Schubert and His Work

by Herbert F. Peyser

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!”

The “Sketch Symphony”

The “Schubertiads” were not invariably indoor affairs. In spring and summer they took the shape of longer or shorter excursions, jaunts into the suburbs or even farther out into the country, with picnicking, dancing, ball-playing, charades and what not. If music of one sort or another was needed, Schubert was always ready to provide it. One of the most charming sites of these frolics (which sometimes lasted several days) was the hamlet of Atzenbrugg, an hour or so from Vienna, and it was here that Schubert produced a delightful set of dances, the Atzenbrugger Deutsche. It may have been at Atzenbrugg, as well, that Schubert composed in August, 1821, a symphony in four movements, sketched out but never completed. This is not, of course, the two-movement torso which the world calls the Unfinished. The Sketch Symphony in E major (with a slow introduction in E minor), is unfinished in a different sense. The first 110 measures are complete in every detail. The rest of the work is carried out only melodically, though with bar lines drawn, tempi and instrumentation indicated, harmonies, accompaniment figures and basses inserted and each subject given in full. The autograph remained at Schubert’s death in the keeping of his brother Ferdinand who later gave it to Mendelssohn, whose brother, Paul, presented it to Sir George Grove. He, in turn, permitted his friend, the English composer, John Francis Barnett, to complete the work and in this form it was first produced in London, in 1883. Only a little over ten years ago the late Felix Weingartner finished it according to his own lights but in a style far less Schubertian than Barnett’s conscientious piety.

We have no means of knowing why Schubert never bothered to carry out in full so elaborately projected a work. Nor have we of his failure to complete the immortal Unfinished. Whatever theories may be advanced are purely speculative. Schubert left large quantities of unfinished work—chamber music, piano sonatas, operas; so why not symphonies? In some cases he may simply have forgotten certain of his creations (as he had a manner of doing), in others he may have lost interest, for others, still, lacked time. Explanations may be plausible yet wholly wide of the mark. Is the Unfinished Symphony unfinished because it has only two movements? Are Beethoven’s two-movement sonatas in any manner “unfinished”? That a 130-bar fragment of a scherzo exists does not mean we have a right to decide it would have been “inferior”—we have no way whatever of knowing what Schubert would have done with a partial sketch. For that matter, piano sketches of the first and second movements of the Unfinished Symphony have actually come down to us. Could we, from an examination of them, tell what the final product would be like if we were not familiar with it?

From what we can judge of the Sketch Symphony its style proves it a bridge between the six early symphonies of Schubert and the two later ones. We say two—were there, peradventure, three? Yes, if there was indeed a Gastein Symphony, of which nobody has ever found a trace though some serious Schubert students have believed and still believe in it. Many have been confused by the manner that has prevailed for years of numbering the last two of Schubert’s symphonies—the Unfinished and the great C major of the “heavenly length.” Why is the C major sometimes called the Seventh, sometimes the Ninth, the Unfinished now the Eighth, now the Seventh?

Title-page of a collection of dances arranged for the piano by leading composers of the period. Included were three of Schubert’s early pieces.

In reality, the answer is simple. In order of composition the Sketch Symphony is the Seventh, the Unfinished the Eighth, the C major of 1828, the Ninth. In order of publication the great C major is the Seventh, the Unfinished (which was not discovered till 1865), the Eighth, the Sketch Symphony (not published till 1883), the Ninth. The consequence of leaving the Sketch Symphony out of one’s calculations is obvious. However, if we maintain that Schubert did write a Gastein Symphony in 1825, we find ourselves obliged to number that legendary opus Nine, whereupon the C major becomes Number Ten!