FRANZ SCHUBERT

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 March 1930, Page 10

FRANZ SCHUBERT

A LIGHTNING COMPOSER. /hen Franz Schubert, one of the Gild’s greatest composers, died in Vienna in 1828, having written 603 songs, 10 symphonies, six masses, much chamber music, and several Operas, the sum total of his wealth was: Three dress coats, three walking coats, 10 pairs of trousers, nine waistcoats —together worth 37 florins; one hat, five pairs of shoes and two of boots —valued at two florins; four shirfs, nine cravats and pocket handkerchiews, 13 pairs of socks, one towel, one sheet, two bedcases —eight florins; one mattress, one bolster, one quilt—six florins; a quantity of old music valued at 10 florins; 63 florins (say £2 10s in all). Among the old music, so conservatively valued at says a writer in an overseas paper, were the Unfinished Symphony and the Symphony in C Major, and hundreds of other works, niapy of them among the best of Schubert’s music. Schubert did not seem to know what his work was worth, even when he had become famous; and unscrupulous publishers bought some of his greatest works for a song—and many of his s.pngs for lOd. Th© Trout Quintet, one of the finest chamber music works in existence, brought the composer 255; exactly half of what he very modestly asked for it. The E Flat Trio, Op. 100, was sold for 17s 6d.

All the same, as poorly as he was paid, Schubert wrote so much that he could have lived more or less comfortably on his earnings from music if there had not been several young, fellows who virutally lived upon his' carelessness and good nature.

They had nominally their own lodgings, but all often slept together in the room of one. They wore each other’s hats, coats, and boots; and the one who was in funds paid the bills of the others. That one was generally Schubert; and, since the amount of his funds, at the best of times, was very small; he very rarely had enough to keep himself in decent comfort.

Schubert composed music at a terrific speed. Often he would work half the night, go to bed wearing his spectacles (to save ihp trouble of taking them oft! and putting them on again), and work, the next morning from seven or eight o’clock until two; composing, composing, composing. When he first’read Muller’s poems ho was so fired with them thqt he set six of them to music in pn’p night; and he wrote six of the songs of his famous Winter Journey pycle in one morning.

Once, finding a friend, with a pjay of Shakespeare’s before him as he sat at a, table in a beer garden, Schubert seized the hook and began to read it. Suddenly he pointed to Hark, Hark, the Lark, and cried, “Such a lovely melody has’ come into my hea.d. Oh, for some music paper.” Someone drew a few staves on the back of a menu card; and then and there, amid all the noise and ’ chatter of the beer garden, the beautiful song was written.

On another occasion Anna Frohlich, whom Schubert was visiting, shpy/.ed him -a Serenade which had been written by a poet in honour of her birthday. 'She asked Schubert'; jestingly, to set it to music. He went to the piano and read tjie yers.es through, slowly: “How beautiful, how" beautiful,” lie said, tojjcl)ing the keyboard lightly. Within a few minutes, looking pyery pew ancj then at''th he Jia.d composecl his ijpmprtaJ Serenade. ' He composed operas, mass.es, symphonies — eyefything—so rapidly that he often forgot what he had written. Once lie asked a friend who was singing a song which he liked whp had written it, to be told by his friend that ho (Schubert) had composed it a few days before. Perhaps this is what happened with the Unfinished Symphony. Schubert wrote the first two rpoyements of it, and put it away jp a drawer; and there it stayed until many years afterwards, long aftju’ Schubert was dead. Ho had never heard it played. The delicate effects and orchestral combinations with which it is crowded were the result of his imagination alone.