Der Erlkönig
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 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. Several listeners objected to the sharp dissonances of the accompaniment to the child’s cry but it was none other than old Ruziczka who showed himself the best “modernist” of them all, actually championing the “cacophony,” explaining its artistic function and praising its beauty. Schubert himself had a pair of sore wrists from the unmerciful triplets of the piano part! Not everywhere, one regrets to say, did Der Erlkönig create such a stir. At the insistence of his friends Schubert sent it, along with some other songs, to Goethe with an appropriate dedication. His Excellency in Weimar did not even deign to acknowledge it. Meanwhile the publishing firm of Breitkopf und Härtel, to whom Spaun also dispatched the ballad, thought that someone was playing a practical joke. Before deciding what to do with “wild stuff” they addressed themselves to a Dresden violinist who chanced also to be called Franz Schubert (he composed a trifling piece called The Bee, which some fiddlers still play) and asked his opinion. The Saxon Franz (or François) Schubert exploded, insisted he had never composed the “cantata” in question but would see who was misusing his good name for such a patchwork and promptly bring the miscreant to book!
Engraving by Franz Weigl for the second edition of Der Erlkönig.
Piano composition—Ecossaises, German Dances (“Deutsche”), variations, sonatas—a number of string quartets and other chamber music swelled the ever-increasing output. The quantity of songs mounted like a tidal wave. And although nothing had come of Des Teufels Lustschloss (part of which the composer, moved by purely artistic impulses, even went so far as to rewrite), Schubert continued the woeful job of piling up unwanted operatic scores. He wrote Der vierjährige Posten (the story of a sentry who was posted and not relieved on the departure of his regiment and who, when it returned four years later, still stood on duty); Fernando, a Singspiel; Claudine von Villa Bella; Die Freunde von Salamanka and Adrast (texts by Johann Mayrhofer).
And, while we are on the operatic subject, let us look ahead into the years of Schubert’s maturity and list what other operas he wrote (it should be understood, by the way, that certain of these are more on the order of operettas than what we understand by lyric dramas). In 1819 he composed Die Zwillingsbrüder, which has a plot along Comedy of Errors lines; in 1820 a “magic and machine” comedy called Die Zauberharfe (“The Magic Harp”), the overture of which is familiar to us as the Rosamunde—though the overture which Schubert used three years later to the musical play of that name was the introduction that prefaced a full-length romantic opera, Alfonso und Estrella, dated 1821. An actual overture to Rosamunde was never written. The piece known universally by that title was not so designated till 1827, when it was published in an arrangement for piano duet. Other operatic works we may cite in passing are Die Verschworenen, a treatment of the “Lysistrata” motive; and the large-scale “heroic-romantic” opera, Fierrabras, composed in the summer of 1823. After 1823 Schubert let opera alone—at least temporarily. On his deathbed he was still planning another, a Graf von Gleichen, to a book by his boon companion, Eduard von Bauernfeld. But the project had never gotten beyond some sketches.
Mayrhofer, whom we just mentioned, had made Schubert’s acquaintance in 1814, when the composer set to music his poem Am See. A close friendship immediately sprang up between them though Mayrhofer—the older of the two by ten years—was of a moody, brooding nature (he subsequently committed suicide by jumping out of a window). By 1819, Schubert, having grown heartily sick of schoolmastering some time before, went to share for a while the sombre, dilapidated quarters of Mayrhofer in the Wipplinger Strasse (the danger of the army draft was now over) and the pair, for all their temperamental differences, hit it off famously. 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. If any visitor came unannounced Schubert would greet him, without looking up from his work, with the words: “Greetings! How are you? Well?”—whereupon the intruder realized it was an invitation to disappear.
After writing all morning Schubert, like a true Viennese, usually went to enjoy the incomparable relaxation of a coffee house, drinking a Mélange (café au lait), eating Kipferl (crescents, if you prefer!), smoking and reading the newspapers. In the evening there was the opera and the theatre (provided one had money or somebody bought the tickets) or else the gatherings of the clans at the various “Gasthäuser,” “Stammbeisel” and taverns. The friends discussed questions of the day, literature, plays, music. They criticized each other’s work with unsparing frankness. Schubert’s uncommonly keen musical opinions were relished by everybody.
Although Schubert wished to have done with teaching as soon as possible he attempted (perhaps to placate his father) to obtain a pedagogical post in a normal school at Laibach. He was turned down in favor of some local applicant, which was no doubt just as well. Had it been otherwise the brilliant coterie of “Schubertians” might have been nipped in the bud and the term “Schubertiads,” as they called their revels and their discussions had it entered the dictionary at all, might have had another meaning.
Who were these “Schubertians,” this group of younger and older intellectuals and Bohemians held together, somehow, by the indefinable attraction of Schubert’s personality? They came and went with the years and when one or another vanished a different one would generally take his place. “Kann er was?” (“What’s he good at?”) was Franz’s usual query if a newcomer appeared—a question which earned him the nickname “Kanevas”! Virtually all who stepped into the charmed circle were good at something. Among the most prominent were Spaun, Mayrhofer, Stadler, Senn, and later Moriz von Schwind, the painter; the Kupelwieser brothers, Leopold and Josef, Josef Gahy, Karl Enderes, the poet Matthaeus Collin, the blue-stocking novelist, Karoline Pichler, Eduard von Bauernfeld, Franz von Schober—to cite only a handful that come to mind. Schober, particularly, who wrote, drew, acted and was in every sense a clever man of the world, played a considerable role in Schubert’s life—some even hint a rather nefarious one. Still, he was well-to-do, his rooms were at Franz’s disposal whenever he needed them and he introduced the composer to the great Michael Vogl.
The latter, whom Schubert had long worshipped at the opera, was not only one of the greatest baritones of his time, but a singular and romantic creature, who became a social favorite on the strength of his handsome face and figure, developed some harmless affectations yet remained a mystic at heart. He passed much of his spare time reading the Bible, Plato, Epictetus and other ancient and mediaeval poets and philosophers. He greeted Schubert in the condescending manner assumed by some popular artists when they first met aspiring beginners. He seemed unimpressed on glancing over the first song or two Schubert put before him, but after reading through Der Erlkönig he patted the composer on the back, remarking as one not wholly dissatisfied: “There’s something in you, but you’re too little of an actor or a charlatan. You squander your fine thoughts without developing them.” Yet before long he had become Schubert’s chief interpreter and propagandist, and spoke grandly of “these truly god-like inspirations, these revelations of musical clairvoyance.”
The chamber music concerts given on Sundays at the Schubert homestead in Lichtental had outgrown their strictly domestic character quite some time before Father Schubert had been transferred (late in 1817) to a new school in the neighboring Rossau district. The string quartet had expanded into a small orchestra and now performed symphonies and such in the homes of several musical acquaintances, lastly in that of a wealthy landowner, Anton Pettenkofer, who lived in the Inner Town, not far from St. Stephen’s. It was for this amateur orchestra that Schubert composed at least four of his early symphonies. The occasional absence of drums and trumpets (in the Fifth, for instance) indicates the constitution of the orchestra at different times. Schubert himself occupied a viola desk delighting, like Mozart and Bach before him, to be “in the middle of the harmony.”
Up to 1818 there had not been what one might describe as public performances of Schubert’s works other than church music. On March 1 there occurred the first of these, at a Musical-Declamatory Academy (that is to say, a miscellaneous concert) organized by a violinist, Eduard Jaell. One of Schubert’s pieces heard was a so-called Italian Overture. It was surprisingly well received by the critics and in less than three weeks other Schubert overtures were heard in Vienna, at similar entertainments. One aristocratic hearer prophesied in type (and correctly, as it proved) that Schubert’s works “would occupy an advantageous place among the productions of the present day.” Only a little earlier Franz had the satisfaction of seeing a composition of his appear for the first time in print! It was a setting of Mayrhofer’s poem Am Erlafsee and it was published in a kind of pictorial guide “For Friends of Interesting Localities in the Austrian Monarchy.”
Financially, Schubert reached in the spring of 1818 a rather desperate pass, as he was earning nothing and could not depend everlastingly on his friends. So when the father of the singer, Caroline Unger, recommended him to Count Johann Esterházy, of Galantha, as piano teacher for his two young daughters, Schubert accepted out of sheer need, much as he detested teaching of any kind. The summer estate of this branch of the Esterházy family was at Zseliz, in Hungarian-Slovakian frontier land, actually not far from Vienna but for Schubert the farthest away he had ever been. The pay was not generous but at least board and lodging were free, the country was a relief after the summer heat in Vienna, the Esterházys and their friends were not unmusical. The daughters, Maria and Caroline, were thirteen and eleven, respectively, whom Schubert found “amiable children.” He is now and then represented as having been in love with Caroline. If he really was it could only have been on his second visit to Zseliz, in 1824, when she had become a young lady of seventeen. Like Haydn, Schubert was quartered with the servants, which does not seem greatly to have irritated him, despite the boorishness of certain grooms (a pretty chambermaid, he wrote home, “sometimes kept him company”). The chief annoyance came from the cacklings of a nearby flock of geese.
Title-page of Schubert’s Fantasia for Piano and Four Hands (opus 103), dedicated by the composer to Countess Caroline Esterházy.
One man whom Schubert met at Zseliz was destined to become as inspired and outstanding an interpreter of his songs as Vogl—Karl Freiherr von Schönstein, whose singing of Schubert later drew tears of emotion from Liszt. He brought to the more lyrical songs an extraordinary artistry, sensitiveness and devotion. The Schöne Müllerin cycle in particular was to be his specialty. And Zseliz, both now and a few years afterwards, enriched Schubert still further by fertilizing his inspiration with Slavic and Hungarian folk music. “I compose and live like a god,” he wrote his brother, Ferdinand, though to Schober he speaks in a less exuberant strain. However, the Esterházys and Schönstein sang not a little of Schubert’s music and also ventured on more or less of Haydn’s Creation and Seasons as well as upon the whole of Mozart’s Requiem. Strangely enough, though he had far more time to write songs during these carefree months than he had some years earlier, he wrote appreciably fewer. His maturing genius was about to take other directions.
Schubert returned to Vienna in November in a jubilant mood. This was the period when Josef Hüttenbrenner—brother of the shrewder Anselm and sometimes rather irritating to the composer by the injudiciousness of his enthusiasm (“Everything I write seems to please him,” said Schubert querulously)—made it his business to collect from near and far every manuscript of Franz he could lay his hands on. In this manner Josef recovered fully a hundred songs—a fortunate thing for posterity though at the time it buttered no bread and paid no bills. Anselm, for his part, went with Schubert (in a remote gallery seat) to the first performance of the latter’s opera Die Zwillingsbrüder. The applause warranted the composer’s appearance for a curtain call, but he declined to take it because of the shabby coat he wore. Anselm wanted Franz to put on his for a moment, but Schubert declined, glad, perhaps, to escape even a brief lionizing. So he merely sat back and smiled wistfully when Vogl came forward to tell the audience that the author was “not in the house.”
One of Schubert’s most influential acquaintances about this time was Leopold Sonnleithner, a member of a noted Viennese musical family. It was through Sonnleithner that Schubert came to know the poet Heinrich von Collin and in his circle the composer met men like the so-called “music count” Dietrichstein, the poet and bishop, Ladislaus Pyrker, Patriarch of Venice, court secretary Ignaz von Mosel and others well qualified to be his patrons and helpers had he but exerted himself to gain their assistance and good will. Better still, Sonnleithner introduced him to the four enchanting Fröhlich sisters, whose father had been a merchant of considerable means. Josefine, Käthi, Barbara and Anna Fröhlich, Viennese to the core, were uncommonly musical. All four sang well, three of them taught and Barbara painted miniatures. One prominent guest of this delightful household was the poet, Franz Grillparzer, who long outlived Schubert and wrote his epitaph. Sonnleithner cleverly brought some of Schubert’s songs to the Fröhlich home before introducing the composer in person and whetted the curiosity of the sisters to such a degree that the stage was ideally set for his entrance.
Käthi Fröhlich tells of Schubert’s joy when music—not necessarily his own—particularly pleased him. “He would place his hands together and against his lips and sit as if spellbound.” Once, after hearing the sisters sing, he exclaimed: “Now I know what to do” and shortly afterwards brought them a setting of the Twenty-third Psalm for four women’s voices and piano. Another time, Anna Fröhlich appealed to Schubert to set some verses of Grillparzer’s as a birthday serenade to one of her pupils, Luise Gosmar. Schubert glanced at the poem a couple of times, murmuring “how beautiful it is” and then announced: “It is done already. I have it.” A few days later he returned with the serenade “Zögernd leise” and the charming piece was sung shortly afterwards beneath Luise Gosmar’s window. Characteristically, Schubert forgot to come and he almost missed his work on a later occasion when it was sung at a concert devoted wholly to his compositions. When he finally did hear it he seemed like one transfixed. “Truly,” he murmured, “I did not think it was so beautiful!”