To trust the soul's invincible surmise
Was all his science and his only art."
The story of the last year of his short life is most pathetic. In March, 1828, he made an attempt to mend his fortunes by giving a concert of his own works, by which he earned one hundred and fifty dollars, to him a large sum. But no temporary help like this could count for much, so long as his compositions, the main business of his life, were so shamefully underrated by the publishers. For six of the best of the "Winterreise" songs he received a little over one dollar; for the E-flat Trio (opus 100), about four dollars and a half; for the great A-major Pianoforte Quintet (opus 114), a little over six dollars. His health being now seriously impaired, he wished to spend the summer in the country with friends, but was compelled by poverty to remain in the heat and confusion of Vienna. A momentary encouragement offered in a projected performance of his greatest work, the C-major Symphony, but it was given up as too difficult, and he never heard it. It was first performed eleven years after his death, by Mendelssohn, in Leipsic. In the fall he rapidly failed, and had just arranged to take lessons in counterpoint, with a view to yet greater works, when, after a comparatively short illness, he died, on November 19, 1828. He left no will, but from the official inventory of his effects we learn that he left behind him twenty-six dollars' worth of clothing and house furniture, and "a quantity of old music" (including the manuscript of the C-major Symphony), valued at five dollars.
Such were the dingy outer circumstances of this man's life. But his spirit soared above them. "My compositions," he wrote in his diary, "are the product of my mind, and spring from my sorrow; those only that were born of grief give the greatest delight to the outside world;" and in another place, more profoundly: "Certainly that happy joyous time is gone when every object seemed encircled with a halo of youthful glory; ... and yet I am now much more than formerly in the way of finding peace and happiness in myself." But the best evidence we have that Schubert learned the lesson of sorrow, and not only transmuted bitter experience into immortal beauty but under the stress of that experience first found his true self, lies in the wonderful series of compositions which he wrote between 1820 and 1828. Here we find at last the essential Schubert. In the single movement in C-minor for string quartet, dated 1820, he discloses a new world of dramatic expression, earnest feeling, daring modulation, intricate harmony, and chromatic melody. And from this time on masterpiece followed masterpiece: the "Unfinished Symphony" in 1822; the A-minor Quartet and the Octet in 1824; the G-major and D-minor Quartets in 1826; the first two piano trios a year later; and to cap the climax, the C-major Quintet and the immortal C-major Symphony in 1828.
In spite of the emotional depth of these last works, the dominant note remains in them, as in everything that emanated from Schubert, romantic. Everywhere in them the interest of the romanticist in color for its own sake, in the primary sensuous charm of the tone combinations, is strikingly manifest. One of the hallmarks of Schubert's symphonies is his impressionistic treatment of orchestral tints, both pure and in mixture. None knows better than he how to make the oboe sultry or menacing, the clarinet mellow and liquid, the horn hollow, vague, mystical, the 'cellos passionate, and the violins clear, aspiring, and ethereal. The score of his C-major Symphony is a marvel of ingenuity and felicity in the weaving of various colors and modes of playing, as staccato and legato, pizzicato, etc. Look, for instance, at page 162 of Eulenberg's miniature score, and see how the wood-wind instruments chatter in staccato against the long rise and fall of the strings playing in octaves, legato; or at page 139, noting how, after a powerful climax and a moment of complete silence, the 'cello, against plucked chords by the other strings, sings a languorous melody, which is presently taken up by the oboe; or at pages 30-35, where, under the shimmering veil of the strings, the trombones gradually work out their sinister call, rising ever higher and higher, and finally precipitating all into the sounding turmoil of the climax on page 36. In such passages as these every tone sounds, and all unite harmoniously to produce the intended effect. In few scores will one find at once such richness and such clear transparency of coloring.
Nor is Schubert dependent for variety of color, as unimaginative composers are, on the richly diversified palette of the full orchestra. His chamber music shows how much he can accomplish with limited means. In his two trios, op. 99 and 100, by making the most of the percussion quality of the piano as well as of both the pizzicato and the sustained tones of the strings, he evolves a surprising variety from the three instruments. Even with the string quartet, the most monochromatic of chamber combinations, he achieves great differentiation and contrast, largely by rhythmically individualizing each voice. The opening of the A-minor Quartet is a good example: viola and 'cello give a drone bass in a peculiar and striking rhythm (a dotted half-note followed by a group of four sixteenths); the second violin holds the tone-mass together by means of a graceful legato running figure in eighth-notes; the first violin sings a melody that follows its own free and untrammelled rhythm. One is reminded by such a passage of Dvořák, who is of close artistic kin to Schubert. Both men, in their writing for strings, secure fascinating texture by opposing many diverse rhythms simultaneously. The device has been assailed as being a mask to cover a poverty of real polyphony (inner melodiousness); but though it may to a certain extent be that, there can be no doubt of its sensuous effectiveness.
Another similarity between Schubert and Dvořák, also indicative of their romantic interest in special momentary features, is their coloristic use of harmony, and especially of modulation. Sudden transitions to remote keys are no commoner perhaps in Schubert than in Beethoven, but in Schubert they are prompted by considerations of color rather than of design. Like Dvořák, he loves unexpected recrystallizations of tone. He shakes the kaleidoscope of his fancy, and all the bits of glass fall into a new pattern (tonality). Such a fascinating change as that immediately after the forte chord of D, in the second entr'acte of "Rosamunde," is an illustration. Even better ones, because showing so clearly the lack of any element of formal design in these changes, are those casual alternations of major and minor mode which are so frequent as to constitute a mannerism. At the close of the first movement of the G-major Quartet is an extreme case. Four measures consist entirely of abrupt alternations of the major and minor tonic chords, with no melodic binding together. This is obviously purely a color effect, and its motive is of course unequivocally romantic.
Romantic also is the persistent lyricism of all Schubert's music, the symphonies and quartets as well as the songs and piano pieces. In the larger almost as much as in the smaller works, the fundamental trait of the peculiar type of expression used is its subjectivity, its strong personal flavor. If the songs of the classicists seem often like condensed symphonies, the symphonies of this romanticist are in many respects magnified songs. In several of his instrumental movements Schubert actually transcribes his themes from songs already written, as for example in the variations of the D-minor Quartet, founded on "Death and the Maiden," and those of the "Forellen Quintet," founded on "Die Forelle." When he uses entirely new material, he is apt to conceive it in the lyrical style, and even to cast it in the lyrical form, with an exact balance of phrases of equal length. The second subject in the "Unfinished Symphony," for instance, is like a stanza or strophe; the imagination easily adds words to it; it is an instrumental song. Most of Schubert's more emotional themes share this quality of utterances, and seem rather communications of personal feeling than objects of abstract beauty. Even in the later works, like the D-minor and G-major Quartets and the C-major Quintet, in which the romance is tinged with tragedy, it is still, one feels, romantic tragedy, the tragedy of sentiment and sensibility, and not universal cosmic tragedy like Beethoven's or Bach's.