagner would himself later play such a key role dated back to the 1830s, prior to his emergence as a major figure. The origins of this debate can be found in widespread anxieties about a cultural decline that was, ironically, partially the result of a remarkable increase of interest in music.3 Robert Schumann’s polemics against philistinism were one of many critiques concerning the growth of musical dilettantism and amateurism. Such criticism registered the fear that musical art in the tradition of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, once the nearly exclusive province of the aristocracy, was at risk. The new public appeared to favor a superficial expressive style: virtuosity detached from any higher aesthetic aspiration, facile theatricality (as in Meyerbeer), and a rather sterile Romantic music for the theater audible in the works of composers such as Heinrich Marschner. 4

  Music, however, was merely one barometer of a perceived general decline in cultural standards that resulted from rapid changes in economic and social conditions. In his 1841 book on Vienna, the theater and music critic Heinrich Adami (1807–1895) observed:

  The number of concerts and traveling virtuosi is increasing steadily—but not that of real artists … can we deny that concert music comes nearer to decline each year? … Is the fault with the audience or the virtuosi? … Or is the real reason for this tendency in all the arts to be found in our era’s trend toward the material, toward sensual enjoyment, superficial pleasure, toward gain and industry? … As it is always with a calamity, one side assigns fault to the other … and we allow ourselves to be told a hundred times how much better it was in olden days, and every complaint seems true and just—but … in the end we allow everything to remain as it was.5

  The cultural debate that began in the 1830s centered on a presumed conflict between contemporaries obsessed with the virtues of progress in industry and commerce and their beneficial impact on mores and culture, and those who viewed contemporary economic and social change as a threat to the ideal of a true aesthetic sensibility—an inheritance of the eighteenth century. In the 1830s and 1840s, music and musical culture came to be understood as a key marker in the trajectory of history—a symptom of the consequences of the rapid spread of literacy and education.

  In music the question was framed in terms of the legacy of Beethoven, whose shadow seemed inescapable to subsequent composers in German-speaking Europe. Purely musical issues intersected, not
always neatly, with sharp divisions about the unique character of things “German.”

  Music became representative of the connection between culture and politics, evidence of the essential relationship between aesthetics and ethics and the individual and the community.

  German speakers widely agreed that music was the distinguishing and outstanding feature of their cultural singularity. As the composer Peter Cornelius exclaimed in 1867, in a review of a concert of string quartet music by Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert, “This magical mirror of the German quartet, which reveals to the eye of the soul a world history of emotional life … this is entirely our possession … and all the most noble passions of sentiment drive us to these proud thoughts: to be a German, to be a musician, to understand this language, to possess citizenship in the nation [Heimat] of the spirit.”6

  Indeed, the history of music, as opposed to the history of other art forms, seemed to reveal a special connection to Germany’s emergence as a preeminent power in modern history. The nineteenth-century cultural historian and music critic W. H. Riehl observed, “There is no antiquity for the musician.”7 Consequently, the work of German composers from Gluck (one of Riehl’s favorites) to Beethoven had become widely acknowledged as representing universal aesthetic norms in music, the equivalents of Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s idealization of Greek and Greco-Roman antiquity in the visual arts.8

  Music was seen as well as exemplifying a uniquely contemporary German Romantic sensibility. In German hands music, it was said, had broken its inherited shackles as a trivial art form. It was not mere temporal entertainment and background distraction for the landed aristocracy. It had become an art of philosophical weight and spiritual profundity (both sacred and secular). It held a special key to the formation and expression of individuality and personality. Music possessed a formal capacity for the expression of the sublime and the beautiful; it was a means of communicating the intensity of life, and was tied to a stark psychological realism about suffering, love, joy, and death. But music also led, ultimately, to realism’s transcendence. Under the Romantics it had become rooted in life, yet was capable of exceeding its limits and expressing the infinite—all in forms that mirrored the highest abstract aesthetic ideals.