Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/365

SCHUBERT. them three days, and during that time he was very careful as to eating and drinking, regained his old cheerfulness, and was often very gay. Still he was far from well, and after his return the bad symptoms revived, to the great alarm of his friends. At length, on the evening of Oct. 31, while at supper at the Rothen Kreuz in the Himmelpfortgrund, an eating-house much frequented by himself and his friends, he took some fish on his plate, but at the first mouthful threw down the knife and fork, and exclaimed that it tasted like poison. From that moment hardly anything but medicine passed his lips; but he still walked a good deal. About this time Lachner returned from Pesth in all the glory of the success of his opera; and though only in Vienna for a few days, he called on his friend, and they had two hours' conversation. Schubert was full of plans for the future, especially for the completion of 'Graf von Gleichen,' which, as already mentioned, he had sketched in the summer of 1827. He discussed it also with Bauernfeld during the next few days, and spoke of the brilliant style in which he intended to score it. About this time Carl Holz, Beethoven's old friend, at Schubert's urgent request, took him to hear the great master's C♯ minor Quartet, still a novelty in Vienna. It agitated him extremely. 'He got (says Holz) into such a state of excitement and enthusiasm that we were all afraid for him.' On the 3rd Nov., the morrow of All Souls' day, he walked early in the morning to Hernals—then a village, now a thickly built suburb outside the Gürtelstrasse—to hear his brother's Latin Requiem in the church there. He thought it simple, and at the same time effective, and on the whole was much pleased with it. After the service he walked for three hours, and on reaching home complained of great weariness.

Shortly before this time the scores of Handel's oratorios had come into his hands—not impossibly some of the set of Arnold's edition given to Beethoven before his death, and sold in his sale for 102 florins; and the study of them had brought home to him his deficiencies in the department of counterpoint. 'I see now,' said he to the Fröhlichs, 'how much I have still to learn; but I am going to work hard with Sechter, and make up for lost time'—Sechter being the recognised authority of the day on counterpoint. So much was he bent on this, that on the day after his walk to Hernals, i.e. on Nov. 4, notwithstanding his weakness, he went into Vienna and, with another musician named Lanz, called on Sechter, to consult him on the matter, and they actually decided on Marpurg as the text-book, and on the number and dates of the lessons. But he never began the course. During the next few days he grew weaker and weaker; and when the doctor was called in, it was too late. About the 11th he wrote a note to Schober—doubtless his last letter.

What answer Schober made to this appeal is not known. He is said to have had a daily report of Schubert's condition from the doctor, but there is no mention of his having called. Spaun, Randhartinger, Bauernfeld, and Josef Hüttenbrenner, are all said to have visited him; but in those days there was great dread of infection, his new residence was out of the way, and dangerous illness was such a novelty with Schubert that his friends may be excused for not thinking the case so grave as it was. After a few days Rinna himself fell ill, and his place was filled by a staff-surgeon named Behring.

On the 14th Schubert took to his bed. He was able to sit up a little for a few days longer, and thus to correct the proofs of the 2nd part of the 'Winterreise,' probably the last occupation of those inspired and busy fingers. He appears to have had no pain, only increasing weakness, want of sleep, and great depression. Poor fellow! no wonder he was depressed! everything was against him, his weakness, his poverty, the dreary house, the long lonely hours, the cheerless future—all concentrated and embodied in the hopeless images of Müller's poems, and the sad gloomy strains in which he has clothed them for ever and ever—the Letzte Hoffnung, the Krähe, the Wegweiser, the Wirthshaus, the Nebensonnen, the Leiermann—all breathing of solitude, broken hopes, illusions, strange omens, poverty, death, the grave! As he went through the pages, they must have seemed like pictures of his own life; and such passages as the following, from the Wegweiser (or Signpost), can hardly have failed to strike the dying man as aimed at himself:—

Alas! he was indeed going the road which no one e'er retraces! On Sunday the 16th the doctors had a consultation; they predicted a nervous fever, but had still hopes of their patient. On the afternoon of Monday, Bauernfeld saw him for the last time. He was in very bad spirits, and complained of great weakness, and of heat in his head, but his mind was still clear, and there was no sign of wandering; he spoke of his earnest wish for a good opera-book. Later in the day,