Where Schubert got his musical genius from is a mystery. His father was a schoolmaster, whose first wife, Schubert’s mother, was a cook. The couple had fourteen children and an income of $175. If this income is somewhat disproportionate to the size of the family, it yet is fortunate that they had fourteen children instead of only thirteen. Otherwise there would have been one great name less in musical history, for Schubert was the fourteenth.
He was born in Vienna in January, 1797. His thirty-one years—for this genius who so enriched music lived to be only thirty-one—were passed in poverty. His father was wretchedly poor, and his own works, when they could be disposed of at all to publishers, were sold at beggarly prices. Now they are universally recognized as masterpieces and are worth many times their weight in gold.
Too Poor to Buy Music Paper.
Shortly before he was twelve years old, Schubert, who had been singing soprano solos and playing violin in the parish choir, was sent to the so-called Convict, the Imperial school for training boys for the Court chapel. During his five years there his progress was so rapid that even before he was fourteen years old he was occasionally asked to substitute for the conductor of the school orchestra. Life, however, was hard. He had no money with which to buy even a few luxuries in the way of food to eke out the wretched fare of the Convict, nor music paper. Had it not been for the kindness of a fellow pupil and friend, named Spaun, he 233 would not have been able to write down and work out his ideas.
When his voice changed, the straitened family circumstances obliged him to become an assistant in his father’s school. He was able to bear poverty with patience, but not the drudgery of teaching, and he is said often to have lost his temper with the boys. Altogether, he taught for three years, 1815 to 1818; and while his work was most distasteful to him, his genius was so spontaneous that during his three years he composed many songs, among them his immortal “Erlking.” Finally a university student, Franz von Schober, who, having heard some of Schubert’s songs, had become an enthusiastic admirer of the composer, offered him one of his rooms as a lodging, whereupon Schubert, straightway accepting the offer, gave up teaching and from that time to the end of his brief life led a Bohemian existence with a clique of friends of varied accomplishments. In this circle he was known as “Canevas,” because whenever some new person joined it, his first question regarding the newcomer was “Kann er wass?” (Can he do anything?)
Outside a small circle of acquaintances, Schubert remained practically unknown until he made the acquaintance of Johann Michael Vogl, an opera singer, to whom his devoted friend, Von Schober, introduced him. Vogl was somewhat reserved in his opinion of the songs which he tried over with Schubert at their first meeting, but they made an impression. He followed up the acquaintance and became the first professional interpreter of Schubert’s lyrics. “The manner in which Vogl sings and I accompany,” wrote Schubert 234 to his brother Ferdinand, “so that we appear like one on such occasions, is something new and unheard of to our listeners.” Publishers, however, held aloof. Five years after the “Erlking” was composed, several of them refused to print it, although Schubert offered to forego royalties on it. Finally, some of Schubert’s friends had the song published at their own expense, and its success led to the issuing of eleven other songs, Schubert unwisely accepting eight hundred florins in lieu of royalty on these and the “Erlking.” Yet from one of these songs alone, “The Wanderer,” the publishers received twenty-seven thousand florins between the years 1822 and 1861.
How the “Erlking” was Composed.
Schubert being the greatest of song composers, and the “Erlking” his greatest song, the circumstances under which it was written are of especial interest. His friend Spaun, the same who provided him with music paper at the Convict, relates that one afternoon toward the close of the year 1815 he went with the poet Mayrhofer to visit Schubert. They found the composer all aglow, reading the “Erlking” aloud to himself. He walked up and down the room several times, book in hand, then suddenly sat down and as fast as his pen could travel put the music on paper. Having no piano, the three men hurried over to the Convict, where the “Erlking” was sung the same evening and received with enthusiasm. The old Court organist, Ruziczka, afterward played it over himself without the voice, and when some of those present objected to the dissonance 235 which occurs three times in the course of the composition and depicts the child’s terror of the Erlking, the old organist struck these chords and explained how perfectly they reflected the spirit of the poem and how felicitously they were worked out in their musical resolution.
Schubert’s song is almost Wagnerian in its descriptive and dramatic quality. The coaxing voice of the Erlking, the terror of the child, the efforts of the father to allay his boy’s fears, each has its characteristic expression, which yet is different from the narrative portions of the poem, while in the accompaniment the horse gallops along. Schubert was but eighteen years old when he set this ballad of Goethe’s to music; yet there is no more thrilling climax to be found in all song literature than those dissonances which I have mentioned and which with each repeat rise to a higher interval and become each time more shrill with terror. Whoever has heard Lilli Lehmann sing this song should be able to appreciate its real greatness, as Goethe, who had remained utterly indifferent to Schubert’s music, did when the “Erlking” was sung to him by Frau Schroeder-Devrient, to whom he exclaimed: “Thank you a thousand times for this great artistic achievement. When I heard this song before I did not like it at all, but sung in your way it becomes a true picture.”