Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/335

SCHUBERT. that he had shown to Beethoven 15 years before, making him write to Metastasio's words, and correcting the prosody of his music. But there must have been some curious attraction about the old man, to attach two such original geniuses as Beethoven and Schubert to him, and make them willing to style themselves 'scholars of Salieri.' His permanent influence on Schubert may be measured by the fact that he warned him against Goethe and Schiller, a warning which Schubert attended to so far as to compose 67 songs of the one poet, and 54 of the other!

Franz's next effort was an opera—a light and absurd supernatural 'opéra comique' in 3 acts, 'Des Teufels Lustschloss,' words by Kotzebue. He probably began it while at the Convict, the first act having been completed Jan. 11, 1814; the second, March 16; and the third, May 15. Two days afterwards he began the mass. That over, he had leisure to look again at the earlier work. The experience gained in writing the mass probably revealed many an imperfection in the opera. He at once rewrote it, and finished the redaction of it on Oct. 22. The work has never been performed, nor can it now ever be so, since the second act, like the MS. of the first volume of Carlyle's French Revolution, was used by an officious maid-servant for lighting the fires as late as 1848. With all these and other labours he found time to visit the Convict in the evenings, take part in the practices, and try over his new compositions. Besides the pieces already mentioned, the productions of 1814 embrace a Salve Regina for tenor and orchestra. Also 2 string-quartets in D and C minor, still in MS., and a third in B♭, published as op. 168, and remarkable for the circumstances of its composition. It was begun as a string trio, and ten lines were written in that form. It was then begun again and finished as a quartet. The movements are more fully dated than usual. Also 5 minuets and 6 Deutsche (or waltzes) for strings and horns; and 17 songs, among them 'Gretchen am Spinnrade' (Oct. 19), and Schiller's 'Der Taucher,' a composition of enormous length, begun Sept. 1813, and finished in the following August. On Dec. 10 he began his second symphony, in B♭. The autograph shows that the short Introduction and Allegro vivace were finished by the 26th of the same month, but its completion falls in 1815. Before the year closed he made the acquaintance of Mayrhofer, a man of eccentric, almost hypochondriac character, and a poet of grand and gloomy cast, who became his firm friend, and 54 of whose poems (besides the operas of 'Adrast' and 'Die beiden Freunde von Salamanca'), fortunately for Mayrhofer's immortality, he set to music—some of them among his very finest songs. The acquaintance began by Schubert's setting Mayrhofer's ' Am See.' He composed it on the 7th December, and a few days afterwards visited the poet at his lodgings in the Wipplinger Strasse 420 (since destroyed), a small dark room rendered illustrious by being the residence of Theodore Körner, and afterwards of Schubert, who lived there in 1819 and 20. The visit was the beginning of a friendship which ended only with Schubert's death.

1815 is literally crowded with compositions. Two orchestral symphonies of full dimensions, Nos. 2 and 3 (that in B♭ ended March 24, that in D, May 24–July 19); a string quartet in G minor (March 25–April 1); PF. sonatas in C, F, E (Feb. 11) and E (Feb. 18); an adagio in G (April 8), 12 Wiener Deutsche, 8 Ecossaises (Oct. 3), and 10 variations for PF. solo; a masses, in G (Mar. 2–7) and B♭ (Nov. 11–); a new 'Dona' for the mass in F; a Stabat Mater in G minor (April 4); a Salve Regina (July 5); 5 large dramatic pieces—'Der vierjährige Posten, 1-act operetta ( ended May 16); 'Fernando,' 1-act Singspiel( July 3–9); 'Claudine von Villabella,' 3-act Singspiel (Act i, July 26–Aug. 5), originally composed complete, but Acts 2 and 3 perished in the same manner as the 'Teufels Lustschloss'; 'Die beiden Freunde von Salamanca,' a 2-act Singspiel by Mayrhofer (Nov. 18–Dec. 31); 'Der Spiegelritter,' 3-act opera, of which 8 numbers are with the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde at Vienna; perhaps also a Singspiel called Die 'Minnesänger,' and 'Adrast,' an opera by Mayrhofer, of which but two numbers exist. In addition to all these there are no less than 137 songs—67 printed, and 70 still in MS. In August alone there are 29, of which 8 are dated the 15th, and 7 the 19th! And of these 137 songs some are of such enormous length as would seem to have prevented their publication. 'Minona' (MS., Feb. 8), the first one of the year, contains 16, and 'Adelwold and Emma' (MS., June 5) no less than 55 closely written sides. Of those published, 'Die Bürgschaft' ('Aug. 1815') fills 22 pages of Litolft's edition, 'Elysium' 13, and 'Loda's Gespenst' 15 of the same. It was the length of such compositions as these—'pas une histoire, mais des histoires'—that caused Beethoven's exclamation on his deathbed: 'Such long poems, many of them containing ten others,' by which he meant as long as ten. [See p. 346b.] And this mass of music was produced in the mere intervals of his