Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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324 SCHUBERT
then the theatre, and supper at the Gaathaua
again, and the coffee-house, sometimes till far
into the morning. In those days no Viennese,
certainly no young bachelor, dined at home
so that the repeated visits to the Gasthaus need
not shook the sensibilities of any English lover
of Schubert. .[See p. 3076.] Nor let any one
be led away with the notion that he was a sot,
as some seem prone to believe. How could a
sot—how could any one who even lived freely,
and woke with a heavy head or a disordered
stomach—have worked as he worked, and have
composed nearly 1000 such works as his in
eighteen years, or have performed the feats of
rapidity that Schubert did in the way of opera,
symphony, quartet, song, which we have enumerated
? No sot could write six of the Winterreise
' songs —
' perfect, enduring works of art
in one morning, and that no singular feat ! Your
Morlands and Poes are obliged to wait their
time, and produce a few works as their brain and
their digestion will allow them, instead of being
always ready for their greatest efforts, as Mozart
and Schubert were. Schubert—like Mozart
loved society and its accompaniments ; he would
have been no Viennese if he had not ; and he
may have been occasionally led away ; but such
escapades were rare. He does not appear to
have oared for the other sex, or to have been
attractive to them as Beethoven was, notwithstanding
his ugliness. This simplicity curiously
characterises his whole life ; no feats of memory
are recorded of him as they so often are of other
great musicians ; the records of his life contain
nothing to quote. His letters, some forty in
all, are evidently forced from him.
' Heavens
and Earth,' says he, 'it's frightful having to
describe one's travels ; I cannot write any
more. ' ' Dearest friend '—on another occasion
—
'
you will be astonished at my writing : I
Strange contrast to the many
am so myself.' *
interesting epistles of Mozart and Mendelssohn,
and the numberless notes of Beethoven ! Beethoven
was well read, a politician, thought
much, and talked eagerly on many subjects.
Mozart and Mendelssohn both drew ; travelling
was a part of their lives ; they were men of the
world, and Mendelssohn was master of many
accomplishments. Schumann too, though a Saxon
of Saxons, had travelled much, and while a most
prolific composer, was a practised literary man.
But Schubert has nothing of the kind to show.
He not only never travelled out of Austria, but
he never proposed it, and it is difficult to conceive
of his doing so. To picture or work of
art he very rarely refers. He expressed himself
with such difficulty that it was all but impossible
to argue with him.^ Besides the letters just
mentioned, a few pages of diary and four or
five poems are all that he produced except his
music. In literature his range was wide indeed,
I
K.E. p. 388 HI. 65) i p. 417 (II. Wi).
^ Seytrled, In SchDliQ^s Lexicon.
but it all went into his music ; and he was
strangely uncritical. He seems to have been
hardly able— at any rate he did not care—to
discriminate between the magnificent songs of
Goethe, Schiller, and Mayrhofer, the feeble
domesticities of Kosegarten and Hblty, and the
turgid couplets of the authors of his librettos.
All came alike to his omnivorous appetite.
But the fact is that, apart from his music,
Schubert's life was little or nothing, and that
is its most peculiar and most interesting fact.
Music and music alone was to him all in all.
It was not his principal mode of expression, it
was his only one ; it swallowed up every other.
His afternoon walks, his evening amusements,
were all so many preparations for the creations
of the following morning. No doubt he enjoyed
the country, but the effect of the walk is to be
found in his music and his music only. He
left, as we have said, no letters to speak of, no
journal ; there is no record of his ever having
poured out his soul in confidence, as Beethoven
did in the 'Will,' in the three mysterious
letters to some unknown Beloved, or in his
conversations with Bettina. He made no impression
even on his closest friends beyond that
of natural kindness, goodness, truth, and reserve.
His life is all summed up in his music. No
memoir of Schubert can ever be satisfactory,
because no relation can be established between
his, life and his music ; or rather, properly
speaking, because there is no life to establish
[a relation with. The one scale of the balance
is absolutely empty, the other is full to overflowing.
In his music we have fluency, depth,
lacuteness, and variety of expression, unbounded
imagination, the happiest thoughts, nevertiring
energy, and a sympathetic tenderness
beyond belief. And these were the result of
natural gifts and of the incessant practice to
which they forced him ; for it seems certain
that of education in music—meaning by education
the severe course of training in the
mechanical portions of their art to which Mozart
and Mendelssohn were subjected—he had little
or nothing. As we have already mentioned,
the two musicians who professed to instruct
him, Holzer and Ruzicka, were so astonished
at his ability that they contented themselves
with wondering, and allowing him to go his
own way. And they are responsible for that
want of counterpoint which was an embarrassment
to him all his life, and drove him, during
his last illness, to seek lessons. [See p. 316as.]
What he learned, he learned mostly for himself,
from playing in the Convict orchestra, from
incessant writing, and from reading the best
scores he could obtain ; and, to use the expressive
term of his friend Mayrhofer, remained
a ' Naturalist ' to the end of his life. From
the operas of the Italian masters, which were
recommended to him by Salieri, he advanced
to those of Mozart, and of Mozart abundant