Books › Musical Courier 1928-04-12: Vol 96 Iss 15, 1928 › scan 10
Scan 10
Musical Courier 1928-04-12: Vol 96 Iss 15, 1928
20 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. Printed page 11. See the scan on archive.org.
1Pictorial Biography of Franz Schubert, Jan. 31, 1797-Nov. 19, 1828
2(Copyrighted, 1928, by The Musical Courier Company)
4FRANZ SCHUBERT—or to give him his full baptismal name, Franz Peter Seraph Schubert—is one of the most beloved figures in the history of music. Beethoven has stirred our emotions more turbulently, Wagner our senses more grandly, but no composer has moved us more deeply than Schubert in the single phrase of a song, or the single modulation of an instrumental piece. The endearing, utterly unaffected, radiantly elevated qualities of his music have never been equalled. They are engendered, not by the opulence nor the lusciousness of his materials, but by those subtle and ineffable means which pass human understanding; which have their impulses in the deepest recesses of the human soul and go straight to the human heart.
6Schubert's is music which will bring the smile of happiness to a child, and to all who have anything left of the child's purity of spirit; it is like the sun breaking through the clouds, spreading gladness but not frivolity, joy but not vulgar jollity. It is not without pathos or tragedy, and it can be sad in a major key and powerful in a pianissimo. But it is never morbid, never melancholy, for it always glimpses the consoling beauties of nature, and the deeper blessings of human happiness. Even death, to Schubert, is envisaged only as the bringer of peace.
8Schubert was probably the greatest melodist of all time, yet it would be wrong to regard him only as a melodist. He was equally as great a genius in harmony, in orchestration and all the structural art of musical composition. His more than 600 songs, of which the majority are immortal masterpieces, constitute but a quarter of his life work; of the rest the two great symphonies (B-minor and C-major), at least a dozen piano sonatas, several string quartets (including the wonderful "Death and the Maiden"), two trios, the string quintet, and the lovely Forellen Quintet rank without question among the world's immortal treasures. Two of his masses, at least, are on the same level, as is the music to Rosamunde, and dozens of the marches, waltzes, and those lyrical and characteristic piano pieces of which he is regarded as the originator. There is still a great mass of Schubert's music, sacred works, male choruses, mixed choruses, four-hand piano music, violin music, that is not known to the general public, the quality of which is no less great than that of the music which we know.
10That all these works should have been created in a life that ended at thirty-one seems a miracle. The world can not imagine what Schubert might have done had he lived to a normal age. He was born at the end of the 18th century, and sang the swan song of Viennese classicism; he stood at the threshold of the nineteenth as the first and greatest of the romanticists, who have brought into music the element of color and subjective sentiment. Schubert was the true romanticist, imbued with the whole poetry of romanticism, and Liszt's epitaph "the most poetic musician that ever lived" must remain an eternal truth.
12(1) FRANZ SCHUBERT
13at the age of sixteen. Charcoal drawing by Leopold Kupelwieser. The original is in the possession of Duke Johann von und zu Lichtenstein in Vienna.
15(2) FRANZ SCHUBERT.
16Oil painting, based on sketches from life by Wilhelm August Rieder, 1875. The original, which is owned by Frau Marie Dumba, hangs in the Schubert Museum in Vienna.
18(3 and 4) FRONT VIEW AND COURTYARD OF SCHUBERT'S BIRTH-HOUSE.
19Franz Schubert was born on January 31, 1797, in a Vienna suburb. His parents were the school teacher, Franz Schubert, and his wife, Elisabeth, née Vietz. They were blessed with no fewer than fourteen children, of whom, however, only five survived. The birth-house of the master was purchased by the Vienna municipality in 1908, and transformed into a Schubert museum in 1912.
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