Schubert

Introduction

The inscription on Schubert’s grave, written by Franz Grillparzer, has become an accepted summary of his achievement: ‘The art of music here entombed a rich possession but even far fairer hopes’ - suggesting, by implication, that his mortal point of departure left us deprived of music that would have been finer than anything he achieved in his brief lifetime. An idle speculation at the best of times, particularly for those who believe in the pre-destined callousness of fate.

It is arguable that, in modern times, Schubert would not have died of what would now be considered quite a minor illness. Certainly the works he achieved in his last years, notably the ineffable String Quintet in C, suggest that he was on the fringes of writing his truly ‘great’ symphonies and chamber-music, and, who knows, he might have found his way to writing an opera that would stand beside Mozart’s. It is almost impossible not to think of Mozart in connection with Schubert. Yet Mozart’s early death seems not to have deprived us so cruelly, for he had already achieved true greatness so many times in so many forms.

Such speculation with regard to Schubert is irresistible; perhaps because, however highly we rate him – and that is amongst the highest (‘the last of the great composers,’ wrote Alfred Einstein – a statement that needs qualifying) - there is always the feeling that he had still not got his house in order; that he was an ‘unfinished’ composer in many ways. Robert Schumann, however, one of the first to tell the world how great Schubert was, deplored the suggestion that Schubert was fairer in hope than achievement.

The academic world of music is unduly obsessed with the idea that maturity inevitably brings depth and richness and, as a rider to this, that the more profoundly intellectual a work is, the better it is. It is by no means a provable equation. Many who have the artistic misfortune to grow old may be found to have done all the exciting things in the years of their youth. It also depends on what we mean by and find exciting. It also depends on the point at which the individual grows old. Some do it at twenty, some at forty, some as late as sixty. Some grow old and see their youthful vigour disappear; some rediscover youth in old age and become joyfully childish again. Such phenomenon as the late Beethoven quartets are always used to back the maturity argument. Perhaps Beethoven was one of those who, in spite of physical deterioration, never got really old at heart. In any case, he was only fifty-seven when he died. Mozart, dead at thirty-five, on the other hand, attained undeniable maturity with such works as the late symphonies, The Magic Flute and the final Requiem. Yet The Magic Flute, for all its profundity and wisdom, is a young work in spirit and full of moments of youthful charm. It could also be said to offer a glimpse of some of the even weightier things that Mozart might have written had he lived to be eighty; by which time, as fate may have seen, he could conceivably have written too much.

This is, indeed, all fascinatingly fruitless. Perhaps the true charm of Schubert actually lies in the fact that he was always a relatively young composer. He left the world at thirty-one, already in a surrendering frame of mind. It is unbearable to think that he might have gone into a long decline with depression and frustration at last getting the upper hand and quelling the flame of optimism that faintly persisted. Schubert died young and never wrote any oppressively mature music. It has become common to try to prove otherwise. But why should we want to? There is excitement and zest enough in what he left behind.

The fascination of Schubert lies in many paradoxes but most strongly in the fact that we can observe and point to his failings without losing any of our love and high regard for his music. If we put his output beside the other-worldliness of Bach’s, the fatherly authority of Handel’s, the accumulative progression of Haydn’s, the sculptured beauty of Mozart’s, the powerful utterance of Beethoven’s – Schubert’s output can sometimes seem a bundle of rags and tatters. Yet this does not stop him from being one of the most fascinating, most lovable composers of all. It has become old-fashioned to say it, but perhaps it was his inspired amateurishness that makes him so endearing. He is the one composer who seems to be actually writing and exploring in front of us. If we can often see why he went wrong we are even more excited when he goes right. For then his music suddenly seems, as perhaps music ought more often, to be essentially magic. If Schubert, in solid analysable terms, was not the greatest of all composers, he was, surely, the great magician of them all in turning those black dots on five undeviating lines into a moving expression of the human spirit.

The ‘Unfinished’ Symphony of 1822 was some years away in time from his maturity, yet it is widely seen as one of his deepest journeys into the world of the unknown. So profound, in its utterance, they say, that Schubert simply gave up trying to finish it and ended in mid-bar. Did he run out of that elusive elixir called inspiration, or did he perhaps run out of youthfulness at that point? It has remained one of the great mysteries of music; yet, like the armless masterpieces of Greek statuary, we could hardly hope for it to be any better if the missing bits were restored. It is an unfinished symbol of an unfinished life – and that is where we might well begin.

I ‘Unfinished’ Symphony

Schubert wrote a symphony – Too bad he didn’t finish it!

from a popular song of the 1930s

In the autumn of 1822, in a Europe trying to regain some composure after the predatory ravages of Napoleon, but heading for an even more painful pageant of human disasters, Franz Schubert was a twenty-five-year-old freelance composer, probably instinctively aware of his potential and sure of his mission in life, but somewhat disheartened by the meagre results of his dedicated labours. Beyond the narrow limits of a part of Viennese society and a little of Austria nearby he was virtually unknown, though, to balance this to some extent, he was deeply loved and admired by a discerning circle of friends and intellectual compatriots. Pure ability, even amounting to genius, tends to come to nothing in the world if not helped either by good fortune or the irresistible self-confidence of the idiot. Schubert’s reticent and private personality had much to do with his commercial neglect. He could have cultivated the friendship of the rich and powerful, but it was never a part of his nature to do so. He lived for many years within calling distance of the man he most admired, Ludwig van Beethoven, but he never summoned up the courage to force a close acquaintanceship. The great man was probably hardly aware of his rival-to-be in the textbooks of the future. But when not afflicted by the regular doubts and depressions that assail the creative artist, Schubert was certain enough of his destiny to be totally absorbed in music-making during his days; recharging himself with the delights of wine and companionship in the evenings.

By this time he was, in fact, first realising himself as a published composer. His first songs had been printed in the spring of 1821 and from then on he enjoyed regular, if sparse, publication. April 1822 had seen the issue of his Eight Variations on a French Song and his eighth book of Lieder, and each month had seen some public or private performance of one of his works – mostly quartets and other small-scale efforts rather than the bigger things that he would have liked to have seen appreciated; but at least he now enjoyed some reasonable, if limited, acclaim. To balance the assets, he was already a continual martyr to ill-health and was suffering acutely from the physical and mental agony of the syphilis he had contracted through succumbing to the persuasions of his riotous friend Schober, with whom he was living in 1822. All such considerations have their importance as we try to decide upon the frame of mind in which Schubert embarked upon one of his potentially greatest works which later, very much later, was to become known as the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony.

The facts and theories surrounding this musical mystery are, in the end, completely baffling. No amount of supposition, however reasoned, can completely persuade us of the truth of the matter. Only the discovery of the rest of the work (which must now be assumed highly unlikely) can ever settle the argument. A mere state of incompletion can prove nothing. If we are to believe Schubert’s own dating of manuscripts, which was generally accurate and helpful (though not always), he began work on the B minor Symphony on 30 October 1822. At this time, greatly influenced by Beethoven whose symphonies were the great popular works of contemporary Vienna, he plunged into the one work that, of all his compositions, might be said to show the strongest influence of the revered master; influence by way of example, rather than method. Earlier in the year Schubert had completed his most substantial opera, Alfonso and Estrella, and his Mass in A flat. The former was promised a production by Weber but Schubert spoilt his chances there by speaking slightingly of the composer’s Euryanthe. He was never able to persuade anyone else to produce it, and it was not performed until 1882.

Judging from the results, in a strangely inspired mood and in emotional turbulence, but presumably in no great state of expectancy as to its outcome, Schubert worked on a piano sketch of the new symphony. He quickly produced the first two movements and, so far as is known, only the outline of a third movement, a scherzo. By 30 October he had started to score the work and sometime in November it is believed that the orchestral score of the first two movements was completed. In November he wrote the Wanderer Fantasia and in December a handful of songs including Der Musensohn. At this point the mystery begins, for we have no further definite clue from Schubert himself or from others as to whether he continued to work on the symphony or whether he simply discarded it. By his own standards of productivity he would have been comparatively idle during these months if he was, in fact, not working on the symphony.

At the beginning of 1823 he was still unwell and unable to leave the house. He turned down a request for a vocal quartet as he considered he had lately indulged in that form too much. An undated letter, placed by Deutsch at the beginning of 1823, states that he had ‘nothing for full orchestra which I could send out into the world with a clear conscience’ which, in view of later happenings, does not suggest a composer who would happily send out an incompleted work – a work which would have been lying on his desk at the time. In February the Wanderer Fantasia was published and he sent Alfonso and Estrella to Ignaz Mosel, a director of the Court Theatre, for his opinion. On 10 April 1823, the Styrian Musical Society in Graz had considered a proposition that ‘Herr Franz Schubert of Vienna be admitted a non-resident honorary member, the said composer, although still young, having already proved by his compositions that he will one day take a high rank as tone-poet and be sure to show gratitude to the Styrian Musical Society for having first made him an honorary member of a not unimportant association.’ In the middle of April they wrote to Schubert:

The services you have so far rendered to the art of music are too well known for the Committee of the Styrian Musical

Society to have remained unaware of them. The latter, being desirous of offering you proof of their esteem, have elected you as a non-resident honorary member of the Styrian Musical Society. A Diploma to that effect as well as a copy of the Society’s Statutes is enclosed herewith.

A similar diploma had been sent to Beethoven in January 1822, with the slight difference that Schubert was referred to as having ‘already generally acknowledged merits’ whereas Beethoven was referred to as ‘the greatest composer of this present century’.

The diploma was delivered to Schubert through Anselm Hüttenbrenner of Graz via his brother Josef who lived in Vienna. He did not receive the diploma until September, as he had been away from Vienna trying to get rid of his infection (and in the meantime had been given a diploma by the Linz Musical Society), and wrote his letter of thanks on 20 September 1823:

I am greatly obliged by the diploma of honorary membership you so kindly sent me, and which, owing to my prolonged absence from Vienna, I received only a few days ago. May it be the reward of my devotion to the art of music to become wholly worthy of such a distinction one day. In order to give musical expression to my sincere gratitude as well I shall take the liberty before long of presenting your honourable Society with one of my Symphonies in full score.

The chronology so far dispels the frequent suggestion that Schubert originally wrote his symphony for the Graz Styrian Society.

The first question that arises at this point is whether Schubert, during the course of almost a whole year, some of it spent at the Kremsmunster Monastery (which has presumably been well searched in the ensuing years), and in spite of his affliction, never felt the urge or inspiration necessary to complete the score of the B minor Symphony. There is also the added complication of an E major symphony, started in 1821 and left in an even greater state of incompletion (which rather throws the argument in the opposite direction). Some commentators (including that most assiduous Schubert documentor, Otto Erich Deutsch, to whom we owe the definitive Schubert catalogue*) feel compelled to remark that they find it incredible that Schubert should think of sending the Styrian Society just two movements of a symphony with one sheet of the scherzo. He could hardly have expected it to be performed in this state! He was far from being famous enough to expect his fragments to be considered holy relics, and was already in contention with the usual conservatism of the establishment. But then neither, perhaps, did he see it himself as the acknowledged masterpiece that it was to become: one of the most often played and most revered works of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There is a possibility that Schubert thought nothing of it at all, as he seems to have made no mention of the work again during his lifetime, despite his continued association with the Hüttenbrenner brothers. Schubert, as we know, was very much in the habit of leaving works incomplete or in the shape of isolated movements, so our emotional arguments to the contrary are tellingly counterbalanced in this respect. Even Schubert’s brother Ferdinand, with whom he was very close, and who catalogued his works after his death, was totally unaware of the existence of the B minor Symphony.

It is only from later vague memories and subsequent documentation that the history of the manuscript is pieced together; but with no explanations ever given as to what actually happened or why. Soon after writing his letter to the Styrian Society in September 1823, Schubert is said to have handed over the incomplete (or complete?) symphony to Josef Hüttenbrenner, in the street on his way to the General Hospital, so that he could pass it on to his brother Anselm in Graz, who could then hand it over to the Styrians. The whole episode now becomes a total mystery with no enlightenment being given by any of the participants. A brief explanation of the Hüttenbrenners’ involvement must be made here, though they will be more fully dealt with later. Anselm and Josef had been fellow students with Schubert under Salieri and remained his closest friends till his death; a fact which in no way helps us elucidate the mystery. Josef was a great admirer of Schubert and was continually making attempts to promote his music. It is doubly strange, therefore, that he should have done nothing about this work in the ensuing years.

It is authoritatively stated in some sources that Josef himself kept the manuscript for four years until 1827 before handing it over to his brother Anselm. Why should he do this? Did he, perhaps, advise Schubert that an incomplete symphony was not an acceptable offering to the Society, and held it back hoping for the rest to materialise? It is not until 1850 that he spoke about it to Kreissle von Hellborn, Schubert’s first biographer, who was then preparing the volume that was finally published in 1865. Kreissle makes the statement:

Of the more important works composed in this year [1822] we may cite: An orchestral symphony in B minor, which Schubert presented, in a half-finished state, to the Musikverein at Gratz, in return for the compliment paid to him of being elected an honorary member of that society. Josef Hüttenbrenner is my authority for saying that the first and second movements are entirely finished and the third (Scherzo) partly. The fragment in the possession of Herr Anselm Hüttenbrenner, of Gratz, is said, the first movement particularly, to be of great beauty.

By 1860 Josef Hüttenbrenner was giving a slightly different version of the circumstances to Johann Herbeck, at that time conductor of the Musikfreunde Society in Vienna and the symphony’s first promoter, telling him: ‘My brother [Anselm] possesses a treasure in Schubert’s B minor Symphony which we place on a level with any of Beethoven’s. But it isn’t finished, Schubert gave it to me for Anselm as thanks for having sent him, through me, the Diploma of Honour of the Graz Music Society.’ At least there is some consistency as to the state of incompleteness of the symphony.

Whether Josef kept it for four years, or immediately handed it over to his brother,