Schubert and His Work

by Herbert F. Peyser

He Joins the “Sängerknaben”

It is not impossible that Schubert may have made a few attempts at composition at this stage, though there is no actual proof. But a real turning point came on May 28, 1808. On that date there appeared in the official journal, the Wiener Zeitung, an announcement that two places among the choristers of the Imperial Chapel (the so-called Sängerknaben) had to be filled. Father Schubert saw his chance. A chorister who showed the necessary qualifications could enjoy free tuition, board and lodging at the Imperial Konvikt (or Seminary); and if the boy distinguished himself “in morals and studies” he might remain even after his voice had changed. The Konvikt was a former Jesuit school reopened in 1802 by the Emperor Franz and supervised by a branch of the Jesuits called the Piarists. In addition to ten choristers there were pupils of middle and high school standing. The Konvikt occupied a long, cheerless building which in modern times looked quite as bleak as it did in Schubert’s day.

The tests took place on September 30, 1808, and the examiners consisted of Antonio Salieri, a prolific opera composer, an intimate of Gluck and Haydn, a teacher of Beethoven and an implacable enemy of Mozart; the Court Kapellmeister Eybler; and a singing teacher at the school, Philip Korner. Schubert presented himself for the examination wearing a grayish smock, which caused the other boys to jeer and call him a miller. But as millers were popularly supposed to be musical the young mockers agreed that he could not fail. They were right. Not only did he meet all the requirements but his voice and musicianship aroused the surprise and enthusiasm of the committee. Schubert was promptly accepted. In other subjects required, as well as in music, he easily surpassed the other competitors. Not in vain was he his father’s son!

So the boy shed his “miller’s” vesture and put on the fancy, gold-braided togs of the Sängerknaben. In a few days he was settled at the Konvikt. He was amenable to discipline—having learned it plentifully at home—and does not appear to have suffered the tribulations of some other Konvikt scholars who were less conformable and more adventurous. The shyness which clung to him more or less throughout his life made him shun his fellow students as much as he conveniently could. The food was poor and scanty and even four years later we find him appealing pathetically to his brother Ferdinand for a few pennies a month to buy a roll or an apple as a fortifying snack between a “mediocre midday meal and a paltry supper” eight hours later! The music room at the school was left unheated, hence “gruesomely cold” (anyone who has experienced the unheated corridors of a Viennese house in winter can shudder in sympathy!). But there was plenty of music and the school orchestra, in which Schubert occupied the second desk among the violins, delighted him.

Every evening this orchestra played an entire symphony and ended up with “the noisiest possible overture.” The windows were left open in summer and crowds used to collect outside, till the police dispersed them because they obstructed traffic. The concerts were conducted by a singularly lovable old Bohemian organist, viola player and teacher, Wenzel Ruziczka, who at an early date defended and explained some of the boldest “modernisms” in Schubert’s compositions. The orchestra performed a good deal of trivial music but every now and then there would be works by Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini, Méhul and even some of the less taxing scores of Beethoven. Schubert on these occasions felt himself in heaven! He was “entranced” by the slow movements of Haydn, but his god was Mozart. With a subtlety of perception almost uncanny in a boy of twelve he said that the G minor Symphony “shook him to the depths without his knowing why.” He called the overture to the Marriage of Figaro the “most beautiful in the whole world,” then quickly added “but I had almost forgotten that to the Magic Flute.” It is certain that this student orchestra was a most valuable factor in Schubert’s musical education. It was with these young players in mind that he composed his First Symphony in October, 1813, at the age of sixteen.

At a first violin desk in front of Schubert there played another youth, some nine years older, a student of law and philosophy from Linz, Josef von Spaun, and thus began one of those Schubertian friendships that was to last for life and play an important part in Schubert’s story. Amazed by the beautiful playing he heard behind him, Spaun looked around and saw “a small boy in spectacles.” Not long afterwards he surprised the youngster in the freezing music room trying a sonata by Mozart. Franz confided to his sympathetic new friend that, much as he loved the sonata, he found Mozart “extremely difficult to play” (another acute observation!). Then, “shy and blushing,” he admitted that he “sometimes put his thoughts into notes.” However, he trembled lest his father get wind of the fact, for while Franz Theodor had no objection to music as a pastime and also had every reason to be satisfied that it paid for his son’s education and kept a roof over his head, he had other plans for him in mind. The real business of the young man’s life was to be schoolmastering. No two ways about it!

So Franz Peter had need to be wary. Besides, there was another obstacle to his composing. Music paper was scarce and costly. He did, it is true, rule staves on paper himself but even ordinary brown paper was not plentiful. So the generous Spaun, though of a rather restricted budget, bought paper out of his own allowance and did not remonstrate when Schubert used up the precious commodity “by the ream.” The only difficulty, now, was that Franz composed in study hours and fell back in his school work, a fact that was not slow in coming to his father’s notice. And yet the records of the Konvikt do not show that Schubert was a poor student. At various times certificates signed by the school director, Father Innocenz Lang, pronounce him “good” or “very good” in almost everything, while in Greek he is even described as “eminent.” Somewhat later when at normal school, preparing to teach in his father’s schoolhouse, his weaker subjects were mathematics, Latin and “practical religion.”

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 himself occupying the viola desk and being the real director of the ensemble. He roughly scolded his brothers when they blundered, but cautiously corrected Franz Theodor’s errors with nothing more scathing than: “Herr Vater, something must be wrong here.” Now this diversion was denied him and he suffered. Not until May 28, 1812, was he permitted to return to the Lichtental roof-tree and then only because a tragic event softened the paternal heart. On that Corpus Christi day Franz’s mother died of typhus (or, as they called it then, “nerve fever”), the same malady which sixteen years later was to carry off Franz himself. In due course the chamber music sessions were resumed and in time they outgrew their humble environment.