By HERBERT F. PEYSER NEW YORK Grosset & Dunlap PUBLISHERS Copyright 1946, 1950 The Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York Printed in the United States of America...

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 le

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 a

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 dyi

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

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 “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 th

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 t

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”)