Franz Schubert, in full Franz Peter Schubert, (born January 31, 1797, Himmelpfortgrund, near Vienna [Austria]—died November 19, 1828, Vienna), Austrian composer who bridged the worlds of Classical and Romantic music, noted for the melody and harmony in his songs (lieder) and chamber music. Among other works are Symphony No. 9 in C Major (The Great; 1828), Symphony in B Minor (Unfinished; 1822), masses, and piano works.
Franz Schubert is known primarily as a songwriter. His nine symphonies stand in the shadow of Beethoven’s but are revolutionary and Romantic in a way utterly different from Beethoven’s. Whereas Beethoven wrestled with melodic problems, Schubert was a born melodist and consequently concerned himself…
Early life and career
Schubert’s father, Franz Theodor Schubert, was a schoolmaster; his mother, Elisabeth, whose maiden name was Vietz, was in domestic service at the time of her marriage. Franz was their fourth surviving son. His elder brothers were Ignaz, Karl, and Ferdinand, and there was a younger sister, Maria Theresa. The elder Franz Schubert was a man of character who had established a flourishing school. The family was musical and cultivated string quartet playing in the home, the boy Franz playing the viola. He received the foundations of his music education from his father and his brother Ignaz, continuing later with organ playing and music theory under the instruction of the parish church organist. In 1808 he won a scholarship that earned him a place in the imperial court chapel choir and an education at the Stadtkonvikt, the principal boarding school for commoners in Vienna, where his tutors were Wenzel Ruzicka, the imperial court organist, and, later, the composer Antonio Salieri, then at the height of his fame. Schubert played the violin in the students’ orchestra, was quickly promoted to leader, and in Ruzicka’s absence conducted. He also attended choir practice and, with his fellow pupils, cultivated chamber music and piano playing.
From the evidence of his school friends, Schubert was inclined to be shy and was reluctant to show his first compositions. His earliest works included a long Fantasia for Piano Duet, a song, several orchestral overtures, various pieces of chamber music, and three string quartets. An unfinished operetta on a text by August von Kotzebue, Der Spiegelritter (The Looking-glass Knight), also belongs to those years. The interest and encouragement of his friends overcame his shyness and eventually brought his work to the notice of Salieri. In 1812 Schubert’s voice broke; he left the college but continued his studies privately with Salieri for at least another three years. During this time he entered a teachers’ training college in Vienna and in the autumn of 1814 became assistant in his father’s school. Rejected for military service because of his short stature, he continued as a schoolmaster until 1818.
The numerous compositions he wrote between 1813 and 1815 are remarkable for their variety and intrinsic worth. They are the products of young genius, still short of maturity but displaying style, originality, and imagination. Besides five string quartets, there were three full-scale masses and three symphonies. His first full-length opera, Des Teufels Lustschloss (The Devil’s Palace of Desire), was finished while he was at the training college. But at this period song composition was his chief, all-absorbing interest. On October 19, 1814, he first set to music a poem by Goethe, “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (“Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”), from Faust; it was his 30th song and in this masterpiece he created at one stroke the German lied (art song). The following year brought the composition of more than 140 songs.
The many unfinished fragments and sketches of songs left by Schubert provide some insight into the working of his creative mind. Clearly, the primary stimulus was melodic. The words of a poem engendered a tune. Harmony (chordal structure of a composition) and modulation (change of key) were then suggested by the contours of the melody. But the external details of the poet’s scene—natural, domestic, or mythical—prompted such wonderfully graphic images in the accompaniments as the spinning wheel, the ripple of water, or the “shimmering robe” of spring. These features were fully present in the songs of 1815. The years that followed deepened and enriched but did not revolutionize these novel departures in song. During 1815 Schubert also continued to be preoccupied with his ill-fated operas: between May and December he wrote Der vierjährige Posten (A Sentry for Four Years), Fernando, Claudine von Villa Bella, and Die Freunde von Salamanka (The Friends of Salamanca).
At this time Schubert’s outward life was uneventful. Friends of his college days were faithful, particularly Josef von Spanun, who in 1814 introduced him to the poet Johann Mayrhofer. He also induced the young and brilliant Franz von Schober to visit Schubert. Late in 1815 Schober went to the schoolhouse in the Säulengasse, found Schubert in front of a class with his manuscripts piled about him, and inflamed the young composer, a willing listener, with a desire to break free from his duties. In the spring of 1816 Schubert applied for the post of music director in a college at Laibach (now Ljubljana, Slovenia) but was unsuccessful. His friends tried to interest Goethe in the songs and in April 1816 sent a volume of 16 settings to the poet at Weimar. It produced no result. At length, in December 1816, Schober persuaded Schubert to apply for leave of absence. Despite his father’s reluctance, he obtained the leave and subsequently spent eight months with Schober, living in the home of his friend’s widowed mother.
Early in 1817 Schober brought the baritone Johann Michael Vogl to his home to meet Schubert. As a result of this meeting, Vogl’s singing of Schubert’s songs became the rage of the Viennese drawing rooms. His friendships with the Huttenbrenner brothers, Anselm, a composer, and Josef, an amateur musician, and with Josef von Gahy, a pianist with whom he played duets, date from these days. But this period of freedom did not last, and in the autumn of 1817 Schubert returned to his teaching duties. He wrote to his friends of himself as a verdorbener (“frustrated”) musician. The two earlier years had been particularly fruitful. Songs of this period include “Ganymed,” “Der Wanderer,” and the Harper’s Songs from Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. There were two more symphonies: No. 4 in C Minor, which Schubert himself named the Tragic (1816), and the popular No. 5 in B-flat Major (1816). A fourth mass, in C major, was composed in 1816. The year 1817 is notable for the beginning of his masterly series of piano sonatas. Six were composed at Schober’s home, the finest being No. 7 in E-flat Major and No. 11 in B Major.
Schubert’s years of uncongenial schoolmastering ended in the summer of 1818. His frustrated period in the spring had produced only one substantial work, the Symphony No. 6 in C Major. In the meantime his reputation was growing, however, and the first public performance of one of his works, the Italian Overture in C Major, took place on March 1, 1818, in Vienna. In June he left the city to take up the post of music master to the two daughters of Johann, Count Esterházy, in the family’s summer residence at Zseliz, Hungary. Letters to his friends show him in exuberant spirits, and the summer months were marked by a fresh creative outburst. The piano duets Variations on a French Song in E minor and the Sonata in B-flat Major, sets of dances, songs, and the Deutsche Trauermesse (German Requiem) were completed.
On his return to Vienna he shared lodgings with Mayrhofer and during the winter months composed the operetta Die Zwillingsbrüder (The Twin Brothers). Although sponsored by Vogl, the production of the work was postponed, and in June 1819 Schubert and Vogl set off for a protracted holiday in the singer’s native district of upper Austria. The composer delighted in the beauty of the countryside and was touched by the enthusiastic reception given everywhere to his music. At Steyr he composed the first of his widely known instrumental compositions, the Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 664, and the celebrated Trout Quintet for piano and strings. The close of 1819 saw him engrossed in songs to poems by his friend Mayrhofer and by Goethe, who inspired the masterly Prometheus.
In June 1820 Die Zwillingsbrüder was performed with moderate success in Vienna, Vogl doubling in the parts of the twin brothers. It was followed by the performance of incidental music for the play Die Zauberharfe (The Magic Harp), given in August of the same year. The lovely, melodious overture became famous as the Rosamunde overture. Schubert was achieving renown in wider social circles than the restricted spheres of friend and patron. The wealthy and influential Sonnleithner family was interested in his development; their son Leopold became a great friend and supporter. At the close of the year 1820, Schubert composed the Quartettsatz (Quartet-Movement) in C Minor, heralding the great string quartets of the middle 1820s, and another popular piece, the motet for female voices on the text of Psalm 23. In December 1820 he began the choral setting of Goethe’s Gesang der Geister über den Wassern (Song of the Spirits over the Water) for male-voice octet with accompaniment for bass strings, D. 714, completed in February 1821.
All of Schubert’s efforts to publish his own work were fruitless. Early in 1821, however, a few friends offered his song “Erlkönig” (“Erl King” or “Elf King”) on a subscription basis. The response was so successful that enough money was raised for the printing of “Gretchen am Spinnrade” also. Eighteen months later, opus 12 had been reached.
In Vienna the popularity of Schubert’s songs and dance music became so great that concert parties were entirely devoted to them. These parties, called Schubertiaden, were given in the homes of wealthy merchants and civil servants, but the wider worlds of opera and public concerts still eluded him. He worked during August 1821 on a seventh symphony in E Minor and Major, but this, too, was put aside, along with many other unfinished works of the period. His determination to establish himself in opera led him in September and October to spend a short holiday with Schober at Sankt Pölten, where the friends devoted their energies to the production of a three-act opera, Alfonso und Estrell. It was completed in February 1822 but was never performed. While spending a few days at Atzenbrugg in July 1822, with Schober and other friends, he produced the document called Mein Traum (“My Dream”), describing a quarrel between a music-loving youth and his father. The autumn of 1822 saw the beginning of yet another unfinished composition—not, this time, destined to obscurity: the Symphony in B Minor (Unfinished), which speaks from Schubert’s heart. Two movements and a half-finished scherzo were completed in October and November 1822. In November of the same year Schubert composed a piano fantasia in which the variations are on a theme from his song “Der Wanderer” and completed the Mass in A-flat Major.
At the close of 1822 Schubert contracted a venereal disease, probably syphilis, and the following year was one of illness and retirement. He continued to write almost incessantly. In February 1823 he wrote the Piano Sonata in A Minor, and in April he made another attempt to gain success in Viennese theatres with the one-act operetta Die Verschworenen (The Conspirators), the title being changed later (because of political censorship) to Der häusliche Krieg (Domestic Warfare). The famous work of the year, however, was the song cycle Die schöne Müllerin (“The Fair Maid of the Mill”), representing the epitome of Schubert’s lyrical art. Schubert spent part of the summer in the hospital and probably started work—while still a patient—on his most ambitious opera, Fierrabras. The work was rejected by the directorate of the prestigious Kärntnertor Theatre in Vienna. The year 1823 closed with Schubert’s composition of the music for the play Rosamunde, performed at Vienna in December.
The early months of 1824 were again unhappy. Schubert was ill, penniless, and plagued by a sense of failure. Yet during these months he composed three masterly chamber works: the String Quartet in A Minor, a second string quartet in D Minor containing variations on his song “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (“Death and the Maiden”), and the Octet in F Major for strings and wind instruments. His dejection is manifest in a letter of March 31, 1824, to the painter Leopold Kupelwieser in which he speaks of himself as “the most unfortunate, the most miserable being in the world.” In desperate need of money, he returned in the summer to his teaching post with the Esterházy family and in May 1824 went again to Zseliz. Once more his health and spirits revived. The period was marked by some magnificent piano duets, the Piano Sonata in C Major (Grand Duo), the Variations on an Original Theme in A-flat Major, and the Divertissement à la hongroise (Hungarian Divertissement).
Although his operas remained unperformed, there were frequent public performances of his songs and part-songs in Vienna during these and the following years. Publication proceeded rapidly, and his financial position, though still strained, was at any rate eased. This is the period of the Lady of the Lake songs, including the once popular but later neglected “Ave Maria.” Instrumental compositions are the piano sonatas in A Minor and in D Major, the latter composed at Badgastein. He sketched a symphony during the summer holiday, in all probability the beginnings of the Symphony in C Major (Great), completed in 1828. New friends Moritz von Schwind, a young painter, and Eduard Bauernfeld, a dramatist, were almost continuously in his company during this period.
The resignation of Salieri as imperial Kapellmeister (musical director) in 1824 had led to the promotion of his deputy, Josef Eybler. In 1826 Schubert applied for the vacant post of deputy Kapellmeister, but in spite of strong support by several influential people he was unsuccessful. From then until his death two years later he seems to have let matters drift. Neither by application for professional posts nor submission of operatic work did he seek to establish himself. It can hardly be believed that Schubert was unaware of his exceptional powers; yet, together with an awareness of genius and the realization that it opened doors into cultivated society went the knowledge of his humble birth and upbringing and also of his somewhat uncouth bearing. This self-consciousness made him diffident, reserved, and hesitant. His life was almost entirely devoted to composition, and he derived his livelihood from publishers’ fees and occasional teaching.
The songs of 1826 include the settings of Shakespeare’s “Hark! Hark! the Lark!” and “Who is Silvia?” written during a brief stay in the village of Währing. Three fine instrumental works of this summer and autumn are the last String Quartet in G Major, the Piano Sonata in G Major, and the beginning of the Piano Trio in B-flat Major. In 1827 he composed the first 12 songs of the cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey). Beethoven’s death in 1827 undoubtedly had a profound effect on Schubert, for there is no denying that a more profound, more intellectual quality akin to that in Beethoven’s music appears in his last instrumental works. Some of them, especially the Piano Trio in E-flat Major (1827) and the Piano Sonata in C Minor (1828), suggest the authority of Beethoven, yet his own strong individuality is never submerged. In September 1827 Schubert spent a short holiday in Graz. On his return he composed the Piano Trio in E-flat Major and resumed work on Part II of the Winterreise. This is the period of his piano solos, the Impromptus and Moments musicaux.
A succession of masterpieces marks the last year of his life. Early in the year he composed the greatest of his piano duets, the Fantasy in F Minor. The Great Symphony was concluded in March, as was also the cantata Miriams Siegesgesang (Miriam’s Victory Song). In June he worked at his sixth mass—in E-flat Major. A return to songwriting in August produced the series published together as the Schwanengesang (Swan Song). In September and early October the succession was concluded by the last three piano sonatas, in C Minor, A Major, and B-flat Major, and the great String Quintet in C Major—the swan song of the Classical era in music.
The only public concert Schubert gave took place on March 26, 1828. It was both artistically and financially a success, and the impecunious composer was at last able to buy himself a piano. At the end of August he moved into lodgings with his brother Ferdinand. Schubert’s health, broken by the illness of 1823, had deteriorated, and his ceaseless work had exhausted him. In October he developed typhoid fever as a result of drinking tainted water. His last days were spent in the company of his brother and several close friends.
It is said that Schubert’s place in the history of music is equivocal, for he stands between the worlds of Classical and Romantic music. He can, however, be considered as the last of the great Classical composers. His music, subjectively emotional in the Romantic manner, poetically conceived, and revolutionary in language, is nevertheless cast in the formal molds of the Classical school—with the result that it has become increasingly apparent that Schubert more truly belongs to the age of Haydn, Beethoven, and Mozart than to that of Schumann, Chopin, and Wagner.Maurice J.E. Brown The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica