Franz Schubert in 1825
From a water-color by Wilhelm August Rieder
Franz Theodor found it inexpedient to remain long a widower. Less than a year after the loss of the quiet woman who had been his “deeply treasured wife” he married the daughter of a silk goods manufacturer, the “wertgeschätzte Jungfrau” Anna Kleyenböck, a woman of thirty, twenty years his junior. The entire Schubert family, including the black sheep from the Konvikt, was present at the wedding on April 25, 1813. Five more children were born and this time only one died. Anna Kleyenböck fitted perfectly into the Schubert ménage. Contrary to the tradition of stepmothers she idolized her stepson, Franz, and was no less adored by him in return. Later, when Father Schubert’s pecuniary position somewhat improved, Anna showed herself a model of economy and thrift, always putting what occasional savings the schoolmaster gave her into a woolen stocking! It was from this stocking that she more than once furnished a helping mite to her stepson in his days of need.
Anna Schubert, Franz’ beloved stepmother.
A pencil drawing by von Schwind
Franz’s voice changed in 1812 and logically his days at the Konvikt should have been numbered. But the authorities were by no means anxious to be rid of him and his father would probably have been pleased if he had stayed on. Even the Emperor, to whom representations were made and whose attention the boy’s talents seem to have attracted, agreed that he might remain and take advantage of the “Meerfeld scholarship”—provided he made an effort to improve his standing in mathematics. Franz himself must have realized that to return home meant to court renewed trouble with his father, not to mention the risk of actual starvation. Yet he was so fed up on the Konvikt that about the end of October, 1813, he left what he called the “prison.” His last work written there (it is dated October 28, 1813) was his First Symphony. But he maintained cordial relations with the Seminary for some years, tried out some of his new compositions in the Konvikt music room and preserved his interest in the school orchestra.
The Early Symphonies
This is, perhaps, as good a place as any to consider for a moment the early symphonies of Schubert. One says “early” because Schubert’s symphonic output falls sharply into two distinct halves. Six of them—two in D major, two in B flat, one in C minor and one in C major—belong to the years from 1813 through 1817. They are relatively small in scale, melodically charming, in numerous detail of harmony and color unmistakably Schubertian, yet by and large derivative. They naïvely reflect phraseology and other influences the young composer assimilated from the music he was then studying and hearing. Thus, in the Second Symphony may be heard echoes of Beethoven’s Fourth and jostling one another through the pages of the others are reminiscences (if not outright citations) of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Weber. The Fourth (in C minor) is for some not clearly defined reason entitled Tragic; the Sixth, still more inexplicably, the composer characterized as Grosse (great) Symphonie in C. Perversely enough, it is probably the weakest of the six, the one which least satisfied its creator. Time has paradoxically rechristened this symphony the “little” C major to distinguish it from the great C major of 1828. The Fifth, in B flat, remains with its endearing reminders of Mozart, perhaps the loveliest and most frequently played of all this symphonic juvenilia. Most of these scores, however, are oftener heard today than they were till recent years. For all their (perhaps half-conscious) borrowings they are still palpable Schubert, even if lesser Schubert. Such a master as Dvorak was always ready to break a lance in their behalf and one of his proudest boasts was how often, as Conservatory director in New York, he used to conduct his students’ orchestra in the Fifth of the set.
No sooner was Schubert liberated from the Konvikt than he found himself faced with a worse menace—conscription. Service in the Austrian army was in those days no laughing matter. Its duration was fourteen years and the prospect of such a lifetime of soldiering might have appalled an even less sensitive nature than Schubert’s. There were loopholes, of course, particularly for those who had wealth and position. For those who did not, the best road of escape lay through the schoolroom. Since there was need of teachers, the government exempted them. It almost looked as if the State were conspiring with Father Schubert against his son. Poor Franz Peter had no alternative and so, barely out of the Konvikt, he enrolled in the Normal School of St. Anna for a ten months’ preparatory course to teach a primary class at his father’s school, a chore which was to occupy him for the next three years.
Hateful as he found his labors he seems to have discharged them conscientiously enough. Yet if the Konvikt, where he had numerous friends, was a “prison” what was this? He was only one of many “assistants” and he had to live under his father’s roof, though he did earn forty gulden a year. Was he a good disciplinarian? He himself once confessed to his friend, Franz Lachner, that he was a “quick-tempered teacher,” who when disturbed by the little imps in his class while he composed thrashed them soundly “because they always made him lose the thread of his thought.” His sister, Therese, later told Kreissle von Hellborn (Schubert’s first biographer) that he “kept his finger in practise on the children’s ears.” Another story has it that he was finally dismissed for a particularly smart box on the ear of a particularly stupid girl. Still, when Schubert later applied for another school position Superintendent Josef Spendou commended the applicant’s “method of handling the young.”