![]() Schubert knew, however, that fame and affluence were only possible through the opera house. By the time of his death he was negotiating with several publishers eager to acquire his works. But from around 1820 his reputation as a composer of songs and piano pieces grew rapidly. Often he had to rely on the generosity of friends. He was certainly never well off, and he never had the security of a permanent position. As with Mozart, the myth of Schubert’s perpetual poverty dies hard. ‘There is something in you,’ he acknowledged, ‘but you have too little of the comedian, too little of the charlatan.’ But Vogl was soon performing Schubert’s songs, accompanied by the composer, in the salons of Vienna. The singer’s initial attitude to the 20-year-old composer was condescending. In the same year, he met the baritone Johann Michael Vogl. Then, in 1817, he touched a new note of terrible grandeur, turning to the sombre neo-Classical verse of Schiller and Mayrhofer in ‘Freiwilliges Versinken’ and ‘Gruppe aus dem Tartarus’, an astonishing vision of souls writhing in Hades. Among them were Goethe-inspired masterpieces ranging from the driving, harmonically audacious ‘Erlkönig’ and ‘An schwager Kronos’ to the exquisite, folk like ‘Heidenröslein’. Between 18 Schubert composed more than 250 songs. With his first Goethe setting, ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’, composed when he was just 17, he created one of the world’s most impassioned songs, its perpetual motion accompaniment simultaneously evoking the whirring spinning wheel and mirroring the changing shades of Gretchen’s ecstatic agitation. What he did have was the rich stimulus of the new German Romantic poetry, and the suggestive power of the rapidly evolving fortepiano. In song, however, he had few significant precedents. In instrumental music Schubert was deeply conscious of tradition. To turn from them to the finest of his early songs is to enter a strange new world. But they still breathe the spirit of the late 18th century. These early works are charming and show signs of individuality. His enchanting Fifth Symphony of 1816 is an overt homage to Mozart. Haydn’s Creation, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and G minor Symphony K550, and Beethoven’s Second and Seventh Symphonies were special favourites. Inevitably they are filled with echoes of the Viennese masters he revered. His early symphonies, masses and string quartets were composed as a teen, at college and, later, as a reluctant teacher in his father’s school. There and at home he was steeped in the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. He sang in the choir of St Stephen’s Cathedral, where he was a star treble. Bluntly he told him that he intended to follow his own path. His elder brother Ignaz taught him piano, but Schubert quickly surpassed him. Schubert was acutely conscious of his unusual gifts as a child. Though chamber works like the ‘Trout’ Quintet, the Octet and the B flat Piano Trio radiate charm and cordiality, the A minor Sonata, the Winterreise song-cycle and the ‘Death and the Maiden’ String Quartet vividly illustrate the composer’s tendency to depression and despair. In the 1860s further orchestral masterpieces such as the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony and the C major String Quintet received their premieres. The discovery of his wider output began in 1839, when Robert Schumann came across the manuscript of the ‘Great’ C major Symphony, then unperformed. In his lifetime, Schubert was known for his songs, part-songs and shorter piano pieces. An image of a happy-go-lucky bohemian lingered well into the twentieth century. His early death, at the age of 31, inspired a welter of sentimental myths. His was a short, brilliant life, spent almost entirely in the city of Vienna. He composed prolifically, writing music in almost all of the major genres, and his songs set a standard that was unsurpassed for more than a century. ![]() Described by Liszt as ‘the most poetic of composers’, Schubert became the quintessential composer of the early Romantic period. ![]()
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