Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

306 1826 SCHUBERT 1826
anthor, ' IV. Senate fiir Pianoforte allein.
Oct. 1826, Franz Schubert'; above which,
in the writing of Tobias Haslinger, stands the
title
'
Fantasia, Andante, Menuetto und Allegretto.'
i We may well say with Beethoven,
'
Tobias ! '
—;
By the side of these undying productions the
'Marche h^roique,' written to celebrate the
accession of Nicholas I. of Russia, and the
Aadantino and Rondo on French motifs—both
for PF. four hands, are not of gre.at significance.
An attack of song-writing seems to have come
upon him in March, which date we find attached
to six songs ; or, if the rest of those to Seidl's
words forming opp. 105 and "80, and marked
merely 1826,' were written '
at the same time
(as, from Schubert's habit of eviscerating his
books, they not improbably were)— twelve.
Three Shakespeare songs are due to this July
'Hark! hark! the lark,'^ from 'Cyrabeline' ;
'
Who is Sylvia ? ' from the Two Gentlemen of
'
Verona ; '
and the Drinking-song in Antony
'
and Cleopatra '—the first two perhaps as popular
as any single songs of Schubert's. The circumstances
of the composition, or rather creation,
of the first of these has already been mentioned
(p. 288a). The fact of three songs from the
same volume belonging to one month (not improbably
to one day, if we only knew) is quite
d la Sehvi)ert.—A beautiful and most characteristic
piece of this year is the ' Nachthelle ' or
'
Lovely night '),
written to words of Seidl's
not improbably for the Musikverein, through
Anna Frbhlich—for tenor solo, with accompaniment
of four men's voices and pianoforte, which
would be a treasure to singing societies, for its
truly romantic loveliness, but for the inordinate
height to which the voices are taken, and the
great difficulty of executing it with sufficient
delicacy. A song called Echo ' ' (op. 130),
probably written in 1826, was intended to be
the first of six humorous ' songs ' for Weigl's
firm.^
We hear nothing of the new symphony during
the early part of this year. No doubt it was
often played from the MS. score at the meetings
of the Schubert set, but they say no more about
it than they do of the Octet, or Quartets, or
Sonatas, which were all equally in existence
and for aught we know it might have been
' locked in a drawer, ' which was often Schubert's
custom after completing a work— 'locked in a
drawer and never thought about again. *
' It
On
was, however, destined to a different fate.
Sept. 9, 1826, at one of the first meetings of
the Board of the Musikverein after the summer
recess, Hofrath Kiesewetter reports that Schubert
desires to dedicate a symphony to the
Society ; upon which the sum of 100 silver
1 See an interesting letter from Emet Perabo, tlie owner of the
ATS. with an extract from the Andante, in the Mmahly Musical
Jlecord for AprU 1688.
z '
Entitled Serenade,' but more aceuratelr •
an Aubade.'
3 See Nottebohm'fl Catalogue under op. 130.
4 Tiachner'a expression to my friend Mr. C. A. Barry in 1881.
florins (£10) is voted to him, not in payment
for the work, but as a token of sympathy, and
aa an encouragement. The letter conveying
the money is dated the 12th, and on or even
before its receipt Schubert brought the manuscrijjt
and deposited it with the Society. His
letter accompanying it may here be quoted ;
To the Committee of the Austrian Musical Society.—
Convinced of the noble desire of the Society to give its
best support to every effort in the cause of art, I venture,
as a native artist, to dedicate this my Symphony to the
Society, and most respectfully to recommend myself to
its protection. With the highest esteem. Your obedt.
Franz Schubert.
In accordance with this, the MS. probably bears
his formal dedication to the Verein, and we
may expect to find that though so long talked
of, it bears marks of having been written down
as rapidly as most of his other productions.^
At present, however, all trace of it is gone ;
not even its key is known. There is no entry
of it in the catalogue of the Society's Library,
and except for the minute and letter given
above, and the positive statements of Bauernfeld
quoted below,^ it might as well be non-existent.
That it is an entirely distinct work from that
in C, written two and a half years later, can
hardly admit of a doubt.
Of the publications of 1826, the most remarkable
are the seven songs from The Lady
'
of the Lake, ' for which Artaria had paid him
200 florins in the preceding October, and which
appeared on the 5th of this April, in two parts,
as op. 52. They were succeeded immediately,
on April 8, by the PF. Sonata in D (op. 53V
and the ' Divertissement k la hongroise ' (op. 54),
both issued by the same firm. For these two
splendid works Schubert received from the
penurious Artaria only 300 Vienna florins, equal
—
to £12. Songs issued fast from the press at
6 The documents on which these statementa are based are given
l»y Herr C. P. Pohl in his BUtory of the QeseUtclu^ft der MuHlcfreuTide—or
Musikverein—Vienna, IWl, p.' 16 ; and by Ferdinand
Schubei-t in the ^eue Zeitachrift fiir Mvtik, for April ao, 1839,
p. 140.
s Bauernfeld, in an article Uehur Frwnz Btihulimt in the Trien«r
Zeiti