Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/353

SCHUBERT. at Zselész on this as on the last occasion, and frequent and exquisite must have been the performances of the many fine songs which Schubert htiil written in the interval since his former visit.

The circumstances attending the composition of the vocal quartet ('Gebet,' op. 139) just mentioned are told by Kreissle, probably on the authority of Schönstein, and they give a good instance of Schubert's extraordinary facility. At breakfast one morning, in Sept. 1824, the Countess produced Lamotte Fouqué's poem, and proposed to Schubert to set it for the family party. He withdrew after breakfast, taking the book with him, and in the evening, less than ten hours afterwards, it was tried through from the score at the piano. The next evening it was sung again, this time from separate parts, which Schubert had written out during the day. The piece is composed for quartet, with solos for Mad. Esterhazy, Marie, Schönstein, and the Count, and contains 209 bars. A MS. letter of Ferdinand's, dated July 3, full of that strong half-reverential affection which was Ferdinand's habitual attitude towards his gifted brother, and of curious details, mentions having sent him Bach's fugues (never-cloying food of great composers), and an opera-book, 'Der kurze Mantel.' Strange fascination of the stage, which thus, in despite of so many failures, could keep him still enthralled!

The country air of the Hungarian mountains, and no doubt the sound and healthy living and early hours of the chateau, restored Schubert's health completely, and in a letter of Sept. 21 to Schober he says that for five months he had been well. But he felt his isolation, and the want of congenial Vienna society keenly; speaks with regret of having been 'enticed' into a second visit to Hungary, and complains of not having a single person near to whom he could say a sensible word. How different from the exuberant happiness of the visits to Steyr and St. Polten, when every one he met was a demonstrative admirer, and every evening brought a fresh triumph!

Now, if ever, was the date of his tender feeling for his pupil Caroline Esterhazy, which his biographers have probably much exaggerated. She was seventeen at the time, and Bauernfeld represents her as the object of an ideal devotion, which soothed, comforted, and inspirited Schubert to the end of his life. Ideal it can only have been, considering the etiquette of the time, and the wide distance between the stations of the two; and the only occasion on which Schubert is ever alleged to have approached anything like a revelation of his feelings, is that told by Kreissle—on what authority he does not say, and it is hard to conceive—when on her jokingly reproaching him for not having dedicated anything to her, he replied, 'Why should I? everything I ever did is dedicated to you.' True, the fine Fantasia in F minor, published in the March following his death as op. 103, is dedicated to her 'by Franz Schubert,' a step which the publishers would hardly have ventured upon unless the MS.—probably handed to them before his death—had been so inscribed by himself. But it is difficult to reconcile the complaints of isolation and neglect already quoted from his letter to Schober with the existence of a passion which must have been fed every time he met his pupil or sat down to the piano with her. We must be content to leave each reader to decide the question for himself.

Vocal composition he laid aside almost entirely in 1824. The only songs which we can ascertain to belong to it are four—the fine though gloomy ones called 'Auflösung' (Lf. 34, no. i), and 'Abendstern' (Lf. 22, no. 4), both by Mayrhofer; another evening song, 'Im Abendroth,' by Lappe (Lf. 20, no. 1), all three in March; and the bass song, 'Lied eines Krieger's' (Lf. 20, no. 2), with which he closed the last day of the year. Of part-songs there are two, both for men's voices; one a 'Salve regina,' written in April, before leaving town; and the other, the 'Gondelfahrer,' or Gondolier, a very fine and picturesque composition, of which Lablache is said to have been fond [App. p.786 "so fond as to have encored it on first hearing, and himself sung in the encore (Spaun)"].—A Sonata for PF. and Arpeggione, in A minor, dated Nov. 1824, was probably one of his first compositions after returning to town.

The publications of 1824 embrace ops. 25 to 28 inclusive, all issued by Sauer & Leidesdorf. Op. 25 is the 'Schöne Müllerin,' 20 songs in five numbers, published March 25; op. 26 is the vocal music in 'Rosamunde,' the romance and three choruses; op. 27, three fine 'heroic marches,' for PF. 4 hands; op. 28, 'Der Gondelfahrer,' for four men's voices and PF., Aug. 12.

1825 was a happy year to our hero—happy and productive. He was back again in his dear Vienna, and exchanged the isolation of Zselész for the old familiar life, with his congenial friends Vogl, Schwind, Jenger, Mayrhofer, etc. (Schober was in Prussia, and Kupelwieser still at Rome), in whose applause and sympathy and genial conviviality he rapidly forgot the disappointments and depression that had troubled him in the autumn. Sofie Müller, one of the great actresses of that day, evidently a very accomplished, cultivated woman, was then in Vienna, and during February and March her house was the resort of Schubert, Jenger, and Vogl, who sang or listened to her singing of his best and newest Lieder,—she herself sang the 'Junge Nonne' at sight on March 3—and lived a pleasant and thoroughly artistic life. Others, which she mentions as new, and which indeed had their birth at this time, are Der Einsame,' and 'Ihr Grab.' The 'new songs from the Pirate,' which she heard on March 1, may have been some from the Lady of the Lake, or 'Norna's song,' or even 'Anna Lyle,' usually placed two years later. Schubert published some