Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

was
3
—
1819- SCHUBERT —1820 293
his friend to the chief amateurs of the town,
Paumgartner, KoUer, Dornfeld, Sohellmami
substantial citizens of the town, with wives and
daughters, 'Pepi Koller," 'Frizi Dornfeld,' 'the
eight Sohellmann girls,' etc., who all welcomed
the musician with real Austrian hospitality,
heard his songs with enthusiasm, and themselves
helped to make music with him. His
friend Albert Stadler was there also with his
sister Kathi. How thoroughly Schubert enjoyed
himself in this congenial hourgeois society, and
in such lovely country—he mentions its beauties
each time he writes—we have ample proof in
two letters. 1 Among other drolleries the 'Erl
King ' sung with the parts distributed
amongst Vogl, Schubert, and Pepi Koller.
Perhaps, too, Schubert gave them his favourite
version of it on a comb. Yogi's birthday
(August 10) was celebrated by a cantata in C,
containing a terzet, two soprano and two tenor
solos, and a finale in canon, pointed by allusions
to his various operatic triumphs, words by
Stadler, and music by Schubert. ^ After this
the two friends strolled on to Linz, the home
of the Spauns, and of Kenner and Ottenwald,
whose verses Franz had set in his earlier days ;
and thence perhaps to Salzburg, returning to
Steyr about the end of the month. Nor did
the joviality of these good Austrians interfere
with composition. Besides the impromptu
cantata just mentioned, the well-known PF.
quintet (op. 114), in which the air of 'Die
Forelle ' is used as the theme of the Andantino,
was written at Steyr, possibly as a commission
from the good Paumgartner, and was performed
by the Paumgartner party. Schubert achieved
in it the same feat which is somewhere ascribed
to Mozart, of writing out the separate parts
without first making a score, and no doubt
played the pianoforte part by heart. The date
of their departure, Sept. 14, is marked by an
entry in the album of Miss Stadler, when
Schubert delivered himself :— of the following
highly correct sentiment ' Enjoy the present
so wisely, that the past may be pleasant to
recollect, and the future not alarming to contemplate.'
This may pair off with a sentence
written by Mozart, in English, in the Album
of an English Freemason, which has not yet
been printed:— 'Patience and tranquillity of
mind contribute more to cure our distempers
as the whole art of medicine. AVien, den 30te
Marz 1787.'
A few days more saw them again settled in
Vienna. Each of the two letters preserved from
the journey contains an obvious allusion to
some love affair ; but nothing is known of it.
He could hardly have adopted a more effectual
diversion from such sorrows than the composition
of a mass, on an extended scale ; that
namely in.Al>—his fifth—which he began this
— 1 E.a. pp. 158-169 (1. 1S9-I60I.
' 8 Published to other worHs, Herrllch prangt,' as op. 158.
3 I owe this to my good friend Mr. PoU, of Vienna.
month
'
under the serious title of Missa
Solemnis ' ; but he seems to have dawdled
over it more than over any other of his works ;
as it was not finished till Sept. 1822, and
contains many marks of indecision.
The most pregnant musical event of this
year is the fact that on Feb. 28, 1819, a song
of Schubert's was sung in public—the ' Schafers
Klagelied,' sung by Jager at Jail's concert, at
5 P.M. at the 'Rbmische Kaiser,' Vienna. It
was Schubert's first appearance before the public
as a song-writer [one of the ' Italian ' overtures
had been given on March 1, 1818, at one of
Jail's concerts], and is noticed by the Leipzig
A.M.Z. in these terms:-— 'Goethe's Schafers
Klagelied set to music by Heir Franz Schubert
—the touching and feeling composition of this
talented young man was sung by Herr Jager in
a similar spirit.' Such is the first utterance of
the press on one who has since evoked so much
enthusiasm ! In the course of this year Schubert
appears to have forwarded the three songs,
'Schwager Kronos,' 'Ueber Thai' (Mignon),
and 'Ganymed,'— afterwards published as op.
19),—to Goethe ; but no notice was taken by
the poet of one who was to give some of his
songs a wider popularity than they could otherwise
have enjoyed, a popularity independent of
country or language ; nor does Schubert's name
once occur in all the six vols, of Goethe's
correspondence with Zelter.*
1820 was again a year of great activity.
Owing to Vogl's influence, Schubert was gradually
attracting the attention of the managers.
The Zwillingsbriider ' ' had been written for the
Karnthnerthor theatre (see p. 292a), and it
was not long before the rigisseur of the rival
opera-house, the Theatre an-der-Wien, suggested
to him a libretto called the Zauberharfe,' or
'
'
Magic harp,' a melodrama in three acts, by
the same Hofmann who had translated the
former piece. To receive such a proposal and
to act upon it was a matter of course with
Schubert, and the Zauberharfe ' ' is said to have
been completed in a fortnight.^ But before
this, early in the year, he had met with the
works of A. H. Niemeyer, Professor of Theology
at Halle, and had adopted the poem of ' Lazarus,
or the Feast of the Resurrection,' for an Easter
Cantata. Easter fell that year on April 2, and
his work is dated February,' '
so that he was in
ample time. The poem—or drama, for there
are seven distinct characters—is in three parts.
1. The sickness and death. 2. The burial and
elegy. 3. The resurrection. Of these the first
and a large portion of the second were completed
by Schubert, apparently without the knowledge
of any of his friends. Ferdinand mentions the
first part in his list,* but the existence of the
second was unknown, till, through the instru-
4 Search should be made in the Qoethe Archiv at Weimar for the
autograph of these BongB, and the letter which doubtless accompanied
them.
c Autograph in Herr Dumba's coUection, s s.Z,M. p. 139a.