Schubertiades in a Police State


Schubert’s room, as drawn by his friend Moritz von Schwind, 1821.


Franz Schubert at age 16.


Franz von Schober.

The Austrian poet Franz von Schober (1796-1882) was evidently the driving force behind the Schubertiades, the semi-private salon gatherings at which Franz Schubert premiered many of his Lieder. Schober was in fact such a close friend of Schubert’s that together they were known as “Schobert” among their circle of friends, a mashup of their names à la Javanka or Brangelina.


84th Annual Academy Awards - Arrivals

Schubert’s setting of Schober’s poem “An die Music” (To Music) has become one of his best-loved Lieder. In the text, the poet addresses music as an allegorical figure of healing:

You, noble Art, in how many grey hours,
When life’s mad tumult wraps around me,

Have you kindled my heart to warm love,
Have you transported me into a better world,
Transported into a better world!

Often has a sigh flowing out from your harp,
A sweet, divine harmony from you

Unlocked to me the heaven of better times,
You, noble Art, I thank you for it,
You, noble Art, I thank you!

A historian-blogger known to me only as Richard has written an extremely engaging and wonderfully detailed history of the Schubertiades.  The entire series of articles is worth reading; here are some excerpts.

In January 1821 Schober invited some ‘good friends, preferably ‘spirited men’ to an evening at his house. Schubert himself would play a lot of ‘wonderful songs’ and afterwards ‘punch would be drunk’. The name Schubertiade had not yet been invented, but this event, programmatically mentioning Schubert and his music, can be considered the first of the series.



As we wrote in [a] previous piece the Schubertiaden were fundamentally selfish events – they kept their house musician busy entertaining their guests, paid him nothing, gave him a buffet and some drink and kept the knowledge of his talent as a composer, his genius and fame, firmly bottled up in the febrile, self-regarding scene of the Viennese salon. The typical conclusion of Schubert’s salon appearances was a sausage supper, some drinking and then some dancing, as Schubert, the resident piano-player . . . would be expected to knock out gallops and ecossaises [social dances of the era] into the early hours of the morning. After about midnight the ladies would be escorted home and the men would then retire to a coffee-house for a nightcap and a smoke.



The concert program from Schubert’s only public concert, 1828.

For most of Vienna, at least those people who had even heard of him, Schubert had just been a passing phenomenon. His music was hardly published, scraps of manuscripts accumulated in drawers throughout Vienna and Germany. By the beginning of 1829 Schubert had gone and it would be more than another 20 years before anyone tried to remember him or rediscover who this ‘Franz Schubert’ was. . .

It was Franz Liszt (1811-1886) and Robert Schumann (1810-1856) and Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) who started the process – that is, it was a musical resurrection: Schubert was reborn through the quality of his music. After that, some biographers attempted the rediscovery of the life. The first one of these biographies (Kreißle’s) appeared more than 37 years after that winter day in 1828. For a hundred years after his death people were still finding manuscript scores in drawers and tucked into books.

That is the trajectory of Schubert’s life. . . . The modern modish word ‘depression’ is not correct here. Schubert never seems to have evidenced the classical characteristics of the depressive’s checklist: no listlessness, no apathy, no black moods or sleeplessness (that we know of). On the contrary, he was driven by an almost superhuman work-ethic. He never succumbed. But, in Die schöne Müllerin and the Winterreise, in the late trios and piano sonatas, we cannot fail to hear it. The roots of that melancholy are easy to find.