Franz Schubert and His World

by Gibbs, Christopher H. , Solvik, Morten

  Schubert’s theatrical aspirations are most apparent in his full-scale operas Alfonso und Estrella (1822) and Fierabras (1823), neither of which was staged during his lifetime. In the midst of the Rossinimania that captivated Vienna in the late teens and early 1820s, Schubert held out hopes that German opera might succeed. The triumph of Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz in 1821 made this seem reasonable, just as the failure two years later of the same composer’s Euryanthe is partly responsible for dashing those hopes. Schober wrote the libretto for Alfonso; the two friends enjoyed a secluded period in the fall of 1821 working together on the project, which was completed in January. Decades later Schober brought the opera to the attention of Franz Liszt, with whom he was closely associated at the time in Weimar. Liszt adored Schubert’s music—he once called him “the most poetic of musicians”—and although he harbored reservations about Alfonso, he nonetheless mounted its much belated premiere in 1854.12 He also wrote an extended essay about the work, which Allan Keiler introduces and translates here. Liszt does not pull his punches, pointing to the faults in the opera, but also to its many marvels.

  The final three chapters explore the intersection between intention and reception, Schubert’s goals as a composer and the manner in which he has been understood by posterity. Schubert won his first and most enduring fame with Lieder, the genre in which he produced his initial masterpieces to texts by Goethe and that engaged him to the very end (the playfully serious Die Taubenpost, on a poem by the Viennese poet Johann Gabriel Seidl about an esoteric mode of communication employed by both lovers and spies, was apparently the last piece he wrote). His songs have invited an astonishing range of scholarly attention and approaches. Recent German-language scholarship in particular has become attuned to political imagery in numerous poems that he chose to set in the repressive post-Napoleonic chill that came over Vienna just as his career was starting up. The hopes of so many in his generation for a spring-like renewal after the war were frustrated by an interminable winter. Kristina Muxfeldt’s essay explores how Schubert’s music deftly reshaped words and allowed unsuspected meanings to resound in the changing political climate. In a time of censorship, music with words, such as songs and operas, had to receive official approval, but Muxfeldt argues that Lieder nonetheless offered Schubert an expressive realm for political thought, “freedom of song, if not speech,” as she puts it.

  Beethoven was the commanding musical presence in Schubert’s world and the composer he most revered. Coeditor Christopher Gibbs returns to a topic broached in earlier writings to propose that Schubert composed the Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 100, in honor of Beethoven. We know Schubert was deeply affected by the master’s death and participated in his funeral on 29 March 1827. The following November, just as Beethoven’s gravestone was dedicated, he began composing the trio, which premiered publicly on 26 March 1828, the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death. Various strains of biographical and musical evidence converge to suggest that Schubert wrote the piece as a tombeau de Beethoven, which may explain why many listeners have perceived a ghost haunting the work ever since.

  Schubert died less than eight months after the premiere of the E-flat Piano Trio and a few days later he was buried, supposedly at his expressed request, near to Beethoven. The two composers became increasingly united in death, their graves a pilgrimage site, and the musical values embodied by their compositions compared and contrasted. The continual posthumous discovery of ever more of Schubert’s music meant that his achievement seemed more in line with Beethoven’s.

  With Schubert’s premature passing he entered not only a realm of myth making, but also of contest for his legacy, a subject Leon Botstein considers in the final chapter. Among the posthumous careers of the great Classical and Romantic composers Schubert’s is unprecedented and extraordinary: most of his significant instrumental, dramatic, and religious music was released in the decades following his death, a steady stream of masterpieces that surprised and delighted many. The discovery of new marvels—Hanslick commented that it appeared Schubert was “composing invisibly”13—made it seem as if he were still alive, a contemporary not only of Mendelssohn and Schumann (both of whom died well before the premiere of the “Unfinished” Symphony), but also of Wagner and Brahms. Thus Schubert could be enlisted or dismissed as a continuing presence in the contested musical politics of the century, and not simply invoked as a departed master. His close identification with Vienna accelerated, and choral groups such as the Wiener Männergesangverein and Schubertbund claimed him as a native son. Botstein takes the story into the twentieth century, including the 1928 centennial of Schubert’s death, when he continued to be extravagantly celebrated and condescendingly diminished by individuals and groups with larger ideological agendas.

  Great historical figures are, of course, always ripe for reassessment, provoking studies that can reveal, with the benefits of hindsight, new perspectives on the distant past while also inevitably reflecting current concerns and attitudes. Anniversary years add impetus, as shown by Schubertjahre in 1897, 1928, 1978, and 1997. As the Bard Music Festival and this book series celebrate their silver anniversary, we are halfway now from the Schubert bicentennial to the next big anniversary in 2028. Among leading composers of the past two and half centuries Schubert, with his largely uneventful and poorly documented life, and his extraordinary posthumous career, turns out to be a fascinating and unusually inviting figure for continual reappraisal.

  — Christopher H. Gibbs

  NOTES

  1. Otto Erich Deutsch, Schubert: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom (London, 1946), 819–20.

  2. Otto Erich Deutsch, Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends, trans. Rosamond Ley and John Nowell (London, 1958), 10.

  3. Deutsch, Schubert: A Documentary Biography, 740.

  4. See Ernst Hilmar, “Zu Grillparzers Inschrift auf Schuberts Grabdenkmal,” Schubert durch die Brille 29 (2002): 125–28.

  5. Hanslick’s Musical Criticisms, ed. and trans. Henry Pleasants (New York, 1978), 102.

  6. For more about Schwind’s drawing and painting, see Maurice J. E. Brown, “Schwind’s ‘Schubert-Abend bei Josef Spaun,’” in Essays on Schubert (New York, 1966), 155–68.

  7. Christopher H. Gibbs, “‘Poor Schubert’: Images and Legends of the Composer,” Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (Cambridge, 1997), 36–55.

  8. Maynard Solomon first raised the issue of the composer’s possible homosexuality in “Franz Schubert’s ‘Mein Traum,’” American Imago 38 (1981): 137–54. His argument achieved wide notoriety with the article “Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini,” 19th-Century Music 12 (Spring 1989): 193–206; and responses in “Schubert: Music, Sexuality, Culture,” a special issue of 19th-Century Music 17 (Summer 1993).

  9. Deutsch, Schubert: A Documentary Biography, 98.

  10. Deutsch, Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends, 183.

  11. Concerning possible influences of popular theater on Schubert’s own dramatic music, see Mary Wischusen, “Franz Schubert and Viennese Popular Comedy,” in The Unknown Schubert, ed. Barbara M. Reul and Lorraine Byrne Bodley (Aldershot, 2008), 83–97.

  12. Janita R. Hall-Swadley, ed. and trans., The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt, vol. 2: Essays and Letters of a Traveling Bachelor of Music (Lanham, 2012), 327.

  13. Deutsch, Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends, 383.

  Acknowledgments

  With Franz Schubert and His World the Bard Music Festival series, published each year by Princeton University Press, reaches its twenty-fifth volume. Many of the individuals deserving thanks for their efforts with this book have long been involved with the series, some going back to Brahms and His World in 1990. First and foremost is Leon Botstein, who when he founded the festival was determined that performance and scholarship should exist in fruitful dialogue and that a lasting legacy of each year’s explorations would be a volume of essays and documents.

  Ginger Shore has overseen the process since 1
996 and retires this year; our thanks to her for dedication to these volumes, for always keeping things moving forward, and for her sensitive oversight of design issues. Irene Zedlacher, executive director of the Bard Music Festival, brings her keen editorial eye to reading the book and deals with many other matters to make things run smoothly. Don Giller has set the musical examples since the series began and we thank him for his careful work. We are grateful to Erin Clermont for copy-editing, Karen Spencer for the layout, and Ruth Elwell for indexing.

  Our special thanks to another veteran of the series, Paul De Angelis, who oversees the production of the book from start to finish. His generous help and support as well as his terrific editorial comments and suggestions are what editors, authors, and contributors crave but so rarely receive in publishing ventures these days. We count ourselves very lucky.

  We would also like to thank our families for their patience and support as we put together this book in countless email exchanges, Skype calls, trans-Atlantic trips, and long nights of editing. We are grateful for their care and understanding.

  Finally, when a publisher asked Schubert about the dedication of one of his pieces, the composer responded: “The work is to be dedicated to nobody, save those who find pleasure in it. That is the most profitable dedication.” In that spirit we wish to thank and dedicate this book to that most precious and endangered group in classical music, the generous music-loving patrons and benefactors who have made the Bard Music Festival possible year after year.

  Christopher H. Gibbs, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

  Morten Solvik, Vienna, Austria

  Permissions and Credits

  The following institutions and individuals have graciously granted permission to reprint or reproduce these materials:

  Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York, for the front cover image by Moritz von Schwind; and for Figure 3, p. 224.

  Handschriftensammlung, Wienbibliothek for Figure 1, p. 2; Figure 5, p. 9; Figure 7 (and 7a–7b), pp. 18–19; Figure 4, p. 127 (from the album “Stammbuch Karl Haslinger. Herrn Karl Haslinger zur Erinnerung an den 25-jährigen Bestand seiner musikalischen Abende gewidmet 1862”); and Figure 4, p. 235.

  Musiksammlung, Wienbibliothek for Figure 2, p. 123.

  Wien Museum Karlsplatz the copyrighted © images reproduced in Figure 2, p. 4; Figure 3, p. 5; Figure 4, p. 6; Figure 6, p. 12; Figure 8, p. 24; Figure 10, p. 28.

  Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna/The Bridgeman Art Library, for Figure 9, p. 25.

  Lebrecht Music & Arts for Figure 1, p. 55 and Figure 3, p. 98.

  Wien Museum Karlsplatz, Vienna, and Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York, for Figure 1, p. 68; Figure 2, p. 69; and Figure 2, p. 186.

  Goethe House and Museum, Frankfurt, Germany/Art Resource, New York, for Figure 4, p. 103.

  Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University, for Figure 3, p. 124.

  Austrian National Library (ÖNB), Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung, for Figure 5, p. 133; Figure 6, p. 134; and Figure 1, p. 168.

  Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Musikabteilung, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, New York, for Figure 7, p. 144.

  Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Yale University, for Figure 8, p. 150.

  National Gallery, London, U.K./The Bridgeman Art Library for Figure 1, p. 214.

  The Metropolitan Museum, New York for Figure 2, p. 216 (From Galerie du Palais royal, gravée d’après les tableaux des differentes ecoles qui la composent : avec un abrégé de la vie des peintres & une description historique de chaque tableau, par Mr. l’abbé de Fontenai / par J. Couché, vol. 2 [Paris: Chez J. Couché, J. Bouilliard, 1786–1808], held by the Metropolitan Museum).

  Archiv, Bibliothek und Sammlungen der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, for Figure 2, p. 256; Figure 3, p. 257; Figure 4, pp. 265–66; Figure 5, p. 285.

  The authors and publishers have made every effort to trace holders of copyright. They much regret if any inadvertent omissions have been made.

  FRANZ SCHUBERT AND HIS WORLD

  Schubert: The Nonsense Society Revisited

  RITA STEBLIN

  Twenty years have now passed since I discovered materials belonging to the Unsinnsgesellschaft (Nonsense Society).1 This informal club, active in Vienna from April 1817 to December 1818, consisted mainly of young painters and poets with Schubert as one of its central members. In this essay I will review this discovery, my ensuing interpretations, and provide some new observations.

  In January 1994, at the start of a research project on Schubert iconography, I studied some illustrated documents at the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien (now the Wienmuseum am Karlsplatz), titled “Unsinniaden.”2 The documents comprise forty-four watercolor pictures and thirty-seven pages of text recording two festive events celebrated by the Nonsense Society: the New Year’s Eve party at the end of 1817 and the group’s first birthday party on 18 April 1818.3 The pictures depict various club members, identified by their code names and dressed in fanciful costumes, as well as four group scenes for the first event, including Vivat es lebe Blasius Leks (Long live Blasius Leks; Figure 1), and two group scenes for the second event, including Feuergeister-Scene (Fire Spirit Scene; Figure 6 below).4 Because of the use of code names—and the misidentifications written on the pictures by some previous owner of the materials—it was not initially possible to interpret these documents correctly.5

  A few months later, in April 1994, I discovered a second set of papers, housed in the manuscript collection of the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek (now Wienbibliothek) in Vienna’s City Hall, and these made it easier to unravel many of the society’s secrets.6 This second set of materials had been purchased in 1937 from a descendant of the club’s vice-editor, code-named Zeisig (a type of finch).7 It consisted of handwritten newsletters titled Archiv des menschlichen Unsinns (Archive of Human Nonsense). One numbered issue of the newsletter was apparently produced each week, although the collection contained only twenty-nine newsletters, those between 17 April 1817 and 10 December 1818 (nine from 1817 and twenty from 1818). Each issue, penned in Kurrentschrift (German running script) and usually eight pages long, begins with a motto and ends with a watercolor picture; in between are humorous and rather off-color texts spoofing contemporary politics, social mores, scientific discoveries, art, drama, and literature, each signed with the writer’s code name. At the beginning of the first issue, in Zeisig’s hand, is a key headed “Namen der Unsinnsmitglieder” that identifies most of the club members—twenty-two in all. This is what made it possible to link the newsletters to the documents in the Wienmuseum and, after intensive biographical research on the club’s participants, establish Schubert’s important role in the secret society.

  Figure 1. Vivat es lebe Blasius Leks: Zur Unsinniade—5ter Gesang (Long Live Blasius Leks: For the 5th Song of Nonsense), 31 December 1817. Watercolor by Carl Friedrich Zimmermann (Aaron Bleistift).

  Most of the members were young painters—students at the Vienna Art Academy—with code names that reflect their profession: for example, August Kloeber (1793–1864), famous for the portrait he sketched of Beethoven in 1818, was called Goliath Pinselstiel (Giant Paintbrush) and Johann Nepomuk Hoechle (1790–1835), who would paint Beethoven’s studio a few days after the composer’s death, was called Kratzeratti Klanwinzi (Little Scratcher). Three Kupelwieser brothers are also clearly identified on this list: Blasius Leks (Josef), Chrisostomus Schmecks (Johann), and Damian Klex (Leopold).8 Not all of the club’s members are initially listed; Schubert’s name, for example, is missing. Moreover, various code names that occur in the newsletters or on the individual portraits, for example that of Quanti Verdradi (Totally Mixed-Up), whom I have identified as Schubert’s friend Franz von Schober, are also not on the initial list. Compounding this, at least two-thirds of the newsletters originally produced by the club are now missing (including the twenty-three issues immediately after the first one), a loss that makes a definitive interpretation of all the complicated allusions difficult.

  Sc
hubert’s connection to the society was referred to in at least two memoirs by his friends but was misinterpreted by the great scholar Otto Erich Deutsch (1883–1967), who was only aware of another group, the so-called Ludlamshöhle (Ludlam’s Cave). The first reference comes from Heinrich Anschütz (1785–1865), a famous Burgtheater actor, who delivered Franz Grillparzer’s celebrated oration at Beethoven’s funeral. He wrote in his memoirs:

  I had spent my first Christmas in Vienna at the end of 1821…. This Christmas was of special interest to me because it brought Schubert to my house for the first time. Franz Schubert was one of the most active members of the late Nonsense Society. In this my brothers had been most intimately associated with him for years and it was through my [brothers] that he came to my house.9

  There is no reason to doubt Anschütz’s assertion about Schubert’s active participation in the “late” Nonsense Society—“late” meaning that the group no longer existed in 1821. Moreover, the first two names on the list of Nonsense Society members are the actor’s two brothers: “Anschütz Eduard … Schnautze, Redacteur” and “Anschütz Gustav … Sebastn Haarpuder” (see Figures 2–4).10 Eduard Anschütz (ca. 1797–1855) was actually the club’s leader, as well as the main editor (Redacteur) of the newsletters; most of the texts were written in his hand. His code name Schnautze, meaning (big) snout, is an anagram of Anschütz.