Title: Schubert and His Work
Author: Peyser, Herbert Francis
Language: English
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             [Illustration: Schubert and Vogl at the piano.
                   _From a drawing by M. v. Schwind_]



                               _Schubert_
                              AND HIS WORK


                          By HERBERT F. PEYSER

                  [Illustration: Harp and cello logo]

                                NEW YORK
                           _Grosset & Dunlap_
                               PUBLISHERS

                         _Copyright 1946, 1950
             The Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York_
                Printed in the United States of America



                                Foreword


A sense of helplessness and futility overcomes the writer who, in the
limits of a volume as unpretending as the present one, endeavors to give
the casual radio listener a slight idea of Schubert’s inundating
fecundity and inspiration. Like Bach, like Haydn, like Mozart,
Schubert’s capacity for creative labor staggers the imagination and,
like them, he conferred upon an unworthy—or, rather, an
indifferent—generation treasures beyond price and almost beyond
counting. Outwardly, his life was far less spectacular than Beethoven’s
or Mozart’s. His works are the mirror of what it must have been
spiritually. Volumes would not exhaust the wonder of his myriad
creations. If this tiny book serves to heighten even a little the
reader’s interest in such songs, symphonies, piano or chamber works of
Schubert as come to his attention over the air it will have achieved the
most that can be asked of it.

                                                                H. F. P.



                                Schubert
                              AND HIS WORK


The most lovable and the shortest-lived of the great composers, Franz
Seraph Peter Schubert was doubly a paradox. He was the only one of the
outstanding Viennese masters (unless one chooses to include in this
category the Strauss waltz kings) actually born in Vienna; and, though
there has never been a composer more spiritually Viennese, Schubert
inherited not a drop of Viennese blood. His ancestry had its roots in
the Moravian and Austrian-Silesian soil. His grandfather, Karl Schubert,
a peasant and a local magistrate, lived in one of the thirty-five towns
called Neudorf in Moravian-Silesian territory and married the daughter
of a well-to-do farmer, acquiring by the match a large tract of land and
ten children of whom the fifth, Franz Theodor Florian, was destined to
beget an immortal.

At eighteen Franz Theodor, who was born in 1763, determined to follow
the example of his elder brother, Karl, and become a schoolmaster. He
went to Vienna and secured a post as assistant instructor in a school
where Karl had already been teaching for several years. In spite of
starvation wages he married (1785) Maria Elisabeth Vietz, from
Zuckmantel, in Silesia, the very town whence the Schuberts had
originally emigrated to Neudorf. She was a cook, the daughter of a
“master locksmith,” and she was seven years older than her husband. The
couple had fourteen children, nine of whom died in infancy. The
survivors were Ignaz, Ferdinand, Karl, Therese and our Franz Peter, who
came twelfth in order.

A year after his marriage father Schubert was appointed schoolmaster of
the parish of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, in Lichtental, one of the
thirty-four Viennese suburbs (or _Vorstädte_), located at greater or
lesser distances from the “Inner Town,” which in those days represented
Vienna proper. The schoolhouse (unless it has been demolished in the
late war) still stands. Franz Theodor took lodgings for himself and his
family a few steps away at the House of the Red Crab (_Zum rothen
Krebse_), Himmelpfortgrund 72, now Nussdorfer Strasse 54 and since 1912
a Schubert museum, owned by the municipality of Vienna. Here Franz
Seraph Peter was born on January 31, 1797, at half past one in the
afternoon.

Father Schubert’s position was far from lucrative; in fact, it offered
no salary at all, nothing but a tax of one gulden a month per child
levied on the parents. And yet this inflexible, God-fearing pedagogue,
imposed such merciless economies and Spartan discipline on himself, his
family and his pupils that he not only managed to make both ends meet
but, when Franz Peter was four, to buy the schoolhouse where he taught
and to take up his quarters there. In modern times the little house had
become a garage, though a memorial tablet placed on it in 1928 reminded
the passerby that Schubert lived and taught there for several years
besides composing under its roof a number of his works, among them _Der
Erlkönig_.

Not the least remarkable thing about Father Schubert was the fact that,
despite the endless grind of making a living, teaching and raising a
family, he should have found time to cultivate music. Yet he was a
tolerable amateur cellist and his great son’s first music teacher. After
giving the boy “elementary instruction” in his fifth year and sending
him to school in his sixth he taught Franz Peter at the age of eight the
rudiments of violin playing and practised him so thoroughly that the boy
was “soon able to play easy duets fairly well.”

The youngster was next handed over to his elder brother, Ignaz, who gave
him some piano instruction. But here an uncanny thing happened! The
child showed such an instinctive grasp of everything his brother tried
to teach him that Ignaz, nonplussed, confessed himself hopelessly
outstripped. Franz, for his part, declared he had no need of help but
would go his own way in musical matters. Thereupon his parents entrusted
him to the choirmaster of the nearby Lichtental parish church, one
Michael Holzer, who knew something about counterpoint and consumed more
alcohol than was good for him. It was not long before poor Holzer was
experiencing with his pupil the same difficulties as Ignaz. He had the
little fellow sing and was delighted by his bright voice and his musical
accuracy. He let him accompany hymns on the organ, had him improvise and
modulate back and forth, taught him a little piano and violin,
familiarized him with the viola clef and a few principles of
thorough-bass. But in the end his labors were largely superfluous.
Holzer admitted that “the lad has harmony in his little finger.” A
nearby shop of a piano maker offered a more fertile field for
experiments in harmony. Released from the organ loft Franz Peter hurried
to this shop and spent hours there forming chords on the keyboard.


                      He Joins the “Sängerknaben”

It is not impossible that Schubert may have made a few attempts at
composition at this stage, though there is no actual proof. But a real
turning point came on May 28, 1808. On that date there appeared in the
official journal, the _Wiener Zeitung_, an announcement that two places
among the choristers of the Imperial Chapel (the so-called Sängerknaben)
had to be filled. Father Schubert saw his chance. A chorister who showed
the necessary qualifications could enjoy free tuition, board and lodging
at the Imperial Konvikt (or Seminary); and if the boy distinguished
himself “in morals and studies” he might remain even after his voice had
changed. The Konvikt was a former Jesuit school reopened in 1802 by the
Emperor Franz and supervised by a branch of the Jesuits called the
Piarists. In addition to ten choristers there were pupils of middle and
high school standing. The Konvikt occupied a long, cheerless building
which in modern times looked quite as bleak as it did in Schubert’s day.

The tests took place on September 30, 1808, and the examiners consisted
of Antonio Salieri, a prolific opera composer, an intimate of Gluck and
Haydn, a teacher of Beethoven and an implacable enemy of Mozart; the
Court Kapellmeister Eybler; and a singing teacher at the school, Philip
Korner. Schubert presented himself for the examination wearing a grayish
smock, which caused the other boys to jeer and call him a miller. But as
millers were popularly supposed to be musical the young mockers agreed
that he could not fail. They were right. Not only did he meet all the
requirements but his voice and musicianship aroused the surprise and
enthusiasm of the committee. Schubert was promptly accepted. In other
subjects required, as well as in music, he easily surpassed the other
competitors. Not in vain was he his father’s son!

So the boy shed his “miller’s” vesture and put on the fancy,
gold-braided togs of the Sängerknaben. In a few days he was settled at
the Konvikt. He was amenable to discipline—having learned it plentifully
at home—and does not appear to have suffered the tribulations of some
other Konvikt scholars who were less conformable and more adventurous.
The shyness which clung to him more or less throughout his life made him
shun his fellow students as much as he conveniently could. The food was
poor and scanty and even four years later we find him appealing
pathetically to his brother Ferdinand for a few pennies a month to buy a
roll or an apple as a fortifying snack between a “mediocre midday meal
and a paltry supper” eight hours later! The music room at the school was
left unheated, hence “gruesomely cold” (anyone who has experienced the
unheated corridors of a Viennese house in winter can shudder in
sympathy!). But there was plenty of music and the school orchestra, in
which Schubert occupied the second desk among the violins, delighted
him.

Every evening this orchestra played an entire symphony and ended up with
“the noisiest possible overture.” The windows were left open in summer
and crowds used to collect outside, till the police dispersed them
because they obstructed traffic. The concerts were conducted by a
singularly lovable old Bohemian organist, viola player and teacher,
Wenzel Ruziczka, who at an early date defended and explained some of the
boldest “modernisms” in Schubert’s compositions. The orchestra performed
a good deal of trivial music but every now and then there would be works
by Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini, Méhul and even some of the less taxing
scores of Beethoven. Schubert on these occasions felt himself in heaven!
He was “entranced” by the slow movements of Haydn, but his god was
Mozart. With a subtlety of perception almost uncanny in a boy of twelve
he said that the G minor Symphony “shook him to the depths without his
knowing why.” He called the overture to the _Marriage of Figaro_ the
“most beautiful in the whole world,” then quickly added “but I had
almost forgotten that to the _Magic Flute_.” It is certain that this
student orchestra was a most valuable factor in Schubert’s musical
education. It was with these young players in mind that he composed his
First Symphony in October, 1813, at the age of sixteen.

At a first violin desk in front of Schubert there played another youth,
some nine years older, a student of law and philosophy from Linz, Josef
von Spaun, and thus began one of those Schubertian friendships that was
to last for life and play an important part in Schubert’s story. Amazed
by the beautiful playing he heard behind him, Spaun looked around and
saw “a small boy in spectacles.” Not long afterwards he surprised the
youngster in the freezing music room trying a sonata by Mozart. Franz
confided to his sympathetic new friend that, much as he loved the
sonata, he found Mozart “extremely difficult to play” (another acute
observation!). Then, “shy and blushing,” he admitted that he “sometimes
put his thoughts into notes.” However, he trembled lest his father get
wind of the fact, for while Franz Theodor had no objection to music as a
pastime and also had every reason to be satisfied that it paid for his
son’s education and kept a roof over his head, he had other plans for
him in mind. The real business of the young man’s life was to be
schoolmastering. No two ways about it!

So Franz Peter had need to be wary. Besides, there was another obstacle
to his composing. Music paper was scarce and costly. He did, it is true,
rule staves on paper himself but even ordinary brown paper was not
plentiful. So the generous Spaun, though of a rather restricted budget,
bought paper out of his own allowance and did not remonstrate when
Schubert used up the precious commodity “by the ream.” The only
difficulty, now, was that Franz composed in study hours and fell back in
his school work, a fact that was not slow in coming to his father’s
notice. And yet the records of the Konvikt do not show that Schubert was
a poor student. At various times certificates signed by the school
director, Father Innocenz Lang, pronounce him “good” or “very good” in
almost everything, while in Greek he is even described as “eminent.”
Somewhat later when at normal school, preparing to teach in his father’s
schoolhouse, his weaker subjects were mathematics, Latin and “practical
religion.”

However, not all the parental thundering could keep nature from taking
its course, even if it temporarily embittered Franz’s young life. Father
Schubert at one stage went so far as to forbid his son to enter his
house. The lad had been in the habit of going home on Sundays and
holidays and there taking part in string quartet concerts with his
father and his brothers, Ignaz and Ferdinand, Schubert himself occupying
the viola desk and being the real director of the ensemble. He roughly
scolded his brothers when they blundered, but cautiously corrected Franz
Theodor’s errors with nothing more scathing than: “Herr Vater, something
must be wrong here.” Now this diversion was denied him and he suffered.
Not until May 28, 1812, was he permitted to return to the Lichtental
roof-tree and then only because a tragic event softened the paternal
heart. On that Corpus Christi day Franz’s mother died of typhus (or, as
they called it then, “nerve fever”), the same malady which sixteen years
later was to carry off Franz himself. In due course the chamber music
sessions were resumed and in time they outgrew their humble environment.


                       The Earliest Compositions

Let us look back briefly to consider a few of Schubert’s early creative
accomplishments. How many experimental efforts preceded his earliest
extant compositions we can only surmise. His first surviving one is a
four-hand piano Fantasie, 32 pages long, running to more than a dozen
movements with frequent changes of time and key. A little later, on
March 30, 1811, he began his first vocal composition, an immensely
prolix affair called _Hagars Klage_ to a discursive poem about Hagar
lamenting her dying child in the desert. With its varying rhythms, its
pathetic slow introduction, its elaborate Allegro and its passionate
prayer, it shows the influence of the popular German ballad master,
Johann Rudolph Zumsteeg, who had himself composed the same text. Not
only Zumsteeg but composers like Reichhardt and Goethe’s friend, Zelter,
exercised moulding influences on Schubert in his formative stage. A
setting of Schiller’s _Leichenphantasie_ is carried out on much the same
lines and so is a ballad, _Der Vatermörder_, to a text by Pfeffel. And
there were other things besides long, trailing ballads—an orchestral
overture in D, a so-called quartet-overture and quintet-overture, an
Andante and a set of variations for piano, three string quartets “in
changing keys” (Schubert wrote seven quartets in all during his Konvikt
days), thirty minuets “with trio” for strings, “German dances,” some
four part Kyries for the Lichtental church and other matters bearing the
dates 1811 and 1812.

The good Ruziczka, finding himself unable to teach his young charge
anything he did not know already, handed him over to Salieri, who began
to give him lessons in counterpoint on June 18, 1812 (Schubert made a
record of the date). He must have profited by Salieri’s instruction or
he would hardly have remained his pupil all of five years, as he did.
One circumstance may astonish us—that he briefly suffered himself to be
swayed by the prejudice Salieri harbored against Beethoven. Yet when
Salieri celebrated his fiftieth year of musical activities, in 1816,
Schubert made a slighting entry in his diary about “certain bizarreries
of modern tendencies.” That this could have been only a passing
aberration is clear from the fact that Beethoven remained his divinity
and his despair to his dying day. He once told his friend, Spaun: “There
are times when I think something could come of me; but who is capable of
anything after Beethoven?” Indeed, Beethoven remained to such a degree
an obsession of his that the older Master’s name was almost the last
word he ever uttered.

               [Illustration: Franz Schubert as a youth.
            _From a crayon drawing by Leopold Kupelwieser_]

                 [Illustration: Franz Schubert in 1825
             _From a water-color by Wilhelm August Rieder_]

Franz Theodor found it inexpedient to remain long a widower. Less than a
year after the loss of the quiet woman who had been his “deeply
treasured wife” he married the daughter of a silk goods manufacturer,
the “wertgeschätzte Jungfrau” Anna Kleyenböck, a woman of thirty, twenty
years his junior. The entire Schubert family, including the black sheep
from the Konvikt, was present at the wedding on April 25, 1813. Five
more children were born and this time only one died. Anna Kleyenböck
fitted perfectly into the Schubert _ménage_. Contrary to the tradition
of stepmothers she idolized her stepson, Franz, and was no less adored
by him in return. Later, when Father Schubert’s pecuniary position
somewhat improved, Anna showed herself a model of economy and thrift,
always putting what occasional savings the schoolmaster gave her into a
woolen stocking! It was from this stocking that she more than once
furnished a helping mite to her stepson in his days of need.

        [Illustration: Anna Schubert, Franz’ beloved stepmother.
                   _A pencil drawing by von Schwind_]

Franz’s voice changed in 1812 and logically his days at the Konvikt
should have been numbered. But the authorities were by no means anxious
to be rid of him and his father would probably have been pleased if he
had stayed on. Even the Emperor, to whom representations were made and
whose attention the boy’s talents seem to have attracted, agreed that he
might remain and take advantage of the “Meerfeld scholarship”—provided
he made an effort to improve his standing in mathematics. Franz himself
must have realized that to return home meant to court renewed trouble
with his father, not to mention the risk of actual starvation. Yet he
was so fed up on the Konvikt that about the end of October, 1813, he
left what he called the “prison.” His last work written there (it is
dated October 28, 1813) was his First Symphony. But he maintained
cordial relations with the Seminary for some years, tried out some of
his new compositions in the Konvikt music room and preserved his
interest in the school orchestra.


                          The Early Symphonies

This is, perhaps, as good a place as any to consider for a moment the
early symphonies of Schubert. One says “early” because Schubert’s
symphonic output falls sharply into two distinct halves. Six of them—two
in D major, two in B flat, one in C minor and one in C major—belong to
the years from 1813 through 1817. They are relatively small in scale,
melodically charming, in numerous detail of harmony and color
unmistakably Schubertian, yet by and large derivative. They naïvely
reflect phraseology and other influences the young composer assimilated
from the music he was then studying and hearing. Thus, in the Second
Symphony may be heard echoes of Beethoven’s Fourth and jostling one
another through the pages of the others are reminiscences (if not
outright citations) of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Weber. The
Fourth (in C minor) is for some not clearly defined reason entitled
_Tragic_; the Sixth, still more inexplicably, the composer characterized
as _Grosse_ (great) _Symphonie in C_. Perversely enough, it is probably
the weakest of the six, the one which least satisfied its creator. Time
has paradoxically rechristened this symphony the “little” C major to
distinguish it from the great C major of 1828. The Fifth, in B flat,
remains with its endearing reminders of Mozart, perhaps the loveliest
and most frequently played of all this symphonic juvenilia. Most of
these scores, however, are oftener heard today than they were till
recent years. For all their (perhaps half-conscious) borrowings they are
still palpable Schubert, even if lesser Schubert. Such a master as
Dvorak was always ready to break a lance in their behalf and one of his
proudest boasts was how often, as Conservatory director in New York, he
used to conduct his students’ orchestra in the Fifth of the set.

No sooner was Schubert liberated from the Konvikt than he found himself
faced with a worse menace—conscription. Service in the Austrian army was
in those days no laughing matter. Its duration was fourteen years and
the prospect of such a lifetime of soldiering might have appalled an
even less sensitive nature than Schubert’s. There were loopholes, of
course, particularly for those who had wealth and position. For those
who did not, the best road of escape lay through the schoolroom. Since
there was need of teachers, the government exempted them. It almost
looked as if the State were conspiring with Father Schubert against his
son. Poor Franz Peter had no alternative and so, barely out of the
Konvikt, he enrolled in the Normal School of St. Anna for a ten months’
preparatory course to teach a primary class at his father’s school, a
chore which was to occupy him for the next three years.

Hateful as he found his labors he seems to have discharged them
conscientiously enough. Yet if the Konvikt, where he had numerous
friends, was a “prison” what was this? He was only one of many
“assistants” and he had to live under his father’s roof, though he _did_
earn forty gulden a year. Was he a good disciplinarian? He himself once
confessed to his friend, Franz Lachner, that he was a “quick-tempered
teacher,” who when disturbed by the little imps in his class while he
composed thrashed them soundly “because they always made him lose the
thread of his thought.” His sister, Therese, later told Kreissle von
Hellborn (Schubert’s first biographer) that he “kept his finger in
practise on the children’s ears.” Another story has it that he was
finally dismissed for a particularly smart box on the ear of a
particularly stupid girl. Still, when Schubert later applied for another
school position Superintendent Josef Spendou commended the applicant’s
“method of handling the young.”

While he was at the St. Anna School, Schubert composed among a quantity
of other things his first complete mass and his first opera. The former
(in F) is the more important of the two. It was written for the limited
resources of the Lichtental parish church—which on October 14, 1814,
celebrated its centenary—in mind. The work of the seventeen-year-old
composer was heard with unconcealed pleasure. He conducted it himself,
his former teacher, Holzer, led the choir and the soprano soloist was
Therese Grob, a year younger than Schubert and daughter of a Lichtental
merchant who lived around the corner from Father Schubert’s schoolhouse.
Ten days later the mass was repeated in the Church of St. Augustine, in
the imperial Hofburg. This performance seems to have aroused even more
enthusiasm and good will than the first. Salieri proudly pointed to the
boyish composer as his own pupil and Franz Theodor, now that he knew his
son safely caged in a classroom, made him a present of a five-octave
piano. The Mass itself, a tenderly felt, lyrical, simple work, is
sensitive and promising rather than something epoch-making, such as the
composer was soon to achieve in the less pretentious province of the
solo song.

A word about Therese Grob, who more or less properly figures in
Schubert’s story as his first love. Her family was refined and musical
and Franz Peter, who was a visitor at the Grob household, may have found
there some of the same sympathy and understanding the young Beethoven
did in the home of the von Breunings. Certainly, he composed a number of
things for Therese and her brother, Heinrich. His friend, Holzapfel,
declares that Therese was “no beauty, but shapely, rather plump, with a
fresh round little face of a child.” In after years Schubert told Anselm
Hüttenbrenner that he had loved her “very deeply.” She was not pretty,
he said, and was pock-marked but “good to the heart.” He had “hoped to
marry her” but could find no position which would insure him the means
to support a wife. Her mother having decided it was no use to wait for a
penniless composer to become a somebody made her take a well-to-do baker
instead. Poor Schubert told his friend this had greatly pained him and
that he “loved her still,” but added philosophically “as a matter of
fact, she was not destined for me.” Did Schubert, we may ask, really
contemplate marriage? If he did how are we to understand an entry he
made in his diary in 1816: “Marriage is a terrifying thought to a free
man...”? Actually, Schubert’s life was devoid of what might be described
as urgent affairs of the heart—outwardly, at least. One will seek vainly
in his case for the periodic transports of a Beethoven or even the
passing dalliances of a Mozart. Friendships rather than passionate
ardors were Schubert’s specialties—and his friendships with women were
quite as sincere as with men and had the same basis of sentimental
conviviality. Hüttenbrenner had small reason to chaff his companion (as
he once did) for being “so cold and dry in society toward the fair sex.”
Certainly, the delightful Fröhlich sisters (whom we shall meet shortly)
did not find him “dry.” It is so easy to mistake shyness for
coldness—and if Schubert was anything he was diffident, sometimes
tragically so!

Opera had exercised a strong attraction on Franz Peter even while he was
a student at the Konvikt. He used to accompany Spaun to the Kärntnertor
Theatre whenever holidays or the state of Spaun’s purse permitted. The
friends sat in the top gallery and heard operas like Weigl’s
_Schweizerfamilie_, Spontini’s _Vestale_, Cherubini’s _Medea_,
Boieldieu’s _Jean de Paris_ and Gluck’s _Iphigenia in Tauris_. Among the
great singers Schubert heard in this way were Pauline Milder and Johann
Michael Vogl. Both artists were soon to become his friends—Vogl, indeed,
the high priest of his songs.

What wonder, then, that Schubert planned an opera of his own? In May,
1814, while at the St. Anna School, he completed a “natural magic opera”
in three acts called _Des Teufels Lustschloss_ (“The Devil’s Pleasure
Palace”). The libretto was by a popular dramatist of the time, August
Kotzebue, who could hardly have attached much importance to it or he
would never have permitted an unknown beginner to compose it. The piece
was the first of a pageant of ugly ducklings, an operatic progeny of
sorrow destined to span Schubert’s life from his schooldays to his
grave. If we add up his works for the stage—completed, fragmentary,
partly sketched or lost—in less than a decade and a half we shall arrive
at the astonishing total of eighteen. And today there is almost nothing
to show for all this heartbreaking industry because an ancient (and
largely untested) tradition calls Schubert’s operas “undramatic” and
otherwise “poor theatre.” Possibly they are. But how many now living can
speak of a Schubert opera from actual experience?

_Des Teufels Lustschloss_ was never performed in Schubert’s Vienna,
though Prague was once on the point of staging it. The plot has to do
with the adventures of an impecunious Count Oswald who, on the way to
his tumbled-down castle with his wife, stops at a wayside inn. There the
peasantry of the neighborhood entreats the knight to free a nearby ruin
from ghosts and other spooky visitants. He consents and, together with
his squire (a kind of Sancho Panza), penetrates the infested premises.
The spectres take him captive and subject him to grisly tests—the worst
of which is a command to marry a “ghostly” but extremely substantial
Amazon who suddenly appears on the scene. In despair Oswald springs into
the abyss and lands—in the arms of his wife! Her wealthy uncle, it
transpires, being displeased with his niece’s marriage to the penniless
Count has “arranged” the whole ordeal as a test of Oswald’s fidelity,
with the help of his gardener’s buxom daughter—the “Amazon”—and
“machines of all kinds brought at considerable expense from foreign
parts.”

It should be remembered, however, that such extravagances were habitual
ingredients of innumerable “magic” plays and comedies which for
generations, indeed for centuries, formed the stock-in-trade of the
Viennese suburban theatre and the most sublimated outgrowth of which was
Mozart’s _Magic Flute_. Moreover, not the effect of such a wild tale in
the _reading_ but in _performance on the stage, in a theatre, before an
audience_ is the proof of the pudding. The same with the text—a specimen
of the poetry of _Des Teufels Lustschloss_ is the ensuing of Count
Oswald’s squire:

  _“I’m laughing, I’m crying, I’m crying, I’m laughing,_
  _I’m laughing, ha, ha, ha,_
  _I’m laughing, hi, hi, hi,_
  _I’m laughing, ho, ho, ho,_
  _I’m laughing, hu, hu, hu”..._

The test of such a thing is not the verbiage but the composer’s
treatment of it. There is no question here of a masterpiece any more
than there is in the mass, or indeed, in the various orchestral or
chamber works, he had produced thus far. It was different, however, with
the song (_Lied_) which he was turning out in effortless abundance. He
had made settings among other things of poems by Schiller, Fouqué,
Mattheson (_Adelaide_, for one, though smoother, more lyrical and less
varied in its mood than Beethoven’s famous song). Then, on October 19,
1814—“the birthday of the German Lied” it has been called—there comes
like a bolt from the blue the epoch-making _Gretchen am Spinnrade_, from
Goethe’s _Faust_. It is a simple, plaintive melody above a murmuring
spinning wheel figure and a pulsing rhythmic throb, but nevertheless a
marvel of jointless form and a miracle of psychology, the emotional
experience of ages concentrated into one hundred bars of music of such
infinite art and uncanny perfection that it almost defies analysis.

As if a gigantic dam had burst, a torrent of immortal mastersongs now
begins to pour forth. Not everything, to be sure, either now or later is
a deathless creation but the number of those that are will probably
remain baffling to the end of time. Schubert frequently made two, three
or more settings of one and the same text, differing in greater or
lesser degree from the earlier one though not invariably better than the
preceding version. Of the more than six hundred Lieder Schubert composed
almost a third are such resettings. It was nothing unusual for him to
turn out four, five, six songs a day. “When I finish one I begin
another,” was his carefree way of describing the incredible process.
Sometimes he even forgot which songs were his own. “I say, that’s not a
bad one; who wrote it?” he once asked on hearing something he had
composed only a few days before. He was careless, too, about what became
of some of his manuscripts and there is no telling how much posterity
may have lost as a result. Once he came near ruining a page on which he
had written his song _Die Forelle_ by pouring ink instead of sand over
the wet writing; being sleepy, he did not bother to notice which
receptacle he had picked up.


                              Der Erlkönig

In the year following _Gretchen am Spinnrade_ there came into being (and
once more in his father’s school in the Säulengasse) what is, in some
ways perhaps, the most famous of Schubert’s songs—_Der Erlkönig_. Spaun,
who went to visit his friend one afternoon, found him “all aglow,” a
book in hand, reading Goethe’s ballad. Schubert walked up and down the
room several times, suddenly seated himself at a table “and in the
shortest possible time the splendid ballad was on paper.” Franz having
no piano, the pair hastened down to the Konvikt where the song was tried
out that very evening. Several listeners objected to the sharp
dissonances of the accompaniment to the child’s cry but it was none
other than old Ruziczka who showed himself the best “modernist” of them
all, actually championing the “cacophony,” explaining its artistic
function and praising its beauty. Schubert himself had a pair of sore
wrists from the unmerciful triplets of the piano part! Not everywhere,
one regrets to say, did _Der Erlkönig_ create such a stir. At the
insistence of his friends Schubert sent it, along with some other songs,
to Goethe with an appropriate dedication. His Excellency in Weimar did
not even deign to acknowledge it. Meanwhile the publishing firm of
Breitkopf und Härtel, to whom Spaun also dispatched the ballad, thought
that someone was playing a practical joke. Before deciding what to do
with “wild stuff” they addressed themselves to a Dresden violinist who
chanced also to be called Franz Schubert (he composed a trifling piece
called _The Bee_, which some fiddlers still play) and asked his opinion.
The Saxon Franz (or François) Schubert exploded, insisted he had never
composed the “cantata” in question but would see who was misusing his
good name for such a patchwork and promptly bring the miscreant to book!

 [Illustration: Engraving by Franz Weigl for the second edition of _Der
                              Erlkönig_.]

Piano composition—Ecossaises, German Dances (“Deutsche”), variations,
sonatas—a number of string quartets and other chamber music swelled the
ever-increasing output. The quantity of songs mounted like a tidal wave.
And although nothing had come of _Des Teufels Lustschloss_ (part of
which the composer, moved by purely artistic impulses, even went so far
as to rewrite), Schubert continued the woeful job of piling up unwanted
operatic scores. He wrote _Der vierjährige Posten_ (the story of a
sentry who was posted and not relieved on the departure of his regiment
and who, when it returned four years later, still stood on duty);
_Fernando, a Singspiel_; _Claudine von Villa Bella_; _Die Freunde von
Salamanka_ and _Adrast_ (texts by Johann Mayrhofer).

And, while we are on the operatic subject, let us look ahead into the
years of Schubert’s maturity and list what other operas he wrote (it
should be understood, by the way, that certain of these are more on the
order of operettas than what we understand by lyric dramas). In 1819 he
composed _Die Zwillingsbrüder_, which has a plot along _Comedy of
Errors_ lines; in 1820 a “magic and machine” comedy called _Die
Zauberharfe_ (“The Magic Harp”), the overture of which is familiar to us
as the _Rosamunde_—though the overture which Schubert used three years
later to the musical play of that name was the introduction that
prefaced a full-length romantic opera, _Alfonso und Estrella_, dated
1821. An _actual_ overture to _Rosamunde_ was never written. The piece
known universally by that title was not so designated till 1827, when it
was published in an arrangement for piano duet. Other operatic works we
may cite in passing are _Die Verschworenen_, a treatment of the
“Lysistrata” motive; and the large-scale “heroic-romantic” opera,
_Fierrabras_, composed in the summer of 1823. After 1823 Schubert let
opera alone—at least temporarily. On his deathbed he was still planning
another, a _Graf von Gleichen_, to a book by his boon companion, Eduard
von Bauernfeld. But the project had never gotten beyond some sketches.

Mayrhofer, whom we just mentioned, had made Schubert’s acquaintance in
1814, when the composer set to music his poem _Am See_. A close
friendship immediately sprang up between them though Mayrhofer—the older
of the two by ten years—was of a moody, brooding nature (he subsequently
committed suicide by jumping out of a window). By 1819, Schubert, having
grown heartily sick of schoolmastering some time before, went to share
for a while the sombre, dilapidated quarters of Mayrhofer in the
Wipplinger Strasse (the danger of the army draft was now over) and the
pair, for all their temperamental differences, hit it off famously.
Although Schubert composed pretty much anywhere and everywhere he
accomplished a prodigious amount of creative work in Mayrhofer’s
depressing room. The poet on opening his eyes in the morning used to see
Franz, clad only in shirt and trousers, writing vigorously at a rickety
table. His favorite working hours were from six in the morning till
noon, though he was in the habit of sleeping with his spectacles on in
case the lightning of inspiration should strike him the minute he awoke.
If any visitor came unannounced Schubert would greet him, without
looking up from his work, with the words: “Greetings! How are you?
Well?”—whereupon the intruder realized it was an invitation to
disappear.

After writing all morning Schubert, like a true Viennese, usually went
to enjoy the incomparable relaxation of a coffee house, drinking a
_Mélange_ (café au lait), eating _Kipferl_ (crescents, if you prefer!),
smoking and reading the newspapers. In the evening there was the opera
and the theatre (provided one had money or somebody bought the tickets)
or else the gatherings of the clans at the various “Gasthäuser,”
“Stammbeisel” and taverns. The friends discussed questions of the day,
literature, plays, music. They criticized each other’s work with
unsparing frankness. Schubert’s uncommonly keen musical opinions were
relished by everybody.

Although Schubert wished to have done with teaching as soon as possible
he attempted (perhaps to placate his father) to obtain a pedagogical
post in a normal school at Laibach. He was turned down in favor of some
local applicant, which was no doubt just as well. Had it been otherwise
the brilliant coterie of “Schubertians” might have been nipped in the
bud and the term “Schubertiads,” as they called their revels and their
discussions had it entered the dictionary at all, might have had another
meaning.

Who were these “Schubertians,” this group of younger and older
intellectuals and Bohemians held together, somehow, by the indefinable
attraction of Schubert’s personality? They came and went with the years
and when one or another vanished a different one would generally take
his place. “Kann er was?” (“What’s he good at?”) was Franz’s usual query
if a newcomer appeared—a question which earned him the nickname
“Kanevas”! Virtually all who stepped into the charmed circle were good
at something. Among the most prominent were Spaun, Mayrhofer, Stadler,
Senn, and later Moriz von Schwind, the painter; the Kupelwieser
brothers, Leopold and Josef, Josef Gahy, Karl Enderes, the poet
Matthaeus Collin, the blue-stocking novelist, Karoline Pichler, Eduard
von Bauernfeld, Franz von Schober—to cite only a handful that come to
mind. Schober, particularly, who wrote, drew, acted and was in every
sense a clever man of the world, played a considerable role in
Schubert’s life—some even hint a rather nefarious one. Still, he was
well-to-do, his rooms were at Franz’s disposal whenever he needed them
and he introduced the composer to the great Michael Vogl.

The latter, whom Schubert had long worshipped at the opera, was not only
one of the greatest baritones of his time, but a singular and romantic
creature, who became a social favorite on the strength of his handsome
face and figure, developed some harmless affectations yet remained a
mystic at heart. He passed much of his spare time reading the Bible,
Plato, Epictetus and other ancient and mediaeval poets and philosophers.
He greeted Schubert in the condescending manner assumed by some popular
artists when they first met aspiring beginners. He seemed unimpressed on
glancing over the first song or two Schubert put before him, but after
reading through _Der Erlkönig_ he patted the composer on the back,
remarking as one not wholly dissatisfied: “There’s something in you, but
you’re too little of an actor or a charlatan. You squander your fine
thoughts without developing them.” Yet before long he had become
Schubert’s chief interpreter and propagandist, and spoke grandly of
“these truly god-like inspirations, these revelations of musical
clairvoyance.”

The chamber music concerts given on Sundays at the Schubert homestead in
Lichtental had outgrown their strictly domestic character quite some
time before Father Schubert had been transferred (late in 1817) to a new
school in the neighboring Rossau district. The string quartet had
expanded into a small orchestra and now performed symphonies and such in
the homes of several musical acquaintances, lastly in that of a wealthy
landowner, Anton Pettenkofer, who lived in the Inner Town, not far from
St. Stephen’s. It was for this amateur orchestra that Schubert composed
at least four of his early symphonies. The occasional absence of drums
and trumpets (in the Fifth, for instance) indicates the constitution of
the orchestra at different times. Schubert himself occupied a viola desk
delighting, like Mozart and Bach before him, to be “in the middle of the
harmony.”

Up to 1818 there had not been what one might describe as public
performances of Schubert’s works other than church music. On March 1
there occurred the first of these, at a Musical-Declamatory Academy
(that is to say, a miscellaneous concert) organized by a violinist,
Eduard Jaell. One of Schubert’s pieces heard was a so-called _Italian
Overture_. It was surprisingly well received by the critics and in less
than three weeks other Schubert overtures were heard in Vienna, at
similar entertainments. One aristocratic hearer prophesied in type (and
correctly, as it proved) that Schubert’s works “would occupy an
advantageous place among the productions of the present day.” Only a
little earlier Franz had the satisfaction of seeing a composition of his
appear for the first time in print! It was a setting of Mayrhofer’s poem
_Am Erlafsee_ and it was published in a kind of pictorial guide “For
Friends of Interesting Localities in the Austrian Monarchy.”

Financially, Schubert reached in the spring of 1818 a rather desperate
pass, as he was earning nothing and could not depend everlastingly on
his friends. So when the father of the singer, Caroline Unger,
recommended him to Count Johann Esterházy, of Galantha, as piano teacher
for his two young daughters, Schubert accepted out of sheer need, much
as he detested teaching of any kind. The summer estate of this branch of
the Esterházy family was at Zseliz, in Hungarian-Slovakian frontier
land, actually not far from Vienna but for Schubert the farthest away he
had ever been. The pay was not generous but at least board and lodging
were free, the country was a relief after the summer heat in Vienna, the
Esterházys and their friends were not unmusical. The daughters, Maria
and Caroline, were thirteen and eleven, respectively, whom Schubert
found “amiable children.” He is now and then represented as having been
in love with Caroline. If he really was it could only have been on his
second visit to Zseliz, in 1824, when she had become a young lady of
seventeen. Like Haydn, Schubert was quartered with the servants, which
does not seem greatly to have irritated him, despite the boorishness of
certain grooms (a pretty chambermaid, he wrote home, “sometimes kept him
company”). The chief annoyance came from the cacklings of a nearby flock
of geese.

  [Illustration: Title-page of Schubert’s _Fantasia for Piano and Four
   Hands_ (opus 103), dedicated by the composer to Countess Caroline
                              Esterházy.]

One man whom Schubert met at Zseliz was destined to become as inspired
and outstanding an interpreter of his songs as Vogl—Karl Freiherr von
Schönstein, whose singing of Schubert later drew tears of emotion from
Liszt. He brought to the more lyrical songs an extraordinary artistry,
sensitiveness and devotion. The _Schöne Müllerin_ cycle in particular
was to be his specialty. And Zseliz, both now and a few years
afterwards, enriched Schubert still further by fertilizing his
inspiration with Slavic and Hungarian folk music. “I compose and live
like a god,” he wrote his brother, Ferdinand, though to Schober he
speaks in a less exuberant strain. However, the Esterházys and
Schönstein sang not a little of Schubert’s music and also ventured on
more or less of Haydn’s _Creation_ and _Seasons_ as well as upon the
whole of Mozart’s _Requiem_. Strangely enough, though he had far more
time to write songs during these carefree months than he had some years
earlier, he wrote appreciably fewer. His maturing genius was about to
take other directions.

Schubert returned to Vienna in November in a jubilant mood. This was the
period when Josef Hüttenbrenner—brother of the shrewder Anselm and
sometimes rather irritating to the composer by the injudiciousness of
his enthusiasm (“Everything I write seems to please him,” said Schubert
querulously)—made it his business to collect from near and far every
manuscript of Franz he could lay his hands on. In this manner Josef
recovered fully a hundred songs—a fortunate thing for posterity though
at the time it buttered no bread and paid no bills. Anselm, for his
part, went with Schubert (in a remote gallery seat) to the first
performance of the latter’s opera _Die Zwillingsbrüder_. The applause
warranted the composer’s appearance for a curtain call, but he declined
to take it because of the shabby coat he wore. Anselm wanted Franz to
put on his for a moment, but Schubert declined, glad, perhaps, to escape
even a brief lionizing. So he merely sat back and smiled wistfully when
Vogl came forward to tell the audience that the author was “not in the
house.”

One of Schubert’s most influential acquaintances about this time was
Leopold Sonnleithner, a member of a noted Viennese musical family. It
was through Sonnleithner that Schubert came to know the poet Heinrich
von Collin and in his circle the composer met men like the so-called
“music count” Dietrichstein, the poet and bishop, Ladislaus Pyrker,
Patriarch of Venice, court secretary Ignaz von Mosel and others well
qualified to be his patrons and helpers had he but exerted himself to
gain their assistance and good will. Better still, Sonnleithner
introduced him to the four enchanting Fröhlich sisters, whose father had
been a merchant of considerable means. Josefine, Käthi, Barbara and Anna
Fröhlich, Viennese to the core, were uncommonly musical. All four sang
well, three of them taught and Barbara painted miniatures. One prominent
guest of this delightful household was the poet, Franz Grillparzer, who
long outlived Schubert and wrote his epitaph. Sonnleithner cleverly
brought some of Schubert’s songs to the Fröhlich home before introducing
the composer in person and whetted the curiosity of the sisters to such
a degree that the stage was ideally set for his entrance.

Käthi Fröhlich tells of Schubert’s joy when music—not necessarily his
own—particularly pleased him. “He would place his hands together and
against his lips and sit as if spellbound.” Once, after hearing the
sisters sing, he exclaimed: “Now I know what to do” and shortly
afterwards brought them a setting of the Twenty-third Psalm for four
women’s voices and piano. Another time, Anna Fröhlich appealed to
Schubert to set some verses of Grillparzer’s as a birthday serenade to
one of her pupils, Luise Gosmar. Schubert glanced at the poem a couple
of times, murmuring “how beautiful it is” and then announced: “It is
done already. I have it.” A few days later he returned with the serenade
“Zögernd leise” and the charming piece was sung shortly afterwards
beneath Luise Gosmar’s window. Characteristically, Schubert forgot to
come and he almost missed his work on a later occasion when it was sung
at a concert devoted wholly to his compositions. When he finally did
hear it he seemed like one transfixed. “Truly,” he murmured, “I did not
think it was so beautiful!”


                         The “Sketch Symphony”

The “Schubertiads” were not invariably indoor affairs. In spring and
summer they took the shape of longer or shorter excursions, jaunts into
the suburbs or even farther out into the country, with picnicking,
dancing, ball-playing, charades and what not. If music of one sort or
another was needed, Schubert was always ready to provide it. One of the
most charming sites of these frolics (which sometimes lasted several
days) was the hamlet of Atzenbrugg, an hour or so from Vienna, and it
was here that Schubert produced a delightful set of dances, the
_Atzenbrugger Deutsche_. It may have been at Atzenbrugg, as well, that
Schubert composed in August, 1821, a symphony in four movements,
sketched out but never completed. This is not, of course, the
two-movement torso which the world calls the _Unfinished_. The _Sketch
Symphony_ in E major (with a slow introduction in E minor), is
unfinished in a different sense. The first 110 measures are complete in
every detail. The rest of the work is carried out only melodically,
though with bar lines drawn, tempi and instrumentation indicated,
harmonies, accompaniment figures and basses inserted and each subject
given in full. The autograph remained at Schubert’s death in the keeping
of his brother Ferdinand who later gave it to Mendelssohn, whose
brother, Paul, presented it to Sir George Grove. He, in turn, permitted
his friend, the English composer, John Francis Barnett, to complete the
work and in this form it was first produced in London, in 1883. Only a
little over ten years ago the late Felix Weingartner finished it
according to his own lights but in a style far less Schubertian than
Barnett’s conscientious piety.

We have no means of knowing why Schubert never bothered to carry out in
full so elaborately projected a work. Nor have we of his failure to
complete the immortal _Unfinished_. Whatever theories may be advanced
are purely speculative. Schubert left large quantities of unfinished
work—chamber music, piano sonatas, operas; so why not symphonies? In
some cases he may simply have forgotten certain of his creations (as he
had a manner of doing), in others he may have lost interest, for others,
still, lacked time. Explanations may be plausible yet wholly wide of the
mark. Is the _Unfinished Symphony_ unfinished because it has only two
movements? Are Beethoven’s two-movement sonatas in any manner
“unfinished”? That a 130-bar fragment of a scherzo exists does not mean
we have a right to decide it would have been “inferior”—we have no way
whatever of knowing _what_ Schubert would have done with a partial
sketch. For that matter, piano sketches of the first and second
movements of the _Unfinished Symphony_ have actually come down to us.
Could we, from an examination of them, tell what the final product would
be like if we were not familiar with it?

From what we can judge of the _Sketch Symphony_ its style proves it a
bridge between the six early symphonies of Schubert and the two later
ones. We say two—were there, peradventure, three? Yes, if there was
indeed a _Gastein Symphony_, of which nobody has ever found a trace
though some serious Schubert students have believed and still believe in
it. Many have been confused by the manner that has prevailed for years
of numbering the last two of Schubert’s symphonies—the _Unfinished_ and
the great C major of the “heavenly length.” Why is the C major sometimes
called the Seventh, sometimes the Ninth, the _Unfinished_ now the
Eighth, now the Seventh?

  [Illustration: Title-page of a collection of dances arranged for the
    piano by leading composers of the period. Included were three of
                       Schubert’s early pieces.]

In reality, the answer is simple. In order of composition the _Sketch
Symphony_ is the Seventh, the _Unfinished_ the Eighth, the C major of
1828, the Ninth. In order of publication the great C major is the
Seventh, the _Unfinished_ (which was not discovered till 1865), the
Eighth, the _Sketch Symphony_ (not published till 1883), the Ninth. The
consequence of leaving the _Sketch Symphony_ out of one’s calculations
is obvious. However, if we maintain that Schubert _did_ write a _Gastein
Symphony_ in 1825, we find ourselves obliged to number that legendary
opus Nine, whereupon the C major becomes Number Ten!


                            The “Unfinished”

As for the B minor Symphony, the sweet, grief-burdened, nostalgic
_Unfinished_, the fable has prevailed for years that it was written as a
thanks offering to the Steiermärkischer Musikverein of Graz, which had
elected Schubert to membership and of which Anselm Hüttenbrenner was
artistic director. As a matter of fact, the date on the title page of
the manuscript is October 30, 1822. But not till April 10, 1823, was
Schubert proposed for membership in the society and not till September,
1823, was the composer informed of his election. He wrote a letter to
Graz promising to send the Musikverein, as a token of his gratitude, the
score _of one of his symphonies_. But it was not until a year later
that, prodded by his father, who was shocked by the idea that a son of
his had waited so long to thank the society “worthily,” he gave Josef
Hüttenbrenner the score of the B minor Symphony to deliver to Anselm in
Graz.

So much for facts! We may as well pursue the epic of the _Unfinished_ to
its close. We do not know whether Anselm ever showed the symphony to the
society and there is no record that he mentioned it to a soul, though he
is said to have made a piano arrangement of the symphony for his own
use. Not till 1860 did Josef Hüttenbrenner speak of it to Johann
Herbeck, conductor of the Vienna Society of the Friends of Music, and
five more years were to elapse before Herbeck, on a visit to Graz,
obtained the score from Anselm on the plea of wanting to produce some
“new” works by Hüttenbrenner, Lachner and Schubert. On December 17,
1865, Vienna heard the _Unfinished_ for the first time. The autograph
shows no trace of any dedication to the Graz Music Society or to anybody
else! But from the start the symphony was acclaimed an undefiled
masterpiece.


                        The “Rosamunde” Overture

In 1823, the same year in which Schubert brought to paper the operas
_Die Verschworenen_ and _Fierrabras_ he wrote for a romantic play called
_Rosamunde_, _Princess of Cyprus_, by the half-mad poetess Helmine von
Chezy, a number of vocal and instrumental pieces which are perhaps the
best loved samples of theatre music he ever composed. The play itself
was a sorry failure, had exactly two performances (though Schubert
gallantly assured the unfortunate librettist that he considered her work
“excellent”) and the book was lost. The Overture we call _Rosamunde_
today and which had been written originally for _The Magic Harp_ was
never used to preface the work whose name it has borne for
generations—was, in fact, not entitled _Rosamunde_ till later. The one
with which Schubert had prefaced Helmine von Chezy’s drama was the
introduction he had used for _Alfonso und Estrella_. There are lovely
and striking things in the _Rosamunde_ score—a soprano romanza, an
ensemble for spirits and two other choruses as well as some ballet music
and various entr’actes. The third interlude brings us that deathless
melody which seems to have haunted Schubert’s imagination and reappears
in the slow movement of the A minor Quartet and the B flat Impromptu for
piano.

The _Rosamunde_ score disappeared from view for more than forty years
and the tale of its recovery belongs to the exciting legends of music.
Like most legends even this one needs to be qualified. The story usually
goes that the Englishmen, George Grove and Arthur Sullivan, in 1867 came
upon the manuscript in a dusty cupboard at the Viennese home of Dr.
Eduard Schneider, husband of Schubert’s sister, Therese. What the two
British explorers found in that famous closet were the complete
orchestral and vocal parts of the score, which made clear the correct
sequence of the pieces and supplied certain accompaniments which had
been missing. But Grove himself records that “besides the entr’actes in
B minor and B flat and the ballet numbers 2 and 9, _which we had already
acquired in_ _1866_, we had found at Mr. Spina’s (the publisher) an
entr’acte after the second act and a Shepherd’s Melody for clarinets,
bassoons and horns.... But we still required the total number of pieces
and their sequence in the drama....”

For all his difficulties and privations Schubert’s health had been, up
to 1823, perhaps the least of his worries. But early in that year he had
been ailing and soon his illness took a serious turn. Confined to his
lodgings at first he was presently taken to the General Hospital. He
became darkly despondent and wrote to his friend, Leopold Kupelwieser, a
mournful letter in which he alluded to himself as “a man whose health
can never be right again ... whose fairest hopes have come to nothing
... who wishes when he goes to sleep never more to awaken and who
joyless and friendless passes his days.” A little later he sets down in
his diary the bitter reflection: “There is none who understands the pain
of another and none his joy.” Nor is this by any means his only
pessimistic entry.

The exact nature of Schubert’s malady has never been definitely
established, even by modern medical authorities who have studied the
case. We know that his hair fell out and that till it grew in again he
had to wear a wig. Some have hinted at “irregularities” of one sort or
another. At different times he complained of “headaches, vertigo and
high blood pressure.” His condition was to improve greatly in the course
of time but he was never again wholly well.

The melancholy of Schubert was surely not lessened by his dealings with
publishers, who took the most despicable advantage of his woeful
inexperience in business affairs. Diabelli once persuaded him to sign
over for a mere 800 Gulden _all_ his rights in a set of works. The
publisher (and later his successor) made 27,000 Gulden on the _Wanderer
Fantasie_ (for piano) alone. Schubert got exactly 20 (about $10)!
Another Viennese firm went so far as to ask him to sell them his
compositions at the most favorable starvation rate “paid a beginner,”
while publishers in Germany were, if anything, even worse! Yet when
Schubert had a few dollars in his pocket he thought nothing of spending
a part of it on tickets for himself and his friend Bauernfeld for a
concert by Paganini, whose spectacular violin playing excited Schubert
quite as much as it did the rest of Vienna.

In spite of illness and discouragement many of his works at this time
rank among his very greatest. There are, first of all, the 23 songs of
the _Schöne Müllerin_ cycle—the unhappy story of the love of a youth for
a miller’s daughter who jilts him for a green-clad hunter—containing
such lyrics as _Wohin_ and _Ungeduld_, which have virtually become
folksongs; the piano sonata, Op. 143; the fabulous Octet, written for an
amateur clarinetist, Count Troyer (and after a few hearings put away and
forgotten till 1861); and that sweetest and most tender of Schubert’s
chamber music works, the A minor Quartet, with its lovely _Rosamunde_
melody, the indescribable lilt of its minuet and the Slavic and
Hungarian influences in its finale.

He was to experience more of these influences the summer of 1824, for at
that time he went once again to the Esterházys in Zseliz. The country
air and the quiet life of the place in addition to regular meals and
comfortable quarters exercised a recuperative effect. Moreover, the
Countess Caroline was now a sightly young lady of seventeen. Possibly
Schubert was not indifferent to her charms. But his letters to his
father and his brother Ferdinand make it clear that he was homesick and
often decidedly blue. Still, he wrote some admirable music at Zseliz—the
_Divertissement à l’Hongroise_, the stunning _Grand Duo_ for four hands,
the sonata for arpeggione and piano; and thoughts of a great symphony,
more imposing than any he had composed so far, began to occupy his mind.
He had heard, also, that Beethoven intended to give a concert at which
his Ninth Symphony would be produced. And he wrote to Kupelwieser: “If
God wills, I am thinking next year of giving a similar concert!”

[Illustration: Schubert at the pianoforte during a musicale at the home
                         of Josef R. v. Spaun]

 [Illustration: A rare coffee cup of Vienna porcelain in the collection
 of the Schubert Museum in Vienna. Shown are a portrait of Schubert and
                a replica of the “Novalis” Hymn No. II.]

In May, 1825, Vogl invited Schubert to accompany him on an outing which
proved to be the longest trip he was ever to take. Franz brought with
him a number of compositions, finished and unfinished, among them
settings of songs from Sir Walter Scott’s _The Lady of the Lake_, of
which the _Ave Maria_ is one of the best loved things he ever wrote. The
friends revisited the haunts of their previous journey, but this time
Vogl took Schubert further—to Gmunden, on the Traunsee in the
Salzkammergut; to Salzburg; then southward as far as Bad Gastein. All
along the way there was no end of music making, charming new
acquaintances, hospitable folk who threatened to kill the travellers
with kindness. Schubert cut up all manner of musical capers on occasion
(one of his favorite pranks was to give a performance of _Der Erlkönig_
on a comb covered with paper!). He was careful not to forget his
parents. In an affectionate letter to his father he asks, chaffingly, if
his brother, Ferdinand, “has not been ill seventy-seven times again” and
surmises that he has surely imagined at least nine times that he was
going to die. “As if death were the worst thing that could befall one!”,
he suddenly exclaims, growing serious; “could Ferdinand only look on
these divine lakes and mountains which threaten to crush and overwhelm
us he would no longer love this puny human life but deem it a great
happiness to be restored for a new life to the inscrutable forces of the
earth”! It is a question how pleased Father Schubert was with this
pantheistic declaration of his son’s; when Franz was in Zseliz,
Ferdinand had warned him against discussing religious matters when
writing to his parent.

Curiously enough, Schubert passed through Salzburg without any allusion
to his idol, Mozart. In Gastein he found time to complete the great
piano sonata in D and to write several songs, one of them a setting of
Ladislaus Pyrker’s _Die Allmacht_—a grandiose musical duplication of
that statement of faith he had fearlessly written his father. At this
health resort, furthermore, Schubert is supposed to have completed that
famous _Gastein Symphony_ of which nobody has ever been able to find a
trace. All manner of theories have been advanced with respect to this
mysterious work. Some of Schubert’s intimates have insisted that the
composer worked on it in the summer of 1825 and intended it for a
benefit concert by the Vienna Society of the Friends of Music. Others
charge the Society with negligence resulting in the loss of the score,
while still other investigators have imagined that the _Grand Duo_,
composed a year earlier, might be an unorchestrated version of the
missing score; or else that Schubert had merely contemplated a revision
of the early Sixth Symphony, with which he had never been satisfied.
Whether the hypothetical _Gastein_ or the subsequent C major of 1828
represents the “great symphony” to which Schubert aspired we have no way
of knowing.

In 1826 a conductor’s post had become free and although Schubert had not
long before turned down an organ position offered him (probably because
he did not like the idea that his freedom might be curtailed) he did
apply for this conductorship, attracted by the moderate salary it
promised. It was not Schubert who got it but the popular mediocrity,
Josef Weigl. How little Schubert harbored jealousy is clear from his
satisfaction that the job had gone to “so worthy a man as Weigl.” Then a
vacancy occurred at the Kärntnertor Theatre. The candidate for a minor
conductor’s post had to submit a specially composed dramatic air for the
singer, Nanette Schechner, and of course Schubert did so. But the
Schechner, we are told, demanded changes in the music and Schubert
peremptorily refused to make them. In spite of passionate entreaties and
a spectacular fainting fit by the soprano, the composer pocketed his
score and walked off coldly announcing: “I will change nothing.” So
things remained about as they were. True, the Friends of Music in 1825
had permitted him to substitute for a viola player at some of their
concerts—after first rejecting his plea to do so on the ground that he
“made a living of music” and that professionals were ineligible! Thus
when in the summer of 1826 he would have liked to go once more to Linz
there was no money for him to go anywhere. He had to content himself
with the suburb of Währing and to aggravate matters it rained for a
month.

All the same, 1826 was a year of significant works. In June Schubert
composed within ten days his last string quartet, the vast and almost
orchestrally colored one in G major. During the preceding winter he had
written what is undoubtedly the most familiar of his quartets, the D
minor, the slow movement of which consists of those variations on his
song _Death and the Maiden_ which are among the supreme variations of
musical literature. Further, there were the melodically blooming B flat
Trio for piano, violin and cello, the lovely G major piano sonata, the
“Rondo Brilliant,” for violin and piano and numerous songs, among them
the two Shakespearean settings _Hark, hark, the Lark_ and _Who is
Sylvia?_ Almost everybody who has ever interested himself in Schubert is
familiar with the fable about the origin of _Hark, hark, the Lark_—how
one day Schubert picked up a volume of Shakespeare in a Währing beer
garden and how, after skimming through _Cymbeline_, he suddenly
exclaimed: “A lovely melody has come into my head—if only I had some
music paper!”; whereupon a friend drew some staves on the back of a bill
of fare and the song was instantly written. Unfortunately for legend,
the song was written originally _not_ on a bill of fare but in a small
note book including a number of other compositions—one of them on the
reverse side of the very page containing _Hark, hark, the Lark_. What
seems a likelier story is that Schubert wrote it in Schwind’s room,
while the latter was trying to draw his picture.

March, 1827, was the date of Beethoven’s death. Schubert was one of the
torchbearers at the funeral. Back from the Währing cemetery he went with
some friends to a coffee house in the “Inner Town.” The gathering was in
a solemn yet exalted mood. Schubert lifted his glass and drank a toast
“To him we have just buried,” then another “To him who will be next.”
Did that strange clairvoyance in which Michael Vogl once said he
composed his music show him in mystic vision that his own sands had just
twenty months more to run?

But before this he still had a little worldly journey to make—and a
pleasant one. Karl Pachler, a cultured and musical lawyer, and his wife,
Marie Leopoldine Koschak, an accomplished pianist whom Beethoven
admired, invited Schubert to visit their home in Graz. The honored guest
was to have been Beethoven but shortly after his passing Marie Koschak
expressed a desire to know Schubert, whose importance she fully
realized. So accompanied by his friend Jenger (who some years earlier
had brought him his notice of membership in the Styrian Musical
Association) he went in September, 1827, to Graz. In the home of the
Pachlers, Schubert passed a happy, carefree, inspiring time. There was
no end of sociability, music, picnics, excursions. He was even
introduced to a local celebrity named Franz Schubert, who had a
reputation as a folksong singer and who rendered Styrian folk melodies
for his Viennese namesake. The Music Society gave a concert in honor of
its visiting member, who also went to the theatre with Anselm
Hüttenbrenner to hear an early opera of Meyerbeer’s—though after the
first act he protested: “I can’t stand it any longer, let’s get out into
the air.” He played his own _Alfonso und Estrella_ to an operatic
conductor, who made wry faces over its “difficulties” so that Schubert
ended by leaving the score with Pachler, who kept it till 1841. Several
songs were composed at Graz, also a quantity of waltzes and galops.
Franz left Graz promising to come back another year—which was never to
dawn.

 [Illustration: Title-page for _Variations on a French Song_ (opus 10),
“dedicated to Mr. Ludwig von Beethoven by his admirer Franz Schubert.”]

It is probably unlikely that, at the gathering of the Schubertians on
New Year’s Eve, Schubert realized as poignantly as some may imagine that
he was standing on the threshold of his last year on earth. But the
winter was hard, there was little or no money and it seems likely that
the good stepmother up in the Rossau schoolhouse had to help out with
occasional pennies from the household stocking. To be sure, a little
earlier the Friends of Music had elected Schubert a member of the
Representative Body of the Society and the composer felt much honored.
But such “honor” would not buy a meal. Even when half starved Schubert
contrived to work. Between January and November, 1828, he turned out
some of the most incomparable songs he ever composed (yes, even though
planning to give up such trifling matters as _Lieder_!) issued
posthumously under the collective title _Schwanengesang_; the _Great
Symphony_ in C major “of the heavenly length” (the score is dated March,
1828); a cantata, the three wonderful piano sonatas in A, C minor and B
flat; that towering monument of chamber music, the C major String
Quintet; the Mass in E flat (he had written a so-called _Missa Solemnis_
in A flat as far back as 1820 besides a quantity of smaller masses) and
much else. He devoted himself to the E flat Mass with such intensity
that Josef Hüttenbrenner described him as “living in his Mass.” The
supreme Lieder—one is tempted to say the most grandiose and prophetic of
all the odd 600 he wrote—are the settings of six poems from Heinrich
Heine’s _Buch der Lieder_, which had just come to his notice. They are
_Am Meer_, _Der Doppelgänger_, _Die Stadt_, _Der Atlas_ and _Ihr Bild_,
anticipations of the whole song technic of the nineteenth century!

The C major Symphony is without its like in the whole range of music and
by one magical pen stroke Schubert made it even a greater thing than
when he first conceived it. The autograph score shows that by the
substitution of a D natural for a G in the theme of the first Allegro
the composer transformed what was scarcely more than a rhythm into one
of the great symphonic subjects of all time. But he was never to hear
the work. It came to a rehearsal by the Friends of Music, was found too
difficult and “overloaded” and on the composer’s own advice, dropped in
favor of the Sixth—the “little” C major. And yet it was the one symphony
of its time which could have endured the sunlight of Beethoven
undiminished and unashamed.

Exactly a year after Beethoven’s death Schubert at last gave the concert
of his own works that he meant “if God wills” to give some day. It was
the urging of Bauernfeld and other friends which finally caused things
to materialize. The idea was that if all went well Schubert might offer
his private concert annually and the rascally publishers would at long
last be singing a different tune. His friends rallied nobly to his aid.
Vogl sang, Josefine Fröhlich’s pupils gave Luise Gosmar’s birthday
serenade, there was chamber music and a male chorus. The Musikverein
hall was packed, encores were innumerable, the applause would not end
and, best of all, there was a clear profit of more than half a hundred
dollars. The only fly in the ointment was that no critics came, though
several foreign publications carried flattering accounts.

But the little wealth quickly ebbed away. Again there were futile
bickerings with publishers. Schubert would have liked to go to Graz once
more but Baden and excursions to nearby Grinzing and Sievering were as
much as he could allow himself. Headaches and other symptoms of a year
before troubled him alarmingly. His doctor advised him to leave the
stuffy center of town for some place where he could have plenty of fresh
country air. So in September he moved to a house in the Neue Wieden
section, where his brother Ferdinand had taken rooms. The building was
new, still damp and unhealthy. Aside from a pilgrimage to Haydn’s tomb
at Eisenstadt and some annoyances with the publisher, Schott, both
September and October were uneventful. Suddenly, while at dinner one day
in the Lichtental neighborhood of his birth, he threw down his fork,
shouted that the food tasted like poison and refused to eat further.

Probably nobody suspected a serious illness, let alone a fatal one. At
that Schubert did not immediately take to bed. He dragged himself a few
days later to hear a Requiem by his brother, shortly before which he had
been fearfully agitated by a first hearing of Beethoven’s C sharp minor
Quartet. Yet so little does his condition appear to have worried him
that he went to the theorist Simon Sechter to arrange for instruction in
counterpoint—his intimates and a study of Handel’s oratorios having
supposedly persuaded him of his deficiencies in that branch of technic.
Nothing came of the project. By November 12 he wrote Schober that “he is
sick, has eaten nothing in eleven days and can do no more than crawl
from his bed to a chair.” And he implores his friend to procure him
reading matter, preferably Fenimore Cooper. The sickness made rapid
inroads, though he continued to toy with the operatic scheme of the
_Count of Gleichen_, and carefully corrected the proofs of his
_Winterreise cycle_. Soon he became delirious and the doctors held a
consultation. The diagnosis was “nerve fever,” or typhus, the same
sickness which had carried off his mother. Pathetically he begged his
brother not to leave him “in this corner under ground”; and when the
anguished Ferdinand assured him he was in his own room he insisted: “No,
that’s not true, Beethoven is not here!” A little later he turned his
face to the wall and murmured, we are told, “Here, here is my end!” “The
days of affliction,” wrote Father Schubert to Ferdinand, “lie heavy upon
us”; and he presently made in the old list of births and deaths in the
Schubert family the entry with the mortuary cross: “Franz Peter,
Wednesday, Nov. 19, 1828, at three o’clock in the afternoon, of nerve
fever, buried Saturday, Nov. 22, 1828.”

It was Ferdinand who decided that his brother should, in death, be
brought closer to Beethoven than ever he had been in life. And since
“Beethoven was not there,” where Schubert would ordinarily have been
buried, Ferdinand saw to it that Franz should rest as close to his
divinity as an intervening grave or two permitted. They were destined in
the process of time to lie closer still. For three score years later the
two masters were exhumed and placed side by side in two of those “graves
of glory” in Vienna’s great Central Cemetery.

      [Illustration: Program for the première of Schubert’s opera,
   _Fierrabras_, performed in Karlsruhe on the hundredth anniversary
                         of Schubert’s birth.]

“Music has buried here a rich treasure, but fairer hopes,” read the
epitaph which Grillparzer set on the original tomb in the Währing
cemetery. “Fairer hopes,” indeed! How could Grillparzer know what even
the wisest musical heads of his day did not know? Eleven years after
Schubert died “all Paris” was said to be astounded at the “posthumous
diligence of a song writer who, while one might think his ashes repose
in Vienna, is still making eternal new songs”! It took decades to reveal
the incalculable richness of this “treasure” and even now the world is
not finally aware of its fullness. Another deathless master, Robert
Schumann, gave the world Schubert’s C major Symphony, redeeming it from
Ferdinand’s heaped but silent hoard of unprinted, nay, unsuspected
scores. “Who can do anything after Beethoven?” the half-starved Konvikt
student had wistfully asked. Here was at least one triumphant answer,
made by Schubert himself, at a distance of only eight months from his
early tomb!


                      COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS
                                 BY THE
               PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NEW YORK


                            COLUMBIA RECORDS

 LP—Also available on Long Playing Microgroove Recordings as well as on
                 the conventional Columbia Masterworks.

                 _Under the Direction of Bruno Walter_

  Barber—Symphony No. 1, Op. 9
  Beethoven—Concerto for Violin, Cello, Piano and Orchestra in C major
        (with J. Corigliano, L. Rose and W. Hendl)—LP
  Beethoven—Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) (with Rudolf
        Serkin, piano)—LP
  Beethoven—Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra (with Joseph
        Szigeti)—LP
  Beethoven—Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21—LP
  Beethoven—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”)—LP
  Beethoven—Symphony No. 5 in C minor—LP
  Beethoven—Symphony No. 8 in F major—LP
  Beethoven—Symphony No. 9 in D minor (“Choral”) (with Elena Nikolaidi,
        contralto, and Raoul Jobin, tenor)—LP
  Brahms—Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir)—LP
  Dvorak—Slavonic Dance No. 1
  Dvorak—Symphony No. 4 in G Major—LP
  Mahler—Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano)—LP
  Mahler—Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor
  Mendelssohn—Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP
  Mendelssohn—Scherzo (from Midsummer Night’s Dream)
  Mozart—Cosi fan Tutti—Overture
  Mozart—Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”), K. 551—LP
  Schubert—Symphony No. 7 in C major—LP
  Schumann, R.—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Rhenish”)—LP
  Smetana—The Moldau (“Vltava”)—LP
  Strauss, J.—Emperor Waltz

               _Under the Direction of Leopold Stokowski_

  Copland—Billy the Kid (2 parts)
  Griffes—“The White Peacock,” Op. 7, No. 1—LP 7″
  Ippolitow—“In the Village” from Caucasian Sketches (W. Lincer and M.
        Nazzi, soloists)
  Khachaturian—“Masquerade Suite”—LP
  Messian—“L’Ascension”—LP
  Sibelius—“Maiden with the Roses”—LP
  Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32—LP
  Tschaikowsky—Overture Fantasy—Romeo and Juliet—LP
  Vaughan-Williams—Greensleeves
  Vaughan-Williams—Symphony No. 6 in E minor—LP
  Wagner—Die Walküre—Wotan Farewell and Magic Fire Music (Act III—Scene
        3)
  Wagner—Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and Siegfried’s Funeral March—(“Die
        Götterdämmerung”)—LP

                  _Under the Direction of Efrem Kurtz_

  Chopin—Les Sylphides—LP
  Glinka—Mazurka—“Life of the Czar”—LP 7″
  Grieg—Concerto in A minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 16 (with Oscar
        Levant, piano)—LP
  Herold—Zampa—Overture
  Kabalevsky—“The Comedians,” Op. 26—LP
  Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite No. 1—LP
  Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite No. 2—LP
  Lecoq—Mme. Angot Suite—LP
  Prokofieff—March, Op. 99—LP
  Rimsky-Korsakov—The Flight of the Bumble Bee—LP 7″
  Shostakovich—Polka No. 3, “The Age of Gold”—LP 7″
  Shostakovich—Symphony No. 9—LP
  Shostakovich—Valse from “Les Monts D’Or”—LP
  Villa-Lobos—Uirapuru—LP
  Wieniawski—Concerto No. 2 in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 22
        (with Isaac Stern, violin)—LP

                 _Under the Direction of Charles Münch_

  D’Indy—Symphony on a French Mountain Air for Orchestra and Piano—LP
  Milhaud—Suite Française—LP
  Mozart—Concerto No. 21 for Piano and Orchestra in C major—LP
  Saint-Saens—Symphony in C minor, No. 3 for Orchestra, Organ and Piano,
        Op. 78—LP

                _Under the Direction of Artur Rodzinski_

  Bizet—Carmen—Entr’acte (Prelude to Act III)
  Bizet—Symphony in C major—LP
  Brahms—Symphony No. 1 in C minor—LP
  Brahms—Symphony No. 2 in D major—LP
  Copland—A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator)—LP
  Enesco—Roumanian Rhapsody—A major, No. 1—LP
  Gershwin—An American in Paris—LP
  Gould—“Spirituals” for Orchestra—LP
  Ibert—“Escales” (Port of Call)—LP
  Liszt—Mephisto Waltz—LP
  Moussorgsky—Gopack (The Fair at Sorotchinski)—LP
  Moussorgsky-Ravel—Pictures at an Exhibition—LP
  Prokofieff—Symphony No. 5—LP
  Rachmaninoff—Concerto No. 2 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra (with
        Gygory Sandor, piano)
  Rachmaninoff—Symphony No. 2 in E minor
  Saint-Saens—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4 in C minor (with
        Robert Casadesus)—LP
  Sibelius—Symphony No. 4 in A minor
  Tschaikowsky—Nutcracker Suite—LP
  Tschaikowsky—Suite “Mozartiana”—LP
  Tschaikowsky—Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathétique”)—LP
  Wagner—Lohengrin—Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III—Scene 2)—(with Helen
        Traubel, soprano, and Kurt Baum, tenor)—LP
  Wagner—Lohengrin—Elsa’s Dream (Act I, Scene 2) (with Helen Traubel,
        soprano)
  Wagner—Siegfried Idyll—LP
  Wagner—Tristan und Isolde—Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano)
  Wagner—Die Walküre-Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and
        Herbert Janssen, baritone)—LP
  Wagner—Die Walküre—Duet (Act I, Scene 3) (with Helen Traubel, soprano
        and Emery Darcy, tenor)—LP
  Wolf-Ferrari—“Secret of Suzanne,” Overture

                _Under the Direction of Igor Stravinsky_

  Stravinsky—Firebird Suite—LP
  Stravinsky—Fireworks (Feu d’Artifice)—LP
  Stravinsky—Four Norwegian Moods
  Stravinsky—Le Sacre du Printemps (The Consecration of the Spring)—LP
  Stravinsky—Scènes de Ballet—LP
  Stravinsky—Suite from “Petrouchka”—LP
  Stravinsky—Symphony in Three Movements—LP

              _Under the Direction of Sir Thomas Beecham_

  Mendelssohn—Symphony No. 4, in A major (“Italian”)
  Sibelius—Melisande (from “Pelleas and Melisande”)
  Sibelius—Symphony No. 7 in C major—LP
  Tschaikowsky—Capriccio Italien

                _Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_

  Bach-Barbirolli—Sheep May Safely Graze (from the “Birthday
        Cantata”)—LP
  Berlioz—Roman Carnival Overture
  Brahms—Symphony No. 2, in D major
  Brahms—Academic Festival Overture—LP
  Bruch—Concerto No. 1, in G minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP
  Debussy—First Rhapsody for Clarinet (with Benny Goodman, clarinet)
  Debussy—Petite Suite: Ballet
  Mozart—Concerto in B-flat major (with Robert Casadesus, piano)
  Mozart—Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183
  Ravel—La Valse
  Rimsky-Korsakov—Capriccio Espagnol
  Sibelius—Symphony No. 1, in E minor
  Sibelius—Symphony No. 2, in D major
  Smetana—The Bartered Bride—Overture
  Tschaikowsky—Theme and Variations (from Suite No. 3 in G)—LP

               _Under the Direction of Andre Kostelanetz_

  Gershwin—Concerto in F (with Oscar Levant)—LP

              _Under the Direction of Dimitri Mitropoulos_

  Khachaturian—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (with Oscar Levant,
        piano)—LP


                             VICTOR RECORDS

_Under the Direction of Arturo Toscanini_

  Beethoven—Symphony No. 7 in A major
  Brahms—Variations on a Theme by Haydn
  Dukas—The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
  Gluck—Orfeo ed Euridice—Dance of the Spirits
  Haydn—Symphony No. 4 in D major (The Clock)
  Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo
  Mozart—Symphony in D major (K. 385)
  Rossini—Barber of Seville—Overture
  Rossini—Semiramide—Overture
  Rossini—Italians in Algiers—Overture
  Verdi—Traviata—Preludes to Acts I and II
  Wagner—Excerpts—Lohengrin—Die Götterdämmerung—Siegfried Idyll

                _Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_

  Debussy—Iberia (Images, Set 3, No. 2)
  Purcell—Suite for Strings with four Horns, two Flutes, English Horn
  Respighi—Fountains of Rome
  Respighi—Old Dances and Airs (Special recording for members of the
        Philharmonic-Symphony League of New York)
  Schubert—Symphony No. 4 in C minor (Tragic)
  Schumann—Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor (with Yehudi
        Menuhin, violin)
  Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini—Fantasia

               _Under the Direction of Willem Mengelberg_

  J. C. Bach—Arr. Stein—Sinfonia in B-flat major
  J. S. Bach—Arr. Mahler—Air for G String (from Suite for Orchestra)
  Beethoven—Egmont Overture
  Handel—Alcina Suite
  Mendelssohn—War March of the Priests (from Athalia)
  Meyerbeer—Prophète—Coronation March
  Saint-Saens—Rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel)
  Schelling—Victory Ball
  Wagner—Flying Dutchman—Overture
  Wagner—Siegfried—Forest Murmurs (Waldweben)

                  [Illustration: Harp and cello logo]



                          Transcriber’s Notes


--A few palpable typos were silently corrected.

--Illustrations were shifted to the nearest paragraph break.

--Copyright notice is from the printed exemplar. (U.S. copyright was not
  renewed: this ebook is in the public domain.)





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