WINE, WOMEN AND SONGS
Incredibly prolific and talented, Schubert seemed set for a long, glittering career – but his vices led him to an early grave
We join the 17-year-old Franz in 1814, still scratching a living as a primary school teacher in Vienna, and yearning after the local silk weaver’s daughter Therese Grob.
17 OCTOBER 1814 I earn no money from teaching these wretched children their letters and sums – 80 florins a year [la little over €2,000 today] is hardly enough to live on. And there’s no way I’ll get permission to marry the lovely Therese Grob on that salary. Oh, she is an angel! But the blasted Austrian law insists that I need to be able to prove I can support a family before they will grant a licence to marry. At least during the afternoons I can compose in peace in the school room.
5 MARCH 1815 I am writing like a demon. The cathedral has asked me to compose a Mass to celebrate its centenary. I’ve asked if Therese can be the soloist; she has such a pure soprano voice to go with her buxom bosom.
Papa is so proud he has given me a piano as a celebration present for the commission. This is helping me to compose even more quickly. 16 OCTOBER 1815 I wrote eight songs yesterday. My dear friend from my schooldays, Joseph von Spaun, says that my quill is on fire at the moment and if I carry on writing at this pace I will have composed 20,000 bars of music by the end of the year. I’ve already finished two Masses, a symphony, a string quartet, about seven piano works and lots of songs. Oh, how I love setting the work of the great German poet Goethe to music.
5 MARCH 1816 Spaun has written to Goethe on my behalf, sending the great man some of my songs. But we haven’t heard anything back.
23 APRIL 1816 Goethe has sent back my songs without any comment. Nothing. Worse – I have just been told by Therese’s widowed mother that she cannot sanction a marriage on my pitiful salary.
Spaun and my other best friend, the poet Franz von Schober, helped me drown my sorrows at the inn. They say I should give up teaching and become a full-time composer. And Schober says the cure for a dark mood is always to be found in the bottom of a bottle and in the arms of a wench. But that is Schober’s answer to everything! 1 JULY 1818 I have landed a job! Seventy-six florins a month to be musical tutor this summer to the two daughters of a certain Count Esterhazy.
He’s not the same Esterhazy who was patron to the composer Joseph Haydn, but a cousin of his, I think. They say I will also have to partake in family musical entertainments. It sounds fun, though it is a beast of a journey to travel all the way to their summer estate in Zseliz, to the east.
8 JULY 1818 I have arrived at Zseliz. It is certainly different from Vienna. I am staying in their servants’ quarters, where my main companions are the cook, who is a bit of a rake, a lady’s maid, and Pipi, an exceptionally pretty chambermaid whom I intend to get to know better.
29 JULY 1818 What an idyllic existence. I rise from my bed early, I wander the gardens, have breakfast and then compose like a god for an hour before teaching Marie, 16, and Caroline, 13, who is the more talented of the two girls. After lunch I have time to compose, then I tend to walk in the gardens before I accompany the countess (a fine contralto) and the count (a decent bass but a terrible bore) for an hour’s worth of singing.
I return around 10pm to the servants’ quarters and the delights of Pipi. All good. Except I have run low on socks and had to write home for some more. 7 SEPTEMBER 1818 I am starting to miss Vienna and the gossip of Schober, Spaun and the gang. But I am writing lots – a requiem and several piano duets since I’ve arrived. I have run out of handkerchiefs, which is tedious. I must write home for more of those, too.
5 AUGUST 1819 I’ve been back in Vienna for just nine months and now Johann Michael Vogl, the baritone, has dragged me on holiday to Steyr in upper Austria. Though he is 30 years older than me and more successful, he always goes out of his way to support me. He says I deserve it after the success I have had this year with my songs being performed at public concerts.
There’s heavenly countryside here and such a pretty river. Vogl seems to know all sorts of people and has found us lodgings in a house with eight girls, nearly all of them pretty. We are having such fun already – the flirting that goes on across the breakfast table!
8 AUGUST 1819 Most lunchtimes Vogl performs my songs at the house of Sylvester Paumgartner, who is a wealthy mine owner and not a bad cellist. Quite large audiences gather for these concerts.
15 AUGUST 1819 Another commission! I was talking to Paumgartner about how much I was enjoying the morning walks here in Steyr, and he suggested I should write a piano quintet using my song The Trout as the theme for some variations. Why not? [Schubert’s Piano Quintet In A Major is commonly known as the Trout Quintet.]
21 NOVEMBER 1822 I have so far completed two movements of a new symphony in B minor, a key that I always associate with loneliness. I am hoping it will have a tragic quality about it, but I’m struggling with the scherzo [a lively section of the piece]. Schober is banging at the door, insisting I come out to the tavern for an evening of fun. He is shouting through the keyhole that to deny yourself pleasure is a sin. I will tackle the third movement tomorrow. Adieu, dear diary!
22 NOVEMBER 1822 My head feels like Marie Antoinette’s after the revolution. Last night was debauched and degraded and Schober dragged me off to a brothel. I hope I haven’t caught anything.
Gah! When will I ever finish this symphony?
2 JANUARY 1823 Not a good start to the new year. I feel terrible, have swollen glands and I still haven’t finished that B minor symphony.
15 FEBRUARY 1823 The doctors have confirmed my worst fear – I have syphilis. B **** y Schober and his women of the night! What hell am I in? I have been confined to my room and given a mercury ointment.
18 MAY 1823 I am in Vienna’s general hospital surrounded by fellow
victims of venereal disease. My hair is falling out. My mood is blacker than coal.
12 FEBRUARY 1824 My health has taken a turn for the worse. My doctor insists that I adopt a regime whereby I must fast and refrain from drinking wine. And then in three days I must alternate my daily meals between veal cutlets and a cooked dish of bread and water. The only drink I am allowed is tea. The suffering... I am, at least, able to work and have just finished a string quartet with variations on my Death
And The Maiden song, with its lyric, ‘Leave me thou grizzly man of bone!’
7 APRIL 1824 Imagine a man whose health will never be right again and who is in sheer despair over this; imagine a man whose most brilliant hopes have perished, to whom the happiness of love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain at best, whose enthusiasm for all things beautiful threatens to disappear. I am a miserable, unhappy being.
29 MARCH 1827 Oh blackest day. We buried the immortal Beethoven today. Will the world ever know another composer of his stature and almighty talent? I had the great honour of being one of the 36 torchbearers, holding a candle with black ribbons as we processed through Vienna. 11 OCTOBER 1827 I have nearly finished the second cycle of my Winter
Journey songs. Schober, Spaun and others say they are quite dumbfounded by their gloomy mood. So? These songs affect me so deeply. They will soon realise these are some of my finest works.
3 JANUARY 1828 I must get my head down and stop drinking. Eduard von Bauernfeld, my friend, the playwright, says that my name is on everybody’s lips and that I should not be so lazy. He says I must put on a concert of my own work and that the public will scramble for tickets. One thing is true – if the concert is a hit, I might be able to put up my fees to publishers as everyone will want to buy my music. The public know my songs such as Erlkönig, based on the Goethe poem about a child being carried off by a fairy king, and my duet
Light And Love, but do they know my serious stuff?
27 MARCH 1828 My concert was a big hit last night. It was the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death – a nice touch, no? – and the audience applauded me warmly. Plus, I have pocketed a profit of 320 florins [€9,000]. Not bad at all. I hope the reviews are good.
9 MAY 1828 All of Vienna is in a frenzy for Niccolo Paganini, the violin virtuoso. I took my friend Bauernfeld to a performance last night. We shall never see the likes of him again. Diabolically heavenly. Afterwards, we went to the tavern and drank too much – I picked up the tab. I still have stacks of money left over from my concert, but I heard that Paganini is able to charge five silver florins for each seat at his concerts. Unbelievable! That is five times the going rate and his face appears on snuff boxes, handkerchiefs and silver canes already. Oh, to enjoy a tenth of his success.
7 JUNE 1828 I am attempting to compose another Mass, but sometimes it seems to me that I no longer belong to this world. 29 SEPTEMBER 1828 I have completed three piano sonatas and a string quartet in the last few weeks. The notes dance, but my body fails.
7 OCTOBER 1828 My health is a little better and the doctor recommends fresh air. So I am on a three-day walking trip to visit Haydn’s grave in Eisenstadt with my brother Ferdinand and two friends. It is a 50-mile round trip. 19 OCTOBER 1828 The Society of Friends of Music, Vienna’s most influential private musical society, plans to play my Symphony In C in December. I hope this could be my Paganini moment! 30 OCTOBER 1828 A nasty incident with some fish in a tavern. I took one mouthful and had to spit it out: it tasted vile. I am ill, I have eaten nothing for 11 days and drunk nothing. I totter feebly from my chair to bed and back again. There is no pain, but I feel so exhausted that I feel I may fall through the bed. 4 NOVEMBER 1828 More doctors, more infernal doctors with their bills. I could have been a wealthy man, if it weren’t for the doctors’ bills. 14 NOVEMBER 1828 All my strength is leaving me. All I now desire is to hear the immortal Beethoven String Quartet In C Sharp Minor. Bauernfeld says he will hire some players. Good fellow. Schubert died five days later of what is thought to have been typhoid fever, but he was also in the later stages of syphilis.