Page:EB1911 - Volume 24.djvu/398

Rh and holidays,&rdquo; in which his two brothers played the violin, his father the 'cello and Franz himself the viola. It was the first germ of that amateur orchestra for which, in later years, many of his compositions were written. During the remainder of his stay at the Convict he wrote a good deal more chamber-music, several songs, some miscellaneous pieces for the pianoforte and, among his more ambitious efforts, a Kyrie and Salve Regina, an octet for wind instruments &mdash; said to commemorate the death of his mother, which took place in 1812 &mdash; a cantata, words and music, for his father's name-day in 1813, and the closing work of his school-life, his first symphony.

At the end of 1813 he left the Convict, and, to avoid military service, entered his father's school as teacher of the lowest class. For over two years he endured the drudgery of the work, which, we are told, he performed with very indifferent success. There were, however, other interests to compensate. He took private lessons from Salieri, who annoyed him with accusations of plagiarism from Haydn and Mozart, but who did more for his training than any of his other teachers; he formed a close friendship with a family named Grob, whose daughter Therese was a good singer and a good comrade; he occupied every moment of leisure with rapid and voluminous composition. His first opera &mdash; Des Teufels Lustschloss &mdash; and his first Mass &mdash; in F major &mdash; were both written in 1814, and to the same year belong three string quartets, many smaller instrumental pieces, the first movement of the symphony in Bb and seventeen songs, which include such masterpieces as Der Taucher and Gretchen am Spinnrade. But even this activity is far outpaced by that of the annus mirabilis 1815. In this year, despite his school-work, his lessons with Salieri and the many distractions of Viennese life, he produced an amount of music the record of which is almost incredible. The symphony in Bb was finished, and a third, in D major, added soon afterwards. Of church music there appeared two Masses, in G and Bb, the former written within six days, a new Dona nobis for the Mass in F, a Stabat Mater and a Salve Regina. Opera was represented by no less than five works, of which three were completed &mdash; Der Vierjährige Posten, Fernando and Claudine von Villabella &mdash; and two, Adrast and Die beiden Freunde von Salamanca, apparently left unfinished. Besides these the list includes a string quartet in G minor, four sonatas and several smaller compositions for piano, and, by way of climax, 146 songs, some of which are of considerable length, and of which eight are dated Oct. 15, and seven Oct. 19. &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; we may say with Dryden, &ldquo;is God's plenty.&rdquo; Music has always been the most generous of the arts, but it has never, before or since, poured out its treasure with so lavish a hand.

In the winter of 1814-1815 Schubert made acquaintance with the poet Mayrhofer: an acquaintance which, according to his usual habit, soon ripened into a warm and intimate friendship. They were singularly unlike in temperament: Schubert frank, open and sunny, with brief fits of depression, and sudden outbursts of boisterous high spirits; Mayrhofer grim and saturnine, a silent man who regarded life chiefly as a test of endurance; but there is good authority for holding that &ldquo;the best harmony is the resolution of discord,&rdquo; and of this aphorism the ill-assorted pair offer an illustration. The friendship, as will be seen later, was of service to Schubert in more than one way.

As 1815 was the most prolific period of Schubert's life, so 1816 saw the first real change in his fortunes. Somewhere about the turn of the year Spaun surprised him in the composition of Erlkönig &mdash; Goethe's poem propped among a heap of exercise-books, and the boy at white-heat of inspiration &ldquo;hurling&rdquo; the notes on the music-paper. A few weeks later Von Schober, a law-student of good family and some means, who had heard some of Schubert's songs at Spaun's house, came to pay a visit to the composer and proposed to carry him off from school-life and give him freedom to practice his art in peace. The proposal was particularly opportune, for Schubert had just made an unsuccessful application for the post of Kapellmeister at Laibach, and was feeling more acutely than ever the slavery of the classroom. His father's consent was readily given, and before the end of the spring he was installed as a guest in Von Schober's

lodgings. For a time he attempted to increase the household resources by giving music lessons, but they were soon abandoned, and he devoted himself to composition. &ldquo;I write all day,&rdquo; he said later to an inquiring visitor, &ldquo;and when I have finished one piece I begin another.&rdquo;

The works of 1816 include three ceremonial cantatas, one written for Salieri's Jubilee on June 16; one, eight days later, for a certain Herr Watteroth who paid the composer an honorarium of &pound;4 (&ldquo;the first time,&rdquo; said the journal, &ldquo;that I have composed for money&rdquo;), and one, on a foolish philanthropic libretto, for Herr Joseph Spendou &ldquo;Founder and Principal of the Schoolmasters' Widows' Fund.&rdquo; Of more importance are two new symphonies, No. 4 in C minor, called the Tragic, with a striking andante, No. 5 in Bb, as bright and fresh as a symphony of Mozart: some numbers of church music, fuller and more mature than any of their predecessors, and over a hundred songs, among which are comprised some of his finest settings of Goethe and Schiller. There is also an opera, Die Burgschaft, spoiled by an illiterate book, but of interest as showing how continually his mind was turned towards the theatre.

All this time his circle of friends was steadily widening. Mayrhofer introduced him to Vogl, the famous baritone, who did him good service by performing his songs in the salons of Vienna; Anselm Hüttenbrenner and his brother Joseph ranged themselves among his most devoted admirers; Gahy, an excellent pianist, played his sonatas and fantasias; the Sonnleithners, a rich burgher family whose eldest son had been at the Convict, gave him free access to their home, and organized in his honour musical parties which soon assumed the name of Schubertiaden. The material needs of life were supplied without much difficulty. No doubt Schubert was entirely penniless, for he had given up teaching, he could earn nothing by public performance, and, as yet, no publisher would take his music at a gift; but his friends came to his aid with true Bohemian generosity &mdash; one found him lodging, another found him appliances, they took their meals together and the man who had any money paid the score. Schubert was always the leader of the party, and was known by half-a-dozen affectionate nicknames, of which the most characteristic is &ldquo;kann er 'was?&rdquo; his usual question when a new acquaintance was proposed.

1818, though, like its predecessor, comparatively unfertile in composition, was in two respects a memorable year. It saw the first public performance of any work of Schubert's &mdash; an overture in the Italian style written as an avowed burlesque of Rossini, and played in all seriousness at a Jäll concert on March 1. It also saw the beginning of his only official appointment, the post of music-master to the family of Count Johann Esterhazy at Zelesz, where he spent the summer amid pleasant and congenial surroundings. The compositions of the year include a Mass and a symphony, both in C major, a certain amount of four-hand pianoforte music for his pupils at Zelesz and a few songs, among which are Einsamkeit, Marienbild and the Litaney. On his return to Vienna in the autumn he found that Von Schober had no room for him, and took up his residence with Mayrhofer. There his life continued on its accustomed lines. Every morning he began composing as soon as he was out of bed, wrote till two o'clock, then dined and took a country walk, then returned to composition or, if the mood forsook him, to visits among his friends. He made his first public appearance as a song-writer on February 28, 1819, when the Schäfers Klagelied was sung by Jäger at a Jäll concert. In the summer of the same year he took a holiday and travelled with Vogl through Upper Austria. At Steyr he wrote his brilliant piano quintet in A, and astonished his friends by transcribing the parts without a score. In the autumn he sent three of his songs to Goethe, but, so far as we know, received no acknowledgment.

The compositions of 1820 are remarkable, and show a marked advance in development and maturity of style. The unfinished oratorio Lazarus was begun in February; later followed, amid a number of smaller works, the 23rd Psalm, the Gesang der Geister, the Quartettsatz in C minor and the great pianoforte fantasia on Der Wanderer. But of almost more biographical interest is