Although it contains much joyful music, its sad ending anticipates the tone of his tragic second cycle, Winterreise (Winter Journey), written in 1827 after four years of illness. The cycle depicts the ill-fated love of a young man for a miller's daughter. Some of the stings for his first song-cycle, Die schone Mullerin (The Fair Maid of the Mill), were written while in hospital in 1823. 9 in С (The Great), a work grander and more profound than any of Schubert's other symphonies. Nevertheless, he returned to the symphonic form soon afterwards to compose the Symphony No. It transformed his entire outlook, and while many reasons are put forward for his failure to complete his Eighth symphony, begun the year before his illness, it may be that it marked a period in his life which came to repel him. In reality Schubert died prematurely of a disfiguring disease, his mind poisoned by the idea of the fate that inevitably awaited him. Yet our notion of a fat, jolly amateur, leaving his coffeehouse only to dash off another carefree masterpiece, is myth. This is the radiant Schubert everybody thinks they know. Over the next five years alone, in an inexhaustible surge of creativity, he wrote five symphonies, six operas, and 300 songs (Lieder). He left the college in 1813 to train as a teacher before returning home to work in his father's school. Under Salieri's tutelage he wrote an opera and a series of quartets by the age of 15. At 11 his serious musical education began when he won a choral scholarship to the Konvikt, Vienna's Imperial College. From his family he learnt the piano and violin, soon outstripping everyone else in the household. His shyness and lack of instrumental virtuosity contributed to the hardships he endured, but he was responsible for a magnificent body of work that is still appraised and appreciated today.īorn in the suburb of Lichtental, he was the fourth son of a schoolmaster. And it seems to me that Maynard Solomon and other historians have made a very good case that his intimate relationships probably extended to men and women.Of the great composers associated with Vienna - the others being Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven - Schubert was the only one born in the city, and the only one who failed to achieve international fame in his lifetime. He didn’t identify himself as homosexual or heterosexual. It was not unusual, nor anything that anybody paid any attention to. It is only since the late 19th century, and accelerated by Oscar Wilde, that homosexuality enters the public conversation as "abnormal.” In Schubert’s lifetime, bisexuality was commonplace. The problem with that is … it’s a bit of a fraud. He became a stand-in for the passionate heterosexual. Since so much of the music seems to be expressive of the existential condition of intimacy and of aloneness, of a dialogue with oneself, of dreaming, of trying to escape the terrifying aspects of daily life, it’s not inappropriate to ask the question: what was his personal life like? Because of Heinrich Berté’s musical and the way Schubert was represented in the film world in the early 20th century, he somehow got stuck with being the young lover. The same complex issues that are in Goethe’s "Sorrows of Young Werther". But the question of sexuality is relevant to Schubert because so much of his music deals with the storyline of desire, lack of fulfilment, and unrecognized love. Leon Botstein, American conductor, music historian & president of Bard College:Īs a musician I don’t think biography is a key to understanding someone’s work. The Vignette – Austria’s Motorway Toll Sticker.
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