Lach’s essential argument was that the most profound music and the highest “educative” mission to humankind in the German culture of music, the “ultimate transfigured heights,” had been achieved by three figures: Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner.94 His attempt to qualify and limit Schubert’s historical significance and compare him unfavorably to Beethoven and the great German tradition of music was actually designed to undermine the viability of a distinct Austrian political and cultural existence, and to foreground the logic of an Anschluss that would render Austria subordinate.
Discarding the idealized late nineteenth-century version and high-lighting moral and aesthetic shortcomings in Schubert, Lach confronted the conceits of local Viennese traditions. He maintained that Austrian and Viennese sensibilities needed to emulate the German tradition from the north. His 1928 Schubert speech is therefore best understood as a prophetic direct criticism of Chancellor Ignaz Seipel’s attempt to appropriate the Schubert centenary on behalf of an independent albeit illiberal Austria.95 Lach joined the Nazi Party early and became a vociferous and enthusiastic Austrian Nazi. Unlike other future fellow Austrian Nazis, in 1928 he had little sympathy with the idea or possibility of an autonomous Austrofascist state.
The serious historical research by Deutsch, the controversy sparked by Lach, and the potential of Schubert as a model for modernist art frame the context for T. W. Adorno’s 1928 essay on Schubert (one of his earliest major publications on music)96 and the place Schubert would occupy in Marxist historiography, notably in the much underestimated and brilliant work of Knepler.97
Adorno used to Schubert’s advantage the invidious distinction between Schubert and Beethoven that had been a fundamental theme in Schubert criticism from Brendel to Lach. In Schubert’s work “art” became an “image of reality.” Schubert’s music was understood in visual terms, as a landscape. In it an “image of truth” stood “within history.” Schubert’s lyricism was not “the blasphemous super-elevation of art” of the nineteenth century. Rather, “the paling images of existent objectivity” were combined in “cells of musical concreteness” with “the power of subjective inwardness.” In Schubert’s originality, in the “asymmetry” of his themes that challenge the “architecture of tonality,” the “autonomy of the captured image” asserts “primacy” over the “abstract will to formal immanence.” With its unique dialectical character as both an objective mirror of concrete experience and a rhetorical template for subjective expression, Schubert’s music reaches where words cannot, into the regions of sorrow and hope.98
For Adorno, Schubert’s joy is “unruly.” Adorno used the true historical character of Schubert as revealed by Deutsch against both the sentimental Viennese mythologizing and against Lach’s moralizing on behalf of a fascist construct of health and aesthetic greatness. Schubert is therefore removed from both “petty bourgeois music making” and “impoverished sentimentality.” “Transcendental distance” through art “becomes attainable in the utmost proximity.” The local realist aspect was the means Schubert used to achieve “a liberated music for a changed humanity” that could register “the message of humanity’s qualitative change.” The language of Schubert’s music is, for Adorno, at once local and universal, “a dialect—but one that has no native soil. It has the concreteness of a homeland, yet its only homeland is one remembered.” Schubert achieves aesthetic transcendence and subjective profundity by using nature and the mundane as the foundation of art. We “weep without knowing why” through music in which nature has “annulled itself” and a utopian hope is expressed, giving voice to a joy in the thought of a “promised state.”
In stressing the metaphor of landscape and the visual imagery of music functioning as a crystal through which light shines, Adorno linked the modernist appreciation of Schubert, the affinity between modern design and Biedermeier precedents, and the ethical candor inherent in Schubert’s realism. Simplicity and honesty in both musical content and form evoked a critical dimension (reminiscent of Nestroy and Raimund) rooted in human empathy that was absent from the affirmative art associated with the high capitalism of the late nineteenth century. Using music, Schubert articulated the inner suffering forced on him and others by the historical transformations of the 1820s, without manipulating the rhetoric of music into an act of masking truth through beauty. Adorno’s theme of the close link between lived experience and aesthetic form set Schubert apart, rendering irrelevant the need to compare him to Beethoven as conventionally understood.
Georg Knepler took up Adorno’s idea that Schubert’s connection to concrete personal experience in history led to unique mechanisms of transcendence. Knepler’s view of Schubert represents the most persuasive synthesis of the modernist and the many-sided populist strands of enthusiasm for Schubert in the history of German and Viennese reception. Schubert was certainly “German,” but never in a political or nationalist sense. He was totally local in character, but never affirmative, more a critical realist than a Romantic: “In Schubert loneliness is not positive, and tears earn no praise. For him Winterreise is without purpose and filled with pain. In his presentation it becomes a bitter reproach against a world in which man must suffer.”99 In the great repertoire of songs, “desire, suffering, and despondency” predominate. Schubert’s lyricism is distinctive since it reflects the encounter “with the social tensions of his era,” which are transformed into “the emotions of his own heart.” In this process, Schubert found a unique way to transcend the local and express the hope that “love and happiness” would be the inheritance of humankind.100
The post–World War II reception of Schubert, particularly among those committed to the ideals of socialism, held fast to a view of Schubert that was an amalgam of the historical Schubert and the late nineteenth-century object of mythic populist adulation. A Brahms-like aesthetic admiration and a populist veneration tempered by modern historical research were synthesized to render Schubert a voice of existential contradictions within the social and economic conditions of modernity. His music possessed a singular honesty, a focused realism rooted in the individual’s encounter with the politics and landscape of Vienna. This had led Schubert to develop a distinctive new voice for Romanticism, in which a transcendent humanist idealism emerged from the concrete and the historical.
Subjective intimacy and progressive idealism about the power of music permitted Schubert to appropriate and extend the Classical heritage in music. At the same time, his work remained immune from the progressive critique of musical Romanticism as the self-serving, apolitical possession of a social and economic elite or as a voice of reactionary chauvinist nationalism. Schubert, in the twentieth century, appeared to redeem the autonomy and forward-looking power of music as a means of authentic, subjective, human freedom through aesthetic expression; his example suggested a path for an accessible musical modernism.
NOTES
1. See the important work by Scott Messing, Schubert in the European Imagination, vol. 1: The Romantic and Victorian Eras; vol. 2: Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (Rochester, NY, 2006 and 2007). Messing’s impressive and detailed account focuses on aspects of Schubert reception in Vienna that are somewhat different but complementary to the argument in this essay. Another provocative and fine work is Andreas Mayer, Franz Schubert: Eine historische Phantasie (Vienna, 1997). The most radical biographical revision in recent memory was Maynard Solomon’s controversial article on Schubert’s sexuality, “Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini,” 19th-Century Music 12 (1989): 193–206. I would like to thank Irene Zedlacher, Christopher H. Gibbs, Morten Solvik, Anna Cafaro, and Lynne Meloccaro for their advice and assistance.
2. The literature on the popular reception of Schubert in modern times is immense. See David Schroeder, Our Schubert: His Enduring Legacy (Lanham, MD, 2009); and the essays by Cornelia Szabo-Knotik, “Franz Schubert und die österreichische Identität im Tonfilm der 1930er Jahre,” and Manfred Permoser, “Der Schubert-Film nach 1950: Anmerkungen zur jüngeren Rezeptionsgeschichte,” i
n Schubert und die Nachwelt, Kongressbericht: 1. Internationale Arbeitstagung zur Schubert-Rezension 2003, ed. Michael Kube, Walburga Litschauer, and Gernot Gruber (Munich, 2007), 309–19 and 321–28 respectively.
3. I do not wish to burden readers of this essay with extraneous historical background, but it is important to direct those interested in the historiography of the connection between culture and politics in the history of German-speaking Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the peculiar and often troubled interaction between the oft discussed high value placed on Kultur and Bildung in the German middle classes after 1815 and especially after 1848 and 1870 and the direction of German politics. The concept of freedom, the individual, and citizenship—the whole complex of attitudes associated with liberalism in German-speaking Europe—was influenced by the prestige culture and learning assumed as surrogates for political activity as construed in the English and American sense. The sufficiency of an apolitical notion of individuality and freedom was bolstered by the huge emphasis on culture, including music, as was a pessimistic attitude to democracy. Within the massive literature on this subject, see the classic essays by Fritz Stern “The Political Consequences of the Unpolitical German,” in The Failure of Illiberalism: Essays on the Political Culture of Modern Germany (New York, 1972), 3–25.
4. See Joseph Joachim’s letter to Robert Schumann from 21 March 1853. Quoted in Beatrix Borchard, Stimme und Geige: Amalie und Joseph Joachim (Vienna, 2005), 121–22.
5. Heinrich Adami, Alt- und Neu-Wien: Beiträge zur Beförderung lokaler Interessen für Zeit, Leben, Kunst und Sitte (Vienna, 1841), 82–83.
6. Peter Cornelius, Literarische Werke: Aufsätze über Musik und Kunst, ed. Edgar Istel (Leipzig, 1904), 152. The review was originally published in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 51/52 (1867).
7. W. H. Riehl, Kulturstudien aus drei Jahrhunderten (Stuttgart, 1862), 391.
8. See Katherine Harloe, Winckelmann and the Invention of Antiquity in the Age of Altertumswissenschaft (Oxford, 2013), passim.
9. The members of the Männergesangverein were overwhelmingly from the middle class, with less than 3 percent of active members coming from the aristocracy. The bulk were professionals, civil servants, commercial employees, followed by bankers, merchants, industrialists, and a very small group of artisans, i.e. 60 percent upper-bourgeoisie, 30 percent comfortable middle-class Viennese, and 10 percent from the lower spectrum of the bourgeoisie. See Leon Botstein, “Music and Its Public,” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1985), 372–73 and Tables 17 and 18 in vol. 5: Appendix.
10. Bruno Walden, Wiener Studien (Vienna, 1869), 42–43.
11. Brahms to Joachim, December 1868, in Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Joseph Joachim, ed. Andreas Moser, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1912), 60–61.
12. Franz Brendel, Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1855), 335.
13. Ibid., 336–37.
14. The operas are still not much known and rarely performed. Liszt premiered Alfonso und Estrella in the 1850s. See a translation of his article on the opera in this volume.
15. Richard Wagner, “About Conducting,” in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. 4: Art and Politics, trans. William Ashton Ellis (New York, 1966), 363.
16. Herbeck, for example, premiered Die Verschworenen in Vienna in 1861.
17. Ludwig Herbeck, Johann Herbeck: Ein Lebensbild (Vienna, 1885), Appendix, 57.
18. Ibid.
19. On this subject see the essays in Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter, eds., Music and German National Identity (Chicago, 2002).
20. Herbeck, Johann Herbeck, 112–13.
21. Brahms to Adolf Schubring, 23 March 1863, in Johannes Brahms: Briefe an Joseph Viktor Widmann, Ellen und Ferdinand Vetter, Adolf Schubring, ed. Max Kalbeck (Berlin, 1915), 196.
22. Quoted in Charlotte Sussman, Eighteenth-Century English Literature (Cambridge, 2011), 36–40.
23. George Bernard Shaw, “Goetz über alles,” in Shaw’s Music, vol. 3: 1893–1950, ed. Dan H. Laurence (New York, 1981), 39.
24. Richard Strauss, “Über Schubert: Ein Entwurf,” in Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen, ed. Willi Schuh (Zurich, 1981), 112–13. Strauss’s interest as a conductor was limited to the C-Major and B-Minor symphonies. On the general topic of the place of Schubert in the New German School, see Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen, “Der geniale Naive und der nachträgliche Progressive: Schubert in der Ästhetik und Politik der ‘neudeutschen Schule,’” in Schubert-Jahrbuch 1999, ed. Dietrich Berke, Walther Dürr, Walburga Litschauer, and Christiane Schumann (Duisburg, 2001), 23–40.
25. The notion that the real recognition of Schubert came through Liszt was a widely held commonplace. The legendary cultural force during the Weimar Republic, Leo Kestenberg, even commented in 1956, “If I only think of what Liszt achieved for Schubert, how he was the one who brought Schubert to the world.” Leo Kestenberg and Franz W. Beidler: Complete Correspondence, 1933–1956, trans. and ed. Philip A. Maxwell (Victoria, CA, 2013), 305.
26. See Thomas Kabisch, Liszt und Schubert, Berliner musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten 23 (Munich and Salzburg, 1984).
27. Quoted in Vladimir Stasov, “Liszt, Schumann, and Berlioz in Russia,” in Selected Essays on Music, trans. Florence Jonas, introduction by Gerald Abraham (London, 1968), 88–89. See also Robert Engel, “Schubert und Russland,” Die Musik 21/2 (1921): 113–19.
28. Hugo Wolf, Briefe, vol. 1: 1873–1901, ed. Leopold Spitzer (Vienna, 2011), 358 (to Emil Kauffmann) and 420 (to Melanie Köchert).
29. Brendel, Geschichte der Musik, 176–78.
30. Eduard Bernsdorf, Neues Universal-Lexikon der Tonkunst, vol. 3 (Offenbach, 1861), 513–18.
31. Heinrich Adolf Köstlin, Geschichte der Musik im Umriss (Tübingen, 1875), 282–83.
32. This is all according to Natalie Bauer-Lechner, in Herbert Killian, Gustav Mahler: Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner (Hamburg, 1984), 158.
33. Brahms is quoted saying this in 1887 in Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms: 1856–1862 (Berlin, 1908), 220.
34. See W. H. Riehl, Die bürgerliche Gesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1851), passim.
35. See Maxim H. Botstein, “Popular History in an Age of Scholarship: Gustav Freytag’s Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit” (Senior thesis, Princeton University, 2014).
36. See Jasper von Altenbockum, Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, 1823–1897: Sozialwissenschaft zwischen Kulturgeschichte und Ethnographie (Cologne, 1994), 85–90.
37. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, with an introduction by Hajo Holborn (New York, 1954), 291.
38. Jacob Burckhardts Briefe an seinen Freund Friedrich von Preen, 1864–1893, ed. Emil Strauss (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1922), 127 (scores), 63 (Wagner). The letter mentioning Wagner is quoted also in Max F. Schneider, Die Musik bei Jacob Burckhardt (Basel, 1946), 110–11.
39. Strauss, Burckhardts Briefe an seinen Freund Friedrich von Preen, 219.
40. Burckhardt, Reflections on History, with an introduction by Gottfried Dietze, trans. M. T. Hottinger (Indianapolis, 1979), 288–89.
41. Cornelius, Aufsätze über Musik und Kunst, 153.
42. See Karl Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte, 10 vols. and supplements (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1903–5), Zweiter Ergänzungsband: 3–10, and 10:3–5, 118–22, and 126–30. English readers can consult Karl Lamprecht, What is History? Five Lectures on the Modern Science of History, trans. E. A. Andrews (London, 1905; repr. 2012). The best short introduction to Lamprecht in English can be found in Karl J. Weintraub, Visions of Culture (Chicago, 1966), 161–207.
43. Karl Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte, 8/2:314; also 10:288–307.
44. Ibid., Deutsche Geschichte, Erster Ergänzungsband: 434–56, and 8/1:18–25, 30–33, 192–93.
45. Riehl, Kulturstudien aus drei Jahrhunderten, 101.
46. Ibid., 374–78, 399–400.
47. W. H. Riehl, “Das Quartett,” in Neues Novellenbuch (Stuttgart, 1899), 190–240.
48. Riehl, Kulturstudien aus drei Jah
rhunderten, 377.
49. Ibid., 377–81.
50. See W. H. Riehl, “Das Volkslied,” in Die Gegenwart: Eine enzyklopädische Darstellung der neuesten Zeitgeschichte für alle Stände, vol. 3 (Leipzig, 1849), 680–81.
51. Ibid.
52. Wilhelm Dilthey, Von deutscher Dichtung und Musik (Leipzig and Berlin, 1933), 282.
53. Ibid.
54. Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7: Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften (Stuttgart and Göttingen, 1961), 220–24.
55. See Leon Botstein, “Realism Transformed: Franz Schubert and Vienna,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (Cambridge, 1997), 15–35.
56. Jacob Burckhardt to Gustav Stehelin, 2 August 1884, in Jacob Burckhardt: Briefe, vol. 8: 1882–1885, ed. Max Burckhardt (Basel, 1974), 218.
57. Adam Müller-Guffenbrunn, Altwiener Wanderungen und Schilderungen (Vienna, 1915), 191.
58. Adolf Schmidl, Wiens Umgebungen auf zwanzig Stunden im Umkreise, 2 vols. (Vienna, 1838), 1–3.
59. Eduard Bauernfeld, Erinnerungen aus Alt-Wien, ed. Josef Bindtner (Vienna, 1923), 221–22.
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