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Schubert And His Works - Herbert Francis Peyser · Ernest Hemingway Works Collection

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  Speaker 1: Part one of Schubert and his Work. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by David Wales. Schubert and his Work by Herbert F. Peaser,
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  Speaker 1: Part one Forward and Beginning, and he joins the singer
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  Speaker 1: canobin forward. A sense of helplessness and futility overcomes the writer, who,
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  Speaker 1: in the limits of a volume as unpretending as the
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  Speaker 1: present one, endeavors to give the casual radio listener a
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  Speaker 1: slight idea of Schubert's inundating fecundati and inspiration. Like Bach,
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  Speaker 1: like Heiden, like Mozart, Schubert's capacity for creative labor staggers
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  Speaker 1: the imagination, and like them, he conferred upon an unworthy,
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  Speaker 1: or rather an indifferent generation, treasures beyond price and almost
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  Speaker 1: beyond counting. Outwardly, his life was far less spectacular than
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  Speaker 1: Beethoven's or Mozart's. His works are the mirror of what
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  Speaker 1: it must have been. Spiritually, volumes would not exhaust the
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  Speaker 1: wonder of his myriad creations. If this tiny book serves
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  Speaker 1: to heighten even a little, the reader's interest in such songs, symphonies,
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  Speaker 1: piano or chamber works of Schubert as come to his
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  Speaker 1: attention over the air, it will have achieved the most
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  Speaker 1: that can be asked of it. H. F. P. Schubert
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  Speaker 1: and his work, the most lovable and the shortest lived
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  Speaker 1: of the great composers. Franz Seraph Peter Schubert was doubly
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  Speaker 1: a paradox. He was the only one of the outstanding
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  Speaker 1: Viennese masters, unless one chooses to include in this category
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  Speaker 1: the strauss Waltz King's actually born in Vienna, and though
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  Speaker 1: there has never been a composer more spiritually Viennese, Schubert
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  Speaker 1: inherited not a drop of Viennese blood. His ancestry had
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  Speaker 1: its roots in the Moravian and Austrian Silesian soil. His grandfather,
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  Speaker 1: Carl Schubert, a peasant and a local magistrate, lived in
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  Speaker 1: one of the thirty five towns called Neudorf in Moravian
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  Speaker 1: Silesian territory, and married the daughter of a well to
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  Speaker 1: do farmer, acquiring by the match a large tract of
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  Speaker 1: land and ten children, of whom the fifth Franz Deodore
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  Speaker 1: Florian was destined to beget an immortal at eighteen. Franz Theodore,
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  Speaker 1: who was born in seventeen sixty three, determined to follow
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  Speaker 1: the example of his elder brother Karl and become a schoolmaster.
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  Speaker 1: He went to Vienna and secured a post as assistant
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  Speaker 1: instructor in a school where Karl had already been teaching
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  Speaker 1: for several years. In spite of starvation wages, he married
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  Speaker 1: seventeen eighty five Maria Elizabeth Vitz from Zuchmantel in Silesia,
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  Speaker 1: the very town whence the Schuberts had originally emigrated to Neudorf.
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  Speaker 1: She was a cook, the daughter of a master locksmith,
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  Speaker 1: and she was seven years older than her husband. The
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  Speaker 1: couple had fourteen children, nine of whom died in infancy.
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  Speaker 1: The survivors were Ignatz Ferdinand, Carl, Teresa, and our Franz Peter,
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  Speaker 1: who came twelfth in order. A year after his marriage,
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  Speaker 1: father Schubert was appointed schoolmaster of the parish of the
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  Speaker 1: Fourteen Holy Helpers in Liechtenthal, one of the thirty four
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  Speaker 1: Viennese suburbs or Fortschtetta located at greater or lesser distances
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  Speaker 1: from the inner town, which in those days represented Vienna proper.
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  Speaker 1: The schoolhouse, unless it has been demolished in the late
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  Speaker 1: war still stands. Franz Theeodor took lodgings for himself and
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  Speaker 1: his family a few steps away at the house of
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  Speaker 1: the Red crab Zumdrotenkrebza himofort Grundt seventy two, now noustor
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  Speaker 1: Fristrass fifty four and since nineteen twelve a Schubert museum
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  Speaker 1: owned by the Municipality of Vienna. Here Franz Seraph Peter
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  Speaker 1: was born on January thirty one, seventeen ninety seven, at
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  Speaker 1: half past one in the afternoon. Father Schubert's position was
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  Speaker 1: far from lucrative. In fact, it offered no salary at all,
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  Speaker 1: nothing but a tax of one goulden a month per
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  Speaker 1: child levied on the parents. And yet this inflexible, god
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  Speaker 1: fearing pedagogue imposed such merciless economies and spartan discipline on himself,
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  Speaker 1: his family and his pupils that he not only managed
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  Speaker 1: to make both ends meet, but when Franz Peter was four,
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  Speaker 1: to buy the s schoolhouse where he taught and to
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  Speaker 1: take up his quarters there. In modern times, the little
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  Speaker 1: house had become a garage, though a memorial tablet placed
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  Speaker 1: on it in nineteen twenty eight, reminded the passerby that
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  Speaker 1: Schubert lived and taught there for several years, besides composing
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  Speaker 1: under its roof a number of his works, among them
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  Speaker 1: Der Earl Kernig. Not the least remarkable thing about father
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  Speaker 1: Schubert was the fact that, despite the endless grind of
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  Speaker 1: making a living, teaching and raising a family, he should
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  Speaker 1: have found time to cultivate music. Yet he was a
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  Speaker 1: tolerable amateur cellist and his great son's first music teacher.
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  Speaker 1: After giving the boy elementary instruction in his fifth year
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  Speaker 1: and sending him to school in his sixth, he taught
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  Speaker 1: Franz Pater at the age of eight, the rudiments of
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  Speaker 1: violin playing, and practiced him so thoroughly that the boy
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  Speaker 1: was soon able to play easy duets fairly well. The
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  Speaker 1: youngster was next handed over to his elder brother, Ignatz,
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  Speaker 1: who gave him some piano instruction. But here an uncanny
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  Speaker 1: thing happened. The child showed such an instinctive grasp of
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  Speaker 1: everything his brother tried to teach him that Ignas none plussed,
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  Speaker 1: confessed himself hopelessly outstripped. Franz. For his part, declared he
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  Speaker 1: had no need of help, but would go his own
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  Speaker 1: way in musical matters. Thereupon, his parents entrusted him to
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  Speaker 1: the choir master of the nearby Yatental Parish church, one
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  Speaker 1: Michael Holtzer, who knew something about counterpoint and consumed more
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  Speaker 1: alcohol than was good for him. It was not long
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  Speaker 1: before poor Holtzer was experiencing with his pupil the same
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  Speaker 1: difficulties as Ignots. He had the little fellow sing and
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  Speaker 1: was delighted by his bright voice and his musical accuracy.
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  Speaker 1: He let him accompany hymns on the organ, had him
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  Speaker 1: improvise and modulate back and forth to bught him a
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  Speaker 1: little piano and violin, familiarized him with the viola cleft
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  Speaker 1: and a few principles of thorough bass, but in the
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  Speaker 1: end his labors were largely superfluous. Holtzer admitted that the
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  Speaker 1: lad has harmony in his little finger. A nearby shop
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  Speaker 1: of a piano maker offered a more fertile field for
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  Speaker 1: experiments in harmony. Released from the organ loft, Franz Feter
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  Speaker 1: hurried to this shop and spent hours there forming chords
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  Speaker 1: on the keyboard. He joins the sanger cannabin it is
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  Speaker 1: not impossible that Schubert may have made a few attempts
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  Speaker 1: at composition at this stage, though there is no actual proof.
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  Speaker 1: But a real turning point came on May twenty eighth,
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  Speaker 1: eighteen o eight. On that date there appeared in the
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  Speaker 1: official journal the Wiener Zeitun an announcement that two places
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  Speaker 1: among the choristers of the Imperial Chapel, the so called
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  Speaker 1: Zanger cannabin had to be filled. Father Schubert saw his chance.
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  Speaker 1: A chorister who showed the necessary qualifications could enjoy free tuition,
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  Speaker 1: board and lodging at the Imperial convict Or Seminary, and
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  Speaker 1: if the boy distinguished himself in morals and studies, he
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  Speaker 1: might remain even after his voice had changed. The Convict
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  Speaker 1: was a former Jesuit school, reopened in eighteen o two
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  Speaker 1: by the Emperor Franz and supervised by a branch of
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  Speaker 1: the Jesuits called the Piarists. In addition to ten choristers,
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  Speaker 1: there were pupils of middle and high school standing. The
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  Speaker 1: Convict occupied a long, cheerless building, which in modern times
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  Speaker 1: looked quite as bleak as it did in Schubert's day.
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  Speaker 1: The tests took place on September thirty eighteen o eight,
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  Speaker 1: and the examiners consisted of Antonio Salieri, a prolific opera composer,
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  Speaker 1: an intimate of Gluke and Haydn, a teacher of Beethoven
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  Speaker 1: and an implacable enemy of Mozart, the court Capellmeister Abler,
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  Speaker 1: and a singing teacher at the school, Philip Corner. Schubert
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  Speaker 1: presented himself for the examination wearing a grayish smock, which
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  Speaker 1: caused the other boys to jeer and call him a miller.
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  Speaker 1: But as miller's were popularly supposed to be musical, the
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  Speaker 1: young mockers agreed that he could not fail. They were right.
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  Speaker 1: Not only did he meet all the requirements, but his
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  Speaker 1: voice and musicianship aroused the surprise and enthusiasm of the committee.
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  Speaker 1: Schubert was promptly accepted. In other subjects required as well
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  Speaker 1: as in music, he easily surpassed the other competitors. Not
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  Speaker 1: in vain was he his father's son. So the boy
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  Speaker 1: shed his miller's vesture and put on the fancy gold
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  Speaker 1: rated dogs of the Snangerknbin. In a few days he
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  Speaker 1: was settled at the convict. He was amenable to discipline,
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  Speaker 1: having learned it plentively at home, and does not appear
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  Speaker 1: to have suffered the tribulations of some other convict scholars
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  Speaker 1: who were less conformable and more adventurous. The shyness which
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  Speaker 1: clung to him more or less throughout his life made
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  Speaker 1: him shun his fellow students as much as he conveniently could.
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  Speaker 1: The food was poor and scanty, and even four years
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  Speaker 1: later we find him appealing pathetically to his brother Ferdinand
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  Speaker 1: for a few pennies a month to buy a roll
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  Speaker 1: or an apple as a fortifying snack between a mediocre
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  Speaker 1: midday meal and a paltry supper eight hours later. The
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  Speaker 1: music room at the school was left unheated, hence gruesomely cold.
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  Speaker 1: Anyone who has experienced the unheated corridors of a Viennese
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  Speaker 1: house in winter can shudder in sympathy. But there was
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  Speaker 1: plenty of music, and the school orchestra, in which Schubert
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  Speaker 1: occupied the second desk among the violins, delighted him. Every evening,
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  Speaker 1: this orchestra played an entire symphony and ended up with
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  Speaker 1: the noisiest possible overture. The windows were left open in summer,
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  Speaker 1: and crowds used to collect outside till the police dispersed them.
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  Speaker 1: Because they obstructed traffic. The concerts were conducted by a
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  Speaker 1: singularly lovable old Bohemian organist, viola player and teacher, Venzel Rutzitka,
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  Speaker 1: who at an early date defended and explained some of
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  Speaker 1: the boldest modernisms in Schubert's compositions. The orchestra performed a
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  Speaker 1: good deal of trivial music, but every now and then
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  Speaker 1: there would be works by Heiden, Mozart, Karobini, Mehul and
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  Speaker 1: even some of the less taxing scores of Beethoven. Schubert,
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  Speaker 1: on these occasions felt himself in heaven. He was entranced
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  Speaker 1: by the slow movements of Heiden, but his god was Mozart,
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  Speaker 1: with a subtlety of perception, almost uncanny. And a boy
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  Speaker 1: of tw twelve, he said that the G Minor Symphony
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  Speaker 1: shook him to the depths, without his knowing why, he
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  Speaker 1: called the overture to the Marriage of Figaro the most
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  Speaker 1: beautiful in the whole world, then quickly added, but I
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  Speaker 1: had almost forgotten that to the magic flute. It is
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  Speaker 1: certain that this student orchestra was a most valuable factor
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  Speaker 1: in Schubert's musical education. It was with these young players
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  Speaker 1: in mind that he composed his first symphony in October
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  Speaker 1: eighteen thirteen, at the age of sixteen, at a first
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  Speaker 1: violin desk in front of Schubert, there played another youth
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  Speaker 1: some nine years older, a student of law and philosophy
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  Speaker 1: from Lynz, Joseph von Spahn, and thus began one of
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  Speaker 1: those Schubertian friendships that was to last for life and
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  Speaker 1: play an important part in Schubert's story. Amazed by the
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  Speaker 1: beautiful playing he heard behind him, Spawn looked, looked round
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  Speaker 1: and saw a small boy in spectacles. Not long afterwards
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  Speaker 1: he surprised the youngster in the freezing music room trying
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  Speaker 1: a sonata by Mozart. Franz confided to his sympathetic new
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  Speaker 1: friend that much as he loved the sonata, he found
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  Speaker 1: Mozart extremely difficult to play another acute observation. Then, shy
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  Speaker 1: and blushing, he admitted that he sometimes put his thoughts
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  Speaker 1: into notes. However, he trembled lest his father get wend
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  Speaker 1: of the fact. For while Franz Theodore had no objection
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  Speaker 1: to music as a pastime, and also had every reason
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  Speaker 1: to be satisfied that it paid for his son's education
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  Speaker 1: and kept a roof over his head, he had other
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  Speaker 1: plans for him. In mind, the real business of the
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  Speaker 1: young man's life was to be schoolmastering, no two ways
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  Speaker 1: about it, so Franz Peter had need to be wary. Besides,
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  Speaker 1: there was another obstacle to his composing music. Paper was
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  Speaker 1: scarce and costly. He did it is true, rule staves
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  Speaker 1: on paper himself, but even ordinary brown paper was not plentiful.
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  Speaker 1: So the generous spawn, though of a rather restricted budget,
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  Speaker 1: bought paper out of his own allowance and did not
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  Speaker 1: remonstrate when Schubert used up the precious commodity by the ream.
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  Speaker 1: The only difficulty now was that Franz composed in study
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  Speaker 1: hours and fell back in his schoolwork, a fact that
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  Speaker 1: was not slow in coming to his father's notice. And
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  Speaker 1: yet the records of the convict do not show that
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  Speaker 1: Schubert was a poor student. At various times certificates signed
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  Speaker 1: by the school director father Innocence long pronounce him good
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  Speaker 1: or very good in almost everything, while in Greek he
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  Speaker 1: is even described as eminent. Somewhat later, when at normal school,
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  Speaker 1: preparing to teach in his father's schoolhouse, his weaker subject
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  Speaker 1: were mathematics, Latin and practical religion. However, not all the
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  Speaker 1: parental thundering could keep nature from taking its course, even
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  Speaker 1: if it temporarily embittered Franza's young life. Father Schubert, at
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  Speaker 1: one stage went so far as to forbid his son
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  Speaker 1: to enter his house. The lad had been in the
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  Speaker 1: habit of going home on Sundays and holidays and there
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  Speaker 1: taking part in string quartet concerts with his father and
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  Speaker 1: his brothers Ignaz and Ferdinand Schubert, himself occupying the viola
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  Speaker 1: desk and being the real director of the ensemble. He
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  Speaker 1: roughly scolded his brothers when they blundered, but cautiously corrected
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  Speaker 1: Franzteodore's errors with nothing more scathing than he faute, something
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  Speaker 1: must be wrong here. Now. This diversion was denied him,
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  Speaker 1: and he suffered. Not until May twenty eight, eighteen twelve,
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  Speaker 1: was he permitted to return to the Lichtenthal Roof Tree,
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  Speaker 1: and then only because as a tragic event softened the
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  Speaker 1: paternal heart. On that corpless Christie day, Franz's mother died
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  Speaker 1: of typhus, or as they called it, then nerve fever,
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  Speaker 1: the same malady which sixteen years later was to carry
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  Speaker 1: off Franz himself. In due course, the chamber music sessions
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  Speaker 1: were resumed, and in time they outgrew their humble environment.
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  Speaker 1: And of Part one, Part two of Schubert and his
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  Speaker 1: Work by Herbert F. Peyser. This LibriVox recording is in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. Part two, The Earliest Compositions and the
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  Speaker 1: Early Symphonies. Let us look back briefly to consider a
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  Speaker 1: few of Schubert's early creative accomplishments. How many experimental efforts
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  Speaker 1: preceded his earliest extant compositions. We can only surmise his
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  Speaker 1: first surviving one is a foehand piano fantasy, thirty two
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  Speaker 1: pages long, running to more than a dozen movements, with
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  Speaker 1: frequent changes of time and key. A little later, on
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  Speaker 1: March thirty, eighteen eleven, he began his first vocal composition,
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  Speaker 1: an immensely products affair called Hagar's Klage to, a discursive
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  Speaker 1: poem about Hagar lamenting her dying child in the desert.
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  Speaker 1: With its varying rhythms, its pathetic slow introduction, its elaborate allegro,
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  Speaker 1: and its passionate prayer, it shows the influence of the
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  Speaker 1: popular German ballad master Johann Rudolph Zunstig, who had himself
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  Speaker 1: composed the same text. Not only Zumsteig, but composers like
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  Speaker 1: Reichhardt and Gerty's friend Zelter exercised molding influence on Schubert
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  Speaker 1: in his formative stage. A setting of Schiller's leichten Fantasie
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  Speaker 1: is carried out on much the same lines, and d
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  Speaker 1: So was a ballot their fodder murder to a text
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  Speaker 1: by Faithful. And there were other things besides long trailing ballads,
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  Speaker 1: an orchestral overture in D, a so called quartet overture
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  Speaker 1: and quintet overture, an andante, and a set of variations
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  Speaker 1: for piano three string quartets in changing keys. Schubert wrote
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  Speaker 1: seven quartets in all during his convict days, thirty minuets
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  Speaker 1: with trio for strings, German dances, some four part cyrieres
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  Speaker 1: for the Leitental Church, and other matters bearing the dates
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  Speaker 1: eighteen eleven and eighteen twelve. The good Rusica, finding himself
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  Speaker 1: unable to teach his young charge anything he did not know,
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  Speaker 1: already handed him over to Salieri, who began to give
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  Speaker 1: him lessons in counterpoint. On June eighteenth, eighteen twelve, Schubert
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  Speaker 1: made a record of the date he must have profited
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  Speaker 1: by Salieri's instruction, or he would hardly have remained his
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  Speaker 1: pupil all of five years as he did. One circumstance
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  Speaker 1: may astonish us that he briefly suffered himself to be
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  Speaker 1: swayed by the prejudice Salieri harbored against Beethoven. Yet, when
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  Speaker 1: Salieri celebrated his fiftieth year of musical activities in eighteen sixteen,
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  Speaker 1: Schubert made a slighting entry in his diary about certain
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  Speaker 1: bizarreries of modern tendencies. That this could have been only
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  Speaker 1: a passing aberration is clear from the fact that Beethoven
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  Speaker 1: remained his divinity and his despair to his dying day.
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  Speaker 1: He once told his friend Spawn, there are times when
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  Speaker 1: I think something could come of me, But who is
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  Speaker 1: capable of anything after Beethoven. Indeed, Beethoven remained to such
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  Speaker 1: a degree an obsession of his that the older master's
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: name was almost the last word he ever uttered. Franz
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Teudor found it inexpedient to remain long a widower. Less
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  Speaker 1: than a year after the loss of the quiet woman
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  Speaker 1: who had been his deeply treasured wife, he married the
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  Speaker 1: daughter of a silk goods manufacturer, the Bertzgchet Daunfrau on
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  Speaker 1: a Climburg, a woman of thirty twenty years his junior.
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  Speaker 1: The entire Schubert family, including the black sheep from the Convict,
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  Speaker 1: was present at the wedding. On April twenty five, eighteen thirteen.
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  Speaker 1: Five more children were born, and this time only one died.
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  Speaker 1: On a Climbrook fitted perfectly into the Schubert menage. Contrary
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  Speaker 1: to the tradition of stepmothers, she idolized her step son
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  Speaker 1: Franz and was no less adored by him in return. Later,
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  Speaker 1: when father Schubert's pecuniary position somewhat improved, Anna showed herself
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  Speaker 1: a model of economy and thrift, always putting what occasional
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  Speaker 1: savings the schoolmaster gave her into a woolen stocking. It
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  Speaker 1: was from this stalking that she more than once furnished
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  Speaker 1: a helping might to her step son in his days
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  Speaker 1: of need. Franz's voice changed in eighteen twelve, and logically
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: his days at the Convict should have been numbered, but
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  Speaker 1: the authorities were by no means anxious to be rid
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  Speaker 1: of him, and his father would probably have been pleased
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  Speaker 1: if he had stayed on, even the Emperor, to whom
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  Speaker 1: representations were made, and whose attention the boy's talents seemed
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  Speaker 1: to have attracted, agreed that he might remain and take
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  Speaker 1: advantage of the Marefold scholarship, provided he made an effort
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  Speaker 1: to improve his standing in mathematics. Franz himself must have
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: realized that to return home meant to court renewed trouble
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  Speaker 1: with his father, not to mention the risk of actual starvation.
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  Speaker 1: Yet he was so fed up on the convict that
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  Speaker 1: about the end of October eighteen thirteen, he left what
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  Speaker 1: he called the prison his life. Vust work written there
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  Speaker 1: it is dated October twenty eighth, eighteen thirteen, was his
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  Speaker 1: first symphony, but he maintained cordial relations with the seminary
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  Speaker 1: for some years, tried out some of his new compositions
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  Speaker 1: in the convict music room, and preserved his interest in
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  Speaker 1: the school orchestra. The early symphonies. This is perhaps as
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  Speaker 1: good a place as any to consider for a moment
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  Speaker 1: the early symphonies of Schubert. One says early because Schubert's
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  Speaker 1: symphonic output falls sharply into two distinct halves, six of
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: them two in D major, two in B flat, one
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: in C minor, and one in C major. Belong to
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: the years from eighteen thirteen through eighteen seventeen. They are
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: relatively small in scale, melodically charming in numerous detail of
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: harmony and color, unmistakably Schubertian, yet by and large derivative
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: de naive reflect phraseology and other influences the young composer
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: assimilated from the music he was then studying and hearing. Thus,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: in the second symphony may be heard echoes of Beethoven's
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: fourth and jostling one another through the pages of the
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: others are reminiscences, if not outright citations of Heiden, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Weber.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: The fourth in C minor is, for some not clearly
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: defined reason entitled tragic. The sixth still more inexplicably, the
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: composer characterized as Groza Great Symphony in C. Perversely enough,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: it is probably the weakest of the six, the one
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: which least satisfied its creator. Time has paradoxically rechristened this
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: symphony the Little C Major to distinguish it from the
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Great C Major of eighteen twenty eight. The fifth in
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: B flat remains with it endearing reminders of Mozart, perhaps
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: the loveliest and most frequently played of all his symphonic juvenilia.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Most of these scores, however, are oftener heard to day
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: than they were till recent years. For all there perhaps
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: half conscious borrowings, they are still palpable Schubert. Even if
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: lesser Schubert, such a master as de Vorgak, was always
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: ready to break a lance in their behalf, and one
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: of his proudest boasts was how often, as conservatory director
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: in New York he used to conduct his student's orchestra
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: in the fifth of the set. No sooner was Schubert
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: liberated from the convict than he found himself faced with
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: a worse menace. Conscription service in the Austrian Army was
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: in those days no laughing matter. Its duration was fourteen years,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: and the prospect of such a lifetime of soldiering might
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: have appalled an even less sensitive nature than Schubert's. There
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: were loopholes, of course, particularly for those who had wealth
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: and position. For those who did not, the best road
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: of escape lay through the school room. Since there was
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: need of teachers, the government exempted them. It almost looked
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: as if the state were conspiring with father Schubert against
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: his son, Poor Franz Peter had no alternative, and so
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: barely out of the convict, he enrolled in the normal
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: school of Saint Anna for a ten months preparatory course
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: to teach a primary class at his father's school, a
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: chore which was to occupy him for the next three years.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Hateful as he found his labors, he seems to have
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: discharged them conscientiously enough. Yet if the convict, where he
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: had numerous friends, was a prison, what was this He
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: was only one of many assistants, and he had to
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: live under his father's roof. Though he did earn forty
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: gulden a year. Was he a good discipline He himself
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: once confessed to his friends Franz Lockner that he was
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: a quick tempered teacher who, when disturbed by the little
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: imps in his class while he composed, thrashed them soundly
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: because they always made him loose the thread of his thought.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: His sister Teresa later told kreisolvon Helbon, Schubert's first biographer,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: that he kept his finger in practice on the children's ears.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Another story has it that he was finally dismissed for
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: a particularly smart box on the ear of a particularly
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: stupid girl. Still, when Schubert later applied for another school position.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Superintendents Josef Spendu commended the applicants a method of handling
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: the young. While he was at the Saint Anna School,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Schubert composed, among a quantity of other things, his first
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: complete Mass and his first opera. The former in f
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: is the more important of the two. It was written
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: for the limited resources of the Leichtenthal parish church, which
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: on October fourteenth, eighteen fourteen, celebrated its centenary. In mind,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: the work of the seventeen year old composer was heard
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: with unconcealed pleasure. He conducted it himself. His former teacher
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Hultzer led the choir, and the soprano solois was Teresa Grobe,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: a year younger than Schubert and daughter of a Lechtental
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: merchant who lived around the corner from father Schubert's schoolhouse.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Ten days later, the Mass was repeated in the Church
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: of Saint Augustine in the Imperial Hofburg. This performance seems
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: to have aroused even more enthusiasm and good will than
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: the first. Salieri proudly pointed to the boyish composer as
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: his own pupil, and Franz Theodore, now that he knew
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: his son safely caged in a class room, made him
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: a present of a five octave piano. The mass itself,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: a tenderly felt, lyrical, simple work, is sensitive and promising,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: rather than something epoch making, such as the composer was
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: soon to achieve in the less pretentious province of the
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: solo song. A word about Teresa Grope, who more or
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: less properly figures in Schubert's story as his first love.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Her family was refined and musical, and Franz Peter, who
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: was a visitor in the Grope household, may have found
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: there some of the same sympathy and understanding the young
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Beethoven did in the home of the von Bernings. Certainly,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: he composed a number of things for Teresa and her
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: brother Heinrich. His friend Holzapfel declares that Teresa was no beauty,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: but shapely, rather plump, with a fresh, round little face
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: of a child. In after years, Schubert told Anselm hutten
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Bruner that he had loved her very deeply. She was
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: not pretty, he said, and was pop marked, but good
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: to the heart. He had hoped to marry her, but
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: could find no position which would insure him the means
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: to support a wife. Her mother, having decided it was
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: no use to wait for a penniless composer to become
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: a somebody made her take a well to do baker instead.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Poor Schubert told his friend this had greatly pained him,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: and that he loved her still, but added philosophically, as
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, she was not destined for me.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Did Schubert, we may ask, really contemplate marriage. If he did,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: how are we to understand an entry he made in
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: his diary in eighteen sixteen, Marriage is a terrifying thought
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to a free man. Actually, Schubert's life was devoid of
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: what might be described as urgent affairs of the heart. Outwardly,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: at least one will seek vainly, in his case, for
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the periodic transports of a Beethoven, or even the passing
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: dalliances of a Mozart. Friendships, rather than passionate orders, were
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Schubert's specialties, and his friendships with women were quite as
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: sincere as with men, and had the same basis of
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: sentimental conviviality. Hutenbrenner had small reason to chaff his companion,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: as he once did for being so cold and dry
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: in society towards the fair sex. Certainly the delightful frilic
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: sisters whom we shall meet shortly did not find him dry.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: It is so easy to mistake shyness for coldness, And
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: if Schubert was anything, he was diffident, sometimes tragically so.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Opera had exercised a strong attraction on Franz Peter. Even
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: while he was a student at the Convict. He used
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: to accompany Swahn to the kert Notur Teatre whenever holidays
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: or the state of a SPAN's purse permitted. The friends
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: sat in the top gallery and heard operas like Weigel's
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: schweitzer Familia, Pontini's Vestal, Karubini's Medea Badieus Jean de Paris,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: and Gluck's Iphiginia in Paris. Among the great singers Schubert
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: heard in this way were Pauline Milder and Johan Michael Vogel,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Both artists were soon to become his friends. Fogel indeed
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: the high priest of his songs. What wonder then, that
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Schubert planned an opera of his own. In May eighteen fourteen,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: while at the Saint Anna's School, he completed a natural
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: magic opera in three acts. He called Des jeufels lust
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Schloss The Devil's Pleasure Palace. The libretto was by a
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: popular dramatist of the time, Oguste Kurtzbeu, who could hardly
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: have attached much importance to it, or he would never
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: have permitted an unknown beginner to compose it. The piece
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: was the first of a pageant of ugly Ducklings, an
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: operatic progeny of sorrow destined to span Shubert's life from
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: his school days to his grave. If we add up
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: his works for the stage, completed fragmentary, partly sketched or lost,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: in less than a decade and a half, we shall
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: arrive at the astonishing total of eighteen And today there
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: is almost nothing to show for all this heart breaking industry,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: because an ancient and largely untested tradition calls Schubert's operas
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: undramatic and otherwise poor theater. Possibly they are, but how
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: many now living can speak of a Schubert opera from
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: actual experience. Des teufels Lustschloss was never performed in Schubert's Vienna,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: though Prague was once on the point of staging it.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: The plot has to do with the adventures of an
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: impecunious Count Oswald, who, on the way to his tumbled
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: down castle with his wife, stops at a wayside inn. There,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: the peasantry of the neighborhood entreats the night to free
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: a nearby ruin from ghosts and other spooky visitants. He consents, and,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: together with his squire a kind of Sancho Panza, penetrates
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: the infested premisses. The specters take him captive and subject
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: him to grisly tests, the worst of which is a
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: command to marry a ghostly but extremely substantial Amazon, who
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: suddenly appears on the scene. In despair, Oswald springs into
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: the abyss and lands in the arms of his wife.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Her wealthy uncle, it transpires, being displeased with his niece's
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: marriage to the penniless count, has arranged the whole ordeal
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: as a test of Oswald's fidelity, with the help of
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: his gardener's books and daughter, the Amazon and machines of
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: all kinds brought at considerable expense from foreign parts. It
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: should be remembered, however, that such extravagances were habitual ingredients
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: of innumerable magic plays and comedies, which for generations, indeed,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: for centuries formed the stock in trade of the Vienny
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: suburban theater, and the most sublimated outgrowth of which was
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Mozart's Magic Flute. Moreover, not the effect of such a
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: wild tale in the reading, but in performance on the
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: stage in a theater before an audience, is the proof
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: of the pudding. The same with the text. A specimen
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: of the poetry of Besteufels Luchtlos is the ensuing of
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Count Oswald's squire, I'm laughing. I'm crying. I'm crying. I'm laughing.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: I'm laughing. Ha ha ha, I'm laughing. He he he,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: I'm laughing. Ho ho ho, I'm laughing, Ho ho. The
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: test of such a thing is not the verbiage, but
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the composer's treatment of it. There is no question here
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: of a masterpiece, any more than there is in the Mass,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: or indeed in the various orchestral or chamber works he
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: had produced the thus far. It was different, however, with
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: the song lead, which he was turning out in effortless abundance.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: He had made settings, among other things, of poems by Schiller,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Fuque mathieson Adelaide, for one, though smoother more lyrical and
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: less varied in its mood than Beethoven's famous song. Then,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: on October nineteenth, eighteen fourteen, the birthday of the German
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: lead it has been called, there comes like a bolt
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: from the blue, the epoch making gretchem Amspindrada from gertis faust.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: It is a simple plaintive melody above a murmuring spinning
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: wheel figure and a pulsing rhythmic throb but nevertheless a
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: marvel of jointless form and a miracle of psychology, the
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: emotional experience of ages concentrated into one hundred bars of music,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: of such infinite art and uncanny perfection that it almost
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: defies analysis. As if a gigantic dam had burst, a
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: torrent of immortal master songs now begins to pour forth.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Not everything, to be sure, either now or later, is
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: a deathless creation, but the number of those that are
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: will probably remain baffling to the end of time. Schubert
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: frequently made two, three or more settings of one and
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: the same text, differing in greater or lesser degree from
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: the earlier one, though not invariably better than the preceding
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: version of the more than six hundred literer Schubert composed
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: almost a third or such resettings. It was nothing unusual
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: for him to turn out four or five six songs
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: a day. When I finish one, I begin another. Was
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: his carefree way of describing the incredible process. Sometimes he
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: even forgot which songs were his own. I say, that's
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: not a bad one who wrote it? He once asked,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: on hearing something he had composed only a few days before.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: He was careless too about what became of some of
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: his manuscripts, and there is no telling how much posterity
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: may have lost as a result. Once he came near
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: ruining a page on which he had written his song
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Di Farella by pouring ink instead of sand over the
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: wet writing. Being sleepy, he did not bother to notice
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: which receptacle he had picked up. End of Part two,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Part three of Schubert and his Work by Herbert F. Peaser.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part three
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: der Erlkernig. In the year following Gretchen Amspindrada there came
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: into being, and once more in his father's school at
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: the Soulengos, what is in some ways perhaps the most
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: famous of Schubert's songs to Earl Kernig Spahn, who went
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: to visit his friend one afternoon found him all aglow
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: a book in hand reading Gerta's ballad. Schubert walked up
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: and down the room several times, suddenly seated himself at
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: a table, and in the shortest possible time the splendid
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: ballad was on paper. Franz having no piano, the pair
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: hastened down to the convict, where the song was tried
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: out that very evening. Several listeners objected to the sharp
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: dissonances of the accompaniment to the child's cry, but it
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: was none other than old Rusica who showed himself the
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: best modernist of them all, actually championing the cacaphony, explaining
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: its artistic function and praising its beauty. Schubert himself had
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: a pair of sore wrists from the unmerciful triplets of
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: the piano. Not everywhere, one regrets to say, did der
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Earl Kernig create such a stir. At the insistence of
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: his friends, Schubert sent it, along with some other songs
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: to Gerta with an appropriate dedication. His excellency in Weimer
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: did not even deign to acknowledge it. Meanwhile, the publishing
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: firm of Breitkopf and Hertel, to whom Schpan also dispatched
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: the ballad, thought that someone was playing a practical joke.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Before deciding what to do with wild stuff, they addressed
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: themselves to a draised and violinist who chanced also to
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: be called Franz Schubert. He composed a trifling piece called
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: the Bee, which some fiddlers still play, and asked his
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: opinion the saxon Franz or Francois Schubert exploded, insisted he
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: had never composed the cantata in question, but would see
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: who was misusing his good name for such a patchwork
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: and promptly bring the misgres to book. Piano composition echosizes,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: German dances, Deutsche variations, sonatas a number of string quartets
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: and other chamber music swelled the ever increasing output. The
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: quantity of songs mounted like a tidal wave, and although
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: nothing had come of Desteufels Luschlos, part of which the
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: composer moved by purely artistic impulses, even went so far
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: as to rewrite, Schubert continued the woeful job of piling
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: up unwonted operatic scores. He wrote Der Firrierekapolsten, the story
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: of a sentry who was posted and not relieved on
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: the departure of his regiment, and who, when it returned
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: four years later, still stood on duty. Fernando A Singspiela
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Claudine Fon Villa Bella de frind of On Salamanca, and
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: adrast text by Johann ma Ierhofer. And while we are
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: on the operetic subject, let us look ahead into the
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: years of Schubert's maturity and list what other operas he wrote.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: It should be understood by the way that certain of
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: these are more on the order of operettas than what
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: we understand by lyric dramas. In eighteen nineteen he composed
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: the Schillingsbreweder, which has a plot a long comedy of
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: errors lines. In eighteen twenty a magic and machine comedy
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: called Disauberharfa the Magic Harp, the overture of which is
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: familiar to us as the Rosamunde, though the overture which
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Schubert used three years later to the musical play of
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: that name, was the introduction that prefaced a full length
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: romantic opera Alfonso Untistrella dated eighteen twenty one. An actual
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: overture to Rosamunda was never written. The piece known universally
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: by that title was not so designated till eighteen twenty seven,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: when it was published in an arrangement for piano duet.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Other operatic works we may cite in passing r. D. Ferschwarenen,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: a treatment of the Lisstrada motif, and the large scale
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: heroic romantic opera Fear of Gross, composed in the summer
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: of eighteen twenty three. After eighteen twenty three, Schubert let
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: opera alone, at least temporarily. On his deathbed, he was
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: still planning another Algraf von Gleichen to a book by
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: his boon companion Edward von Bauenfeld, but the project had
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: never gotten beyond some sketches. Meierhoffer, whom we just mentioned,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: had made Schubert's acquaintance in eighteen fourteen. When the composer
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: set to music his poem Amzi, a close friendship immediately
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: sprang up between them. The Meierhoffer, the older of the
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: two by ten year years, was of a moody, brooding nature.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: He subsequently committed suicide by jumping out of a window
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: by eighteen nineteen, Schubert, having grown heartily sick of schoolmastering
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: some time before, went to share for a time the somber,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: dilapidated quarters of Meerhoffer in the Wippinger's Thossa. The danger
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: of the army draft was now over, and the pair,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: for all their temperamental differences, hid it off famously. Although
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Schubert composed pretty much anywhere and everywhere, he accomplished a
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: prodigious amount of creative work In Meerhoffer's depressing room. The poet,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: on opening his eyes in the morning, used to see
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Franz clad only in shirt and trousers, writing vigorously at
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: a rickety table. His favorite working hours were from six
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: in the morning till noon, though he was in the
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: habit of sleeping with his spectacles on in case the
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: lightning of inspiration should strike him the minute he awoke.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: If any visitor came unannounced, Schubert would greet him, without
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: looking up from his work, with the words greetings, how
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: are you well, whereupon the intruder realized it was an
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: invitation to disappear. After writing all morning, Schubert, like a
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: true Viennese, usually went to enjoy the incomparable relaxation of
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: a coffee house, drinking a melange cafe oles, eating kipferl
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: crescents if you prefer smoking, and reading the newspapers. In
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: the evening, there was the opera and the theater, provided
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: one had money or somebody bought the tickets, or else.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: The gatherings of the clans at the various grastoeuzer, Stambeizel
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: and taverns, the friends discussed questions of the day, literature, plays, music.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: They criticized each other's work with unsparing frankness. Schubert's uncommonly
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: keen musical of opinions were relished by everybody. Although Schubert
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: wished to have done with teaching as soon as possible,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: he attempted, perhaps to placate his father, to obtain a
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: pedagological post in a normal school at Libach. He was
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: turned down in favor of some local applicant, which was
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: no doubt just as well. Had it been otherwise, the
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: brilliant coterie of Schubertians might have been nipped in the bud,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: and the term shubertiides, as they called their revels and
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: their discussions had it entered the dictionary at all might
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: have had another meaning. Who were these Shubertians? This group
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: of younger and older intellectuals and bohemians held together somehow
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: by the indefinable attraction of Schubert's personality. They came and
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: went with the years, and when one or another vanished,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: a different one would generally take his place. kN r
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: vas what's he good att was Franz's usual query if
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: a newcomer appeared, a question which earned him the nickname Aknavas.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Virtually all who stepped into the charmed circle were good
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: at something. Among the most prominent were Swahn Meerhoffer, Statler
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Zen and later Maritz von Schwind, the painter, the Kupfelweiser
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: brothers Leopold and Joseph, Josef Guy, Carl Enders, the Poematteis Colin,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: the Bluestocking novelist Kawenene Pichner, Edward von Barnfeld, Franz von
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Schober decide. Only a handful that come to mind. Schober,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: particularly who wrote, drew, acted and was in every sense
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: a clever man of the world, played a considerable role
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: in Schubert's life. Some even hint a rather nefarious one.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Still he was well to do. His rooms were at
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Franz's disposal whenever he needed them, and he introduced the
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: composer to the great Michael Vogel. The latter, whom Schubert
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: had long worshiped at the opera, was not only one
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: of the greatest baritones of his time, but a singular
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: and romantic creature who became a social favorite on the
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: strength of his handsome face and figure. Developed some harmless affectations,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: yet remained a mystic at heart. He passed much of
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: his spare time reading the Bible, Plato, Epictetus, and other
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: ancient and medieval poets and philosophers. He greeted Schubert in
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: the condescending manner assumed by some popular artists when they
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: first met aspiring beginners. He seemed unimpressed on glancing over
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: the first song or two Schubert put before him, but
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: after reading through Daryl Earlkernig, he patted the composer on
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: the back, remarking as one not wholly dissatisfied. There something
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: in you, but you're too little of an actor or
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: a charlatan. You squander your fine thought without developing them.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: Yet before long he had become Schubert's chief interpreter and propagandist,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: and spoke grandly of these truly godlike inspirations, these revelations
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: of musical clairvoyance. The chamber music concerts given on Sundays
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: at the Schubert homestead in Lichtenthal had outgrown their strictly
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: domestic character quite some time before. Father Schubert had been
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: transferred late in eighteen seventeen to a new school in
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: the neighboring Rosau district. The string quartet had expanded into
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: a small orchestra and now performed symphonies and such in
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the homes of several musical acquaintances, lastly in that of
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: a wealthy landowner, Anton Ptenkopfer, who lived in the inner town,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: not far from Saint Stephen's. It was for this amateur
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: orchestra that Schubert composed at least four of his early symphonies.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: The occasional absence of drums and trumpets in the fifth,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: for instance, indicates the constitution of the orchestra. At different times,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Schubert himself occupied a viola desk, delighting, like Mozart and
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Bach before him, to be in the middle of the
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: harmony up to eighteen eighteen, there had not been what
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: one might describe as public performances of Schubert's works other
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: than church music. On March one, there occurred the first
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: of these, at a musical declamatory academy, that is to say,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: a miscellaneous concert organized by a violinist Edward Jael. One
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: of Schubert's pieces heard was a so called Italian overture.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: It was surprisingly well received by the critics, and in
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: less than three weeks other Schubert overtures were heard in
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: Vienna at similar entertainments. One aristocratic hearer prophesied in type
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: and correctly, as it proved that Schubert's works would occupy
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: an advantageous place among the productions of the present day.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: Only a little earlier, Franz had the satisfaction of seeing
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: a composition of his appear for the first time in print.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: It was a setting of Meierhofer's poem onm er Lafsey,
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: and it was published in a kind of pictorial guide
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: for friends of interesting localities in the Austrian monarchy. Financially,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Schubert reached in the spring of eighteen eighteen a rather
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: desperate pass, as he was earning nothing and could not depend, everlastingly,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: on his friends. So when the father of the singer
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Caroline Umer recommended him to Count Johann Estrahausi of Galanta
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: as piano teacher for his two young daughters, Schubert accepted
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: out of sheer need, much as he detested teaching of
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: any kind. The summer estate of this branch of the
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: Estrahazi family was at Zeldst in the sad Hungarian Slovakian frontierland,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: actually not far from Vienna, but for Schubert the farthest
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: away he had ever been. The pay was not generous,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: but at least board and lodging were free. The country
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: was a relief after the summer heat in Vienna. The
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Estrahazis and their friends were not unmusical. The daughters, Maria
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: and Caroline were thirteen and eleven, respectively, whom Schubert found
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: amiable children. He is now and then represented as having
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: been in love with Caroline. If he really was, it
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: could only have been on his second visit to Zaliitz
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty four, when she had become a young
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: lady of seventeen. Like Heiden, Schubert was quartered with the servants,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: which does not seem greatly to have irritated him. Despite
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: the boorishness of certain grooms, a pretty chambermaid, he wrote home,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: sometimes kept him company. The chief annoyance came from the
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: cacklings of a nearby flock of geese. One man whom
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Schubert met at Zalitz was destined to become as inspired
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: and outstanding an interpreter of his songs as vogel Karl
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: Fraheil von Shenstein, whose singing of Schubert later drew tears
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: of emotion from Liszt. He brought to the more lyrical
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: songs an extraordinary artistry, sensitiveness, and devotion. The Chernamullern cycle
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: in particular was to be his specialty, and Zaliz, both
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: now and a few years afterwards, enriched Schubert still further
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: by fertilizing his inspiration with Slavac and Hungarian folk music.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: I compose and live like a god, he wrote his
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: brother Ferdinand, though to Schobert he speaks in a less
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: exuberant strain. However, the Estrahazis and Shenstein sang not a
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: little of Schubert's music, and also ventured on more or
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: less of Heidn's creation and seasons, as well as upon
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: the whole of Mozart's Requiem. Strangely enough, though he had
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: far more time to write songs during these care free
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: months than he had some years earlier, he wrote appreciably fewer.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: His maturing genius was about to take other directions. Schubert
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: returned to Vienna in November in a jubilant mood. This
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: was the period when Joseph Heughtenbrenner, brother of the shrewder
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Onselm and sometimes rather irritating to the composer by the
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: injudiciousness of his enthusiasm. Everything I write seems to please him,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: said Schubert. Querulously made it his business to collect from
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: near and far every manuscript of France he could lay
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: his hands on. In this manner, Josef recovered fully a
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: hundred songs, a fortunate thing for posterity, though at the
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: time it buttered no bread and paid no bills. Enselm,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: for his part, went with Schubert in a remote gallery
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: seat to the first performance of the latter's opera d Zevellingsbruder.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: The applause warranted the composer's appearance for a curtain call,
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: but he declined to take it because of the shabby coat.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: He war Anselm wanted Franz to put on his for
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: a moment, but Schubert declined, glad perhaps to escape even
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: a brief lionizing, so he merely sat back and smiled
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: wistfully when Vogel came forward to tell the audience that
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: the author was not in the house. One of Schubert's
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: most influential acquaintances about this time was Leopold son Leiitner,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: a member of a noted Viennese musical family. It was
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: through Son Leiightner that Schubert came to know the poet
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: Heinrich Boncollen, and in his circle the composer met men
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: like the so called music Count Dietrichstein, the poet and
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: Bishop Ladislaus Pricker, Patriarch of Venice, court Secretary Ignaz von Mosel,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: and others we qualified to be his patrons and helpers,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: had he but exerted himself to gain their assistance and
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: good will. Better still, Son Lightner introduced him to the
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: foe enchanting Freelish sisters, whose father had been a merchant
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: of considerable means, Hossephina, Kati, Barbara and Anna Frilich Viennese.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: To the corps were uncommonly musical. All four sang well,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: three of them taught, and Barbara painted miniatures. One prominent
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: guest of this delightful household was the poet Franz Grillparzer,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: who long outlived Schubert and wrote his epitaph Son Lightner
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: cleverly brought some of Schubert's songs to the Furlish home
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: before introducing the composer in person, and whetted the curiosity
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: of the sisters to such a degree that the stage
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: was ideally set for his entrance. Katye Frilich tells of
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: Schubert's joy when at music not necessarily his own, particularly
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: pleased him. He would place his hands together and against
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: his lips, and sit as if spellbound. Once, after hearing
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: the sisters sing, he exclaimed, now I know what to do,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: and shortly afterwards brought them a setting of the twenty
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: third Psalm for four women's voices and piano. Another time,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Anna Ferlich appealed to Schubert to set some verses of
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Grillparzer's as a birthday serenade to one of her pupils,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: Louis Cosmer Schubert glanced at the poem a couple of times,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: murmuring how beautiful it is, and then announced, it is
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: done already, I have it. A few days later he
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: returned with the serenade zurgand Eliza, and the charming piece
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: was sung shortly afterwards beneath Louise Gosmer's window. Characteristically, Schubert
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: forgot to come, and he almost missed his work on
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: a later occasion when it was sung at a concert
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: devoted wholly to his compositions. When he finally did hear it,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: he seemed like one transfixed. Truly, he murmured, I did
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: not think it was so beautiful. And of Part three
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Part four of Schubert and his Work by Herbert F. Peyser.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part four,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: the sketch Symphony, and the unfinished The Schubertiides were not
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: invariably indoor affairs in spring and summer. They took the
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: shape of longer or shorter excursions, jaunts into the suburbs
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: or even farther out into the country, with picnicking, dancing,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: ball playing, charades and what not. If music of one
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: sort or another was needed, Schubert was always ready to
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: provide it. One of the most charming sights of these frolics,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: which sometimes lasted several days, was the hamlet of Otzenbrug,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: an hour or so from Vienna, and it was here
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: that Schubert produced a delightful set of dances, the Altembrueger Deutsche.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: It may have been at Altembrug as well that Schubert
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: composed in August eighteen twenty one, a symphony in four movements,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: sketched out but never completed. This is not, of course,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: the two movement torso, which the world calls the unfinished.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: The sketch symphony in E major with a slow introduction
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: in E minor is unfinished in a different sense. The
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: first hundred and ten measures are complete in every detail.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: The rest of the work is carried out only melodically,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: though with bar lines drawn, timpi and instrumentation indicated, harmonies,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: accompaniment figures and basses inserted, and each subject given in full.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: The autograph remained at Schubert's death in the keeping of
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: his brother Ferdinand, who later gave it to Mendelssohn, whose
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: brother Paul presented it to Sir George Grove. He in
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: turn permitted his friend, the English composer John Francis Barnett,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: to complete the work, and in this form it was
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: first produced in London in eighteen eighty three. Only a
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: little over ten years ago. The late Felix Weingartner finished
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: it according to his own lights, but in a style
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: far less Schubertian than Barnett's conscientious piety. We have no
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: means of knowing why Schubert never bothered to carry out
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: in full, so elaborately projected a work, nor have we
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: of his failure to complete the Immortal Unfinished. Whatever theories
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: may be advanced are purely speculative. Schubert left large quantities
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: of unfinished work chamber music, piano, sonatas, operas, so why
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: not symphonies? In some cases he may simply have forgotten
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: certain of his creations, as he had a manner of doing.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: In others, he we may have lost interest. For others
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: still lacked time. Explanations may be plausible, Yet wholly wide
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: of the mark is the Unfinished Symphony unfinished because it
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: has only two movements? Are Beethoven's two movement sonatas in
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: any manner unfinished that a one hundred and thirty bar
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: fragment of a Scherzo exists, does not mean we have
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: a right to decide it would have been inferior. We
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: have no way whatever of knowing what Schubert would have
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: done with a partial sketch. For that matter, piano sketches
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: of the first and second movements of the Unfinished Symphony
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: have actually come down to us. Could we, from an
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: examination of them, tell what the final product would be
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: like if we were not familiar with it? From what
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: we can judge of the sketch symphony its style proves
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: it a bridge between the six early symphonies of Schubert
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: and the two later ones. We say two were there adventure? Three? Yes,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: if there was indeed a gastein symphony of which nobody
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: has ever found a trace. Though some serious Schubert students
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: have believed and still believe in it, many have been
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: confused by the manner that has prevailed for years of
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: numbering the last two of Schubert's symphonies, the Unfinished and
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: the Great C Major of the Heavenly Length. Why is
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: the sea major sometimes called the seventh, sometimes the ninth,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: the unfinished, now the eighth, now the seventh In reality,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: the answer is simple. In order of composition, the sketch
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: Symphony is the seventh, the unfinished, the eighth, the C
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: major of eighteen twenty eight, the ninth. In order of publication,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: the great C Major is the seventh, the unfinished, which
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: was not discovered until eighteen sixty five, the eighth, the
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: sketch Symphony, not published till eighteen eighty three, the ninth.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: The consequence of leaving the sketch Symphony out of one's
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: calculations is obvious. However, if we maintain that Schubert did
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: write a Gastein symphony in eighteen twenty five, we find
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: ourselves obliged to number that legendary Opus nine, whereupon the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: C major becomes number ten, the unfinished. As for the
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: B Minor Symphony, the sweet grief burdened, nostalgic, unfinished. The
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: fable has prevailed for years that it was written as
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: a thanks offering to the Styremichscher Music Verine of Gratz,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: which had elected Schubert to membership and of which Anselm
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: Heutenbrenner was artistic director. As a matter of fact, the
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: date on the title page of the manuscript is October thirty,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: eighteen twenty two, but not till April tenth, eighteen twenty
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: three was Schubert proposed for membership in the society, and
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: not till September eighteen twenty three was the composer informed
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: of his election. He wrote a letter to Graz promising
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: to send the Music Varigne as a token of his gratitude,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: the score of one of his symphonies, but it was
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: not until a year later that, prodded by his father,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: who was shocked by the idea that a son of
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: his had waited so long to thank the Society worthily,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: he gave Josef Huttenbrenner the score of the B Minor
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: Symphony to deliver to Anselm in Graz. So much for facts,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: we may as well pursue the epic of the unfinished
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: to its close. We do not know whether Anselm ever
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: showed the symphony to the Society, and there is no
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: record that he mentioned it to a soul, though he
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: is said to have made a piano arrangement of the
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: symphony for his own use. Not till eighteen sixteen did
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: Josef Houttenbrenner speak of it to Johann Ebek, conductor of
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: the Vienna Society of the Friends of Music, and five
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: more years were to elapse before her Beck, on a
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: visit to Gras, obtained the score from Anselm on the
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: plea of wanting to produce some new works by Huttenbrenner,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: Lochner and Schubert. On December seventeenth, eighteen sixty five, Vienna
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: heard the unfinished for the first time. The autograph shows
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: no trace of any dedication to the Gras Music Society
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: or to anybody else, but from the start the symphony
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: was acclaimed an undefiled masterpiece. End of Part four Part
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: five of Schubert and his work by Herbert F. Peiser.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part five
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: the Rosamundo obchure to his death in eighteen twenty three,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: the same year in which Schubert brought to paper the
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: operas d Ferschwornen and Firebras, he wrote for a romantic
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: play called Ro Rosamunda Princess of Cyprus by the half
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: mad poetis Helmin Vonchese, a number of vocal and instrumental
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: pieces which are perhaps the best loved samples of theater music.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: He ever composed. The play itself was a sorry failure,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: had exactly two performances, though Schubert gallantly assured the unfortunate
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: librettist that he considered her work excellent, and the book
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: was lost. The overture we call Rosamunda today, and which
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: had been written originally for the Magic Harp, was never
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: used to preface the work whose name it has borne
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: for generations, was in fact not entitled Rosamunda till later.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: The one with which Schubert had prefaced Helmin Bonchesi's drama
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: was the introduction he had used for Alfonso und Estrella.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: There are lovely and striking things in the Rosamunda score,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: a soprano romanza, an ensemble for spirits, and two other choruses,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: as well as some ballet music and various entroes. The
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: third interlude brings us that deathless melody which seems to
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: have haunted Schubert's imagination, and reappears in the slow movement
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: of the A minor quartet and the B flat impromptu
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: for piano. The Rosamundi score disappeared from view for more
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: than forty years, and the tale of its recovery belongs
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: to the exciting legends of music. Like most legends, even
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: this one needs to be qualified. The story usually goes
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: that the englishmen George Grove and Arthur Sullivan, in eighteen
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: sixty seven came upon the manuscript in a dusty cupboard
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: at the Viennese home of doctor Eduard Schneider, husband of
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: Schubert's sister Teresa. What the two British explorers found in
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: that famous closet were the complete orchestral and vocal parts
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: of the score, which made clear the correct sequence of
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: the pieces, and supply certain accompaniments which had been missing.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: But Grove himself records that, besides the atrox in B
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: minor and B flat, and the ballet numbers two and nine,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: which we had already acquired in eighteen sixty six, we
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: had found at mister Spina's the publisher and antrocta after
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: the second act, and a Shepherd's melody for clarinet, bassoon
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: and horn. But we still required the total number of
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: pieces and their sequences in the drama. For all his
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: difficulties and privations, Schubert's health had been up to eighteen
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: twenty three, perhaps the least of his worries, but early
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: in that year he had been ailing, and soon his
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: illness took a serious turn. Confined to his lodgings at first,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: he was presently taken to the general hospital. He became
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: darkly despondent and wrote to his friend Leopold Kupelwaser a
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: mournful letter in which he alluded to himself as a
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: man whose health can never be right again, whose fairest
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: hopes have come to nothing, who wishes when he goes
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: to sleep never more to waken, who joyless and friendless
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: passes his days. A little later, he sets down in
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: his diary the bitter reflection there is none who understands
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: the pain of another, and none his joy. Nor is this,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: by any means his only pessimistic entry. The exact nature
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: of Schubert's malady has never been definitely established, even by
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: modern medical authorities who have studied the case. We know
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: that his hair fell out, and that till it grew
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: in again he had to wear a wig. Some have
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: hinted at irregularities of one sort or another. At different
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: times he complained of headaches, vertigo, and high blood pressure.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: His condition was to improve greatly in the course of time,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: but he was never again wholly well. The melancholy of
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: Schubert was surely not lessened by his dealings with publishers,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: who took the most despicable advantage of his woeful inexperience
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: in business affairs. Diabelli once persuaded him to sign over
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: for a mere eight hundred gulden all his rights in
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: a set of works. The publisher and later his successor,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: made twenty seven thousand gulden on the Wonder of Fantasy.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: For piano alone, Schubert got exactly twenty about ten dollars.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: Another Viennese firm went so far as to ask him
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: to sell them his compositions at the most favorable starvation
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: rate paid a beginner, while publishers in Germany were, if anything,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: even worse. Yet, when Schubert had a few dollars in
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: his pocket, he thought nothing of spending a part of
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: it on tickets for himself and his friend Bauenfeld for
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: a concert by Paganini, whose spectacular violin playing excited Schubert
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: quite as much as it did the rest of Vienna.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: In spite of illness and discouragement, many of his works
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: at this time rank among his very greatest. There are,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: first of all the twenty three songs of the Chernameleeran cycle,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: the unhappy story of the love of a youth for
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: a miller's daughter who jilts him for a greenclad hunter,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: containing such lyrics as a voheen und ungadould, which have
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: virtually become folk songs, The piano sonatas Opus one forty three,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: the famous octet written for an amateur clarinetist, Count Troyer
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: and after a few hearings, put away and forgotten till
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: eighteen sixty one. And that sweetest and most tender of
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: Schubert's chamber music works, the A Minor Quartet, with its
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: lovely Rosamunde melody, the indescribable lilt of its minuet, and
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: the Slavic and Hungarian influences in its finale. He was
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: to experience more of these influences the summer of eighteen
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: twenty four, for at that time he went once again
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: to the Estrahauses and Zealotz. The country air and the
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: quiet life of the place, in addition to regular meals
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: and comfortable quarters, exercised a recuperative effect. Moreover, the Countess
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: Caroline was now a slightly young lady of seventeen. Possibly
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: Schubert was not indifferent to her charms, but his letters
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: to his father and his brother Ferdinand make it clear
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: that he was homesick and often decidedly blue. Still, he
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: wrote some admirable music at Zalitz, the de vtisimon a l'engreise,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: the stunning grand Duo for four hands, the Sonata for
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: arpeggione and piano, and thoughts of a great symphony more
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: imposing than any he had composed so far began to
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: occupy his mind. He had heard also that Beethoven intended
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: to give a concert at which his ninth Symphony would
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: be produced, and he wrote to koupolviser, if God wills,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: I am thinking next year of giving a similar concert.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: In May eighteen twenty five, Vogel invited Schubert to accompany
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: him on an outing, which proved to be the longest
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: trip he was ever to take. Franz brought with him
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: a number of compositions finished and unfinished, among them settings
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: of songs from Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: of which the albe Maria is one of the best
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: loved things he ever wrote. The friends revisited the haunts
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: of their previous journey. But this time Vogel took Schubert
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: further to Camuden on the transay in the Salzkommergut to Salzburg,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: then southward as far as vod Gustein. All along the
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: way there was no end of music, making, charming new acquaintances,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: hospitable folk who threatened to kill the travelers with kindness.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: Schubert cut up all manner of music capers on occasion.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: One of his favorite pranks was to give a performance
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: of Der Erlknich on a comb covered with paper. He
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: was careful not to forget his parents. In an affectionate
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: letter to his father, he asked chafingly if his brother
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: Ferdinand had not been ill seventy seven times again, and
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: surmises that he has surely imagined at least nine times
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: that he was going to die, as if death were
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: the worst thing that could befall one. He suddenly exclaims,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: growing serious, could Ferdinand only look on these divine lakes
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: and mountains which threaten to crush and overwhelm us, he
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: would no longer love this puny human life, but deem
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: it a great happiness to be restored, for a new
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: life to the inscrutable forces of the earth. It is
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: a question how pleased father Schubert was with this pantheistic
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: declaration of his sons. When Franz was in zealous, Ferdinand
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: had warned him against discussing religious matters when writing to
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: his parent. Curiously enough, Schubert passed through Salzburg without any
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: allusion to his idle Mozart. In Gushtein, he found time
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: to complete the great Piano Sonata in D and to
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: write several songs, one of them a setting of Ladislaus
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: prickers di Almacht, a grandiose musical duplication of that statement
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: of faith he had fearlessly written his father at this
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: health resort. Furthermore, Schubert is supposed to have completed that
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: famous Goshstein's Symphony, of which nobody has ever been able
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: to find a trace. All manner of theories have been
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: advanced with respect to this mysterious work. Some of Schubert's
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: intimates have insisted that the composer worked on it in
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: the summer of eighteen twenty five and intended it for
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: a benefit concert by the Vienna Society of the Friends
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: of Music. Others charged them society, with negligence resulting in
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: the loss of the score, while still other investigators have
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: imagined that the Grand Duo composed a year earlier might
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: be an unorchestrated version of the missing score, or else
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: that Schubert had merely contemplated a revision of the early
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: sixth symphony with which he had never been satisfied. Whether
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: the hypothetical Gustein or the subsequent C Major of eighteen
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: twenty eight represents the great symphony to which Schubert aspired,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: we have no way of knowing. In eighteen twenty six
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: a conductor's post had become free, and although Schubert had
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: not long before turned down an organ position offered him,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: probably because he did not like the idea that his
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: freedom might be curtailed, he did apply for this conductorship,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: Attracted by the moderate salary it promised. It was not
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: Schubert who got it, but the popular mediocrity Josephel. How
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: little Schubert harbored jealousy is clear from his satisfaction that
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: the job had gone to so worthy a man as Vigel.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: Then a vacancy occurred at the Kertnertor Theater. The candidate
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: for a minor conductor's post had to submit a specially
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: composed dramatic air for the singer Nanette Schechner, and of
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: course Schubert did so. But the Schechner, we are told,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: demanded changes in the music, and Schubert peremptorily refused to
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: make them. In spite of passionate entreaties and a spectacular
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: fainting fit by the soprano. The composer pocketed his score
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: and walked off coldly, announcing I will change nothing. So
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: things remained about as they were true. The Friends of
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: Music in eighteen twenty five had permitted him to substitute
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: for a viola player at some of their concerts, after
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: first rejecting his plea to do so on the ground
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: that he made a living of music and that professionals
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: were ineligible. Thus, when in the summer of eighteen twenty
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: six he would have liked to go once more to Lynz,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: there was no money for him to go anywhere. He
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: had to content himself with the suburb of veering, and
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: to aggravate matters it reigned for a month. All the same,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: eighteen twenty six was a year of significant works. In
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: June Schubert composed within ten days his last string quartet,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: the vast and almost orchestrally colored one in G major.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: During the preceding winter he had written what is undoubtedly
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: the most familiar of his quartets, the D Minor, the
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: slow movement of which consists of those variations on his
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: song Death and the Maiden, which are among the supreme
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: variations of musical literature. Further, there were the melodically blooming
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: B flat trio for piano by Elyn and cello, the
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: lovely G major piano sonata, the rendeu briant for violin
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: and piano, and numerous songs, among them the two Shakespearean
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: settings Hark Hark the Lark and Who is Sylvia? Almost
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: everybody who has ever interested himself in Schubert is familiar
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: with the fable about the origin of hark Hark the Lark.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: How one day Schubert picked up a volume of Shakespeare
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: in a Berring beer garden, and how after skimming through Cymbeline,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: he suddenly exclaimed, A lovely melody has come into my head,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: if only I had some music paper. Whereupon a friend
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: drew some staves on the back of a bill of fare,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: and the song was instantly written. Unfortunately for legend, the
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: song was written originally not on a bill of fare,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: but in a small note book including a number of
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: other compositions, one of them on the reverse side of
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: the very page containing Hark Hark the Lark. What seems
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: a likelier story is that Schubert wrote it in Schven's
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: room while the latter was trying to draw his picture.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: March eighteen, twenty seven was the date of Beethoven's death.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: Shubert was one of the torch bearers at the funeral.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: Back from the varying cemetery, he went with some friends
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: to a coffee house in the inner town. The gathering
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: was in a solemn yet exalted mood. Schubert filled his
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: glass and drank a toast to him we have just buried,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: then another to him who will be next? Did that
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: strange clairvoyance in which Michael Vogel once said he composed
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: his music show him, in mystic vision that his own
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: sands had just twenty months more to run. But before
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: this he still had a little worldly journey to make,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: and a pleasant one. Carl Pocklar, a cultured and musical lawyer,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: and his wife Marie Leopold Dean Koshak, an accomplished pianist
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: whom Beethoven admired, invited Schubert to visit their home in Graz.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: The honored guest was to have been Beethoven, but shortly
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: after his passing Maria Koshak expressed a desire to know Schubert,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: whose importance she fully realized. So, accompanied by his friend Jenger,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: who some years earlier had brought him his notice of
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: membership in the Styrian Musical Association, he went in September
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: eighteen twenty seven to Graz, in the home of the Pocklers.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: Schubert passed a happy, carefree, inspiring time. There was no
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: end as sociability, music, picnics, excursions. He was even introduced
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: to a local celebrity named Franz Schubert, who had a
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: reputation as a folk song singer and who rendered Styrian
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: folk melodies for his p and ees namesake. The Music
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: Society gave a concert in honor of its visiting member,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: who also went to the theatre with Anselmon to hear
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: an early opera of Meyerbeer's, though after the first act
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: he protested, I can't stand it any longer. Let's get
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: out into the air. He played his own Alfonso Untestrella
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: to an operatic conductor who made wry faces over its difficulties,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: so that Schubert ended by leaving the score with Pockler,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: who kept it until eighteen forty one. Several songs were
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: composed at Gras, also a quantity of waltzes and gallops.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: Franz left Grass, promising to come back another year, which
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: was never to dawn. It is probably unlikely that at
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: the gathering of the Schubertians on New Year's Eve, Schubert realized,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: as poignantly as some may imagine, that he was standing
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: on the threshold of his last year on earth. But
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: the winter was hard. There was little or no money,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: and it seemed likely that the good stepmother up in
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: the Rosseau schoolhouse had to help out with the caccasional
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: pennies from the household stocking. To be sure. A little earlier,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: the Friends of Music had elected Schubert a member of
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: the representative body of the society, and the composer felt
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: much honored. But such honor would not buy a meal.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: Even when half starved. Schubert contrived to work between January
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: and November eighteen twenty eight, he turned out some of
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: the most incomparable songs he ever composed. Yes, even though
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: planning to give up such trifling matters as Leader issued
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: posthumously under the collective title Schwana Gazang The Great Symphony
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: and C Major of the Heavenly Length the score as
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: dated March eighteen twenty eight, A Cantata, the three Wonderful
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: Piano sonatas an A C minor and B flat, that
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: towering monument of chamber music, the C major string quintet,
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: the mass in E flat. He had written a so
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: called mysa Solemnis and a A flat as far back
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: as eighteen twenty Besides a quantity of smaller masses and
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: much else. He devoted himself to the E flat mass
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: with such intensity that Josef Hettenbrenner described him as living
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: in his mass, the Supreme Leader. One is tempted to say.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: The most grandiose and prophetic of all the odd six
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: hundred he wrote are the settings of six poems from
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: Heinrich Heine's Buch der Lieder, which had just come to
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: his notice. They are Am Meyer der Dopelginger, di Stadt
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: der Atlus and ear Built anticipations of the whole song
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: technique of the nineteenth century. The C major symphony is
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: without its like in the whole range of music, and
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: by one magical penstroke Schubert made it even a greater
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: thing than when he first conceived it. The autograph score
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: shows that by the substitution of a denatural for a
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: g in the theme of the first allegro, the composer
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: transformed what was scarcely more than a rhythm into one
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: of the great symphonic subjects of all time. But he
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: was never to hear the work. It came to a
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: rehearsal by the friends of music, was found too difficult
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: and overloaded, and on the composer's own advice, dropped in
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: favor of the sixth the Little C Major. And yet
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: it was the one symphony of its time which could
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: have endured the sunlight of Beethoven, undiminished and unashamed. Exactly
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: a year after Beethoven's death, Schubert at last gave the
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: concert of his own works that he meant if God
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: wills to give some day. It was the urging of
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: Bouenfeld and other friends which finally caused things to materialize.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: The idea was that, if all went well, Schubert might
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: offer his private concert annually, and the rascally publishers would
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: long last be singing a different tune. His friends rallied
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: nobly to his aid. Vogel sang else. The phene Firleich
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: Pupils gave Louise Gosmer's birthday serenade. There was a chamber
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: music and a male chorus. The musik vadein hall was packed,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: encores were innumerable, the applause would not end, and best
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: of all, there was a clear profit of more than
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: half a hundred dollars. The only fly in the ointment
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: was that no critics came, though several foreign publications carried
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: flattering accounts, but the little wealth quickly ebbed away Again.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: There were futile bickerings with publishers. Schubert would have liked
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: to go to Groz once more, but Baden and excursions
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: to nearby Grinsing and Severing were as much as he
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: could allow himself. Headaches and other symptoms of a year
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: before troubled him alarmingly. His doctor advised him to leave
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: the stuffy center of town for some place where where
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: he could have plenty of fresh country air, so in
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: September he moved to a house in the Noi of
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: Eden section, where his brother Ferdinand had taken rooms. The
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: building was new, still damp and unhealthy. Aside from a
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: pilgrimage to Heiden's tomb at Eisenstadt and some annoyances with
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: the publisher's shot, both September and October were uneventful. Suddenly,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: while at dinner one day in the Liechtental, neighborhood of
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: his birth, he threw down his fork, shouted that the
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: food tasted like poison, and refused to eat further. Probably
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: nobody suspected a serious illness, let alone a fatal one.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: At that Schubert did not immediately take to bed. He
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: dragged himself a few days later to hear a requiem
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: by his brother, shortly before which he had been fearfully
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: agitated by a first hearing of Beethoven C. Major Minor quartet.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: Yet so little does his condition appear to have worried
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: him that he went to the theorist Simon Sector to
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: arrange for instruction and counterpoint. His intimates and a study
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: of Handel's oratorials having supposedly persuaded him of his deficiencies
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: in that branch of technique. Nothing came of the project.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: By November twelve, he wrote Schober that he is sick,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: has eaten nothing in eleven days, and can do no
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: more than crawl from his bed to a chair, and
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: he implores his friend to procure him reading matter, preferably
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: Fenimore Cooper. The sickness made rapid inroads, though he continued
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: to toy with the operatic scheme of the Count of
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: Glyphen and carefully corrected the proofs of his withinther eyesa cycle.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: Soon he became delirious, and the doctors held a consultation.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: The diagnosis was nerve fever or typhus, the same sickness
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: which had carried his mother. Pathetically, he begged his brother
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: not to leave him in this corner underground, and when
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: the anguished Ferdinand assured him he was in his own room,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: he insisted, no, that's not true. Beethoven is not here.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: A little later he turned his face to the wall
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: and murmured, we are told here here is my end.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: The days of affliction, wrote Father Schubert to Ferdinand lie
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: heavy upon us, and he presently made in the old
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: list of births and deaths in the Schubert family. The
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: entry with the mortuary cross Franz Peter Wednesday, November nineteenth,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: eighteen twenty eight, at three o'clock in the afternoon of
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: nerve fever, buried Saturday, November twenty two, eighteen twenty eight.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: It was Ferdinand who decided that his brother should, in
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: death be brought closer to Beethoven than ever he had
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: been in life. And since Beethoven was not there where
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: Schubert would ordinarily have been buried, Ferdinand saw to it
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: that Franz should rest as close to his divinity as
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: an intervening grave or two permitted. They were destined, in
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: the process of time to lie closer still. For threescore
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: years later, the two masters were exhumed and placed side
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: by side in two of those graves of glory in
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: Vienna's great Central Cemetery. Music has buried here a rich treasure.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: But Fairer hopes read the epitaph which Grillpartzer set on
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: the original tomb in the varying cemetery. Fairer hopes, indeed,
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: how could Grillpartser know what even the wisest musical heads
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: of his day did not know? Eleven years after Schubert died,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: all Paris was said to be astounded at the posthumous
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: diligence of a songwriter who, while one might think his
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: ashes repose in Vienna, still making eternal new songs. It
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: took decades to reveal the incalculable richness of this treasure,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: and even now the world is not finally aware of
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: its fullness. Another deathless master, Robert Schumann, gave the world
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: Schubert's C Major Symphony, redeeming it from Ferdinand's heaped but
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: silent horde of unprinted, nay unsuspected scores who can do
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: anything after Beethoven. The half starved convict student had wistfully asked,
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: here was at least one triumphant answer made by Schubert himself,
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: at a distance of only eight months from his early tomb.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: End of Part five End of Schubert and his Work
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: by Herbert Payser