Schubert and Vogl at the piano.
From a drawing by M. v. Schwind
Schubert
AND HIS WORK
By HERBERT F. PEYSER
NEW YORK
Grosset & Dunlap
PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1946, 1950
The Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York
Printed in the United States of America
Foreword
A sense of helplessness and futility overcomes thewriter who, in the limits of a volume as unpretending asthe present one, endeavors to give the casual radio listenera slight idea of Schubert’s inundating fecundity and inspiration.Like Bach, like Haydn, like Mozart, Schubert’scapacity for creative labor staggers the imagination and,like them, he conferred upon an unworthy—or, rather, anindifferent—generation treasures beyond price and almostbeyond counting. Outwardly, his life was far less spectacularthan Beethoven’s or Mozart’s. His works are themirror of what it must have been spiritually. Volumeswould not exhaust the wonder of his myriad creations. Ifthis tiny book serves to heighten even a little the reader’sinterest in such songs, symphonies, piano or chamberworks of Schubert as come to his attention over the air itwill have achieved the most that can be asked of it.
H. F. P.
Schubert
AND HIS WORK
The most lovable and the shortest-lived of the greatcomposers, Franz Seraph Peter Schubert was doubly aparadox. He was the only one of the outstanding Viennesemasters (unless one chooses to include in this category theStrauss waltz kings) actually born in Vienna; and, thoughthere has never been a composer more spiritually Viennese,Schubert inherited not a drop of Viennese blood. His ancestryhad its roots in the Moravian and Austrian-Silesiansoil. His grandfather, Karl Schubert, a peasant and a localmagistrate, lived in one of the thirty-five towns calledNeudorf in Moravian-Silesian territory and married thedaughter of a well-to-do farmer, acquiring by the match alarge tract of land and ten children of whom the fifth,Franz Theodor Florian, was destined to beget an immortal.
At eighteen Franz Theodor, who was born in 1763, determinedto follow the example of his elder brother, Karl,and become a schoolmaster. He went to Vienna and secureda post as assistant instructor in a school where Karlhad already been teaching for several years. In spite ofstarvation wages he married (1785) Maria Elisabeth Vietz,from Zuckmantel, in Silesia, the very town whence theSchuberts had originally emigrated to Neudorf. She was acook, the daughter of a “master locksmith,” and she wasseven years older than her husband. The couple had fourteenchildren, nine of whom died in infancy. The survivorswere Ignaz, Ferdinand, Karl, Therese and our Franz Peter,who came twelfth in order.
A year after his marriage father Schubert was appointedschoolmaster of the parish of the Fourteen Holy Helpers,in Lichtental, one of the thirty-four Viennese suburbs