The Schubert collection

Visitors unfamiliar with Schubert can get an accessible overview of his life and thematic lists of the articles about him on this website here: Beginning Schubert.

The short, Schubert-related entries in the monthly scrapbooks (marked in pale blue) are also included in the list. The order of the entries is latest to earliest. This collection differs from the list produced by selecting the category 'Schubert', in that the 'Schubert Collection' includes some extended comments on the contents of some of the entries.

The entries marked in light grey are introductions to multiple-page articles; their component articles are listed immediately following them, marked with lighter grey.

141 articles listed.

Making a start at a reconstruction of Franz Peter Schubert's life in his family and neighbourhood:
—Brothers and sisters from the east
—The two Schubert families
—The Schubert family businesses
—Ignaz and Elisabeth Wagner
—Michael Holzer
—The Grob family
—The female factor
—The family bond

A lonely hearts advertisement in the New York Review of Books gets a Schubertian response.

Behind Rückert's superficial charm and simplicity there is great skill and expressive power. Schubert's setting of Rückert's poem is a work of genius worthy of the work of genius that is the text. Nevertheless, the depths and subtleties of Rückert's original are often overlooked or misunderstood.

Franz von Schober (1796-1882) wrote the poem Jägers Liebeslied, date unknown. It was set to music by Schubert in February 1827. The text of the poem presents us with many problems. Schubert's setting takes over all these problems and adds a further layer of musical problems. Whereas Schubert's musical genius elevated many mediocre or bad texts into worthwhile songs, Schober's poem brought Schubert's music down to its own inconsequential level.

Carl Gottfried Ritter von Leitner (1800-1890) wrote the poem Die Sterne, 'The Stars', in 1819. It was set to music by Schubert in January 1828. In 1828 the song found its way into Opus 96, the album of four songs that was dedicated to Charlotte Princess Kinsky. The quality of Leitner's poem is terrible – what we might expect of a nineteen year-old dilettante. Schubert did his best to rescue the piece, but his best was not good enough. The question remains: why did he set this terrible poem to music?

The biographical links between Franz Schubert and Franz von Schlechta stretch from their first meeting (probably in the Vienna Stadtkonvikt in 1813) to Schlechta's elegy written just after Schubert's death. Although Schlechta does not appear to be one of the prominent members of the circle of friends around Schubert, the length of his relationship with Schubert suggests an area of social activity outside the immediate, well-known Schubert circle.

A textual and contextual analysis of Schlechta's poem, a lyric out of which Schubert managed to create one of his most entertaining songs.

An examination of the claim that an 1827 painting by the Hungarian artist Gábor von Melegh (1801-1835) is a portrait of Franz Schubert. The detailed iconography of the painting does not support this conclusion. No direct evidence for the attribution exists and all the circumstantial evidence presented to this day does no stand examination.

A text interpretation of Goethe's magnificent poem Wandrers Nachtlied II, (Ein gleiches) (1780) and a look at some of the legends which surround its creation. The poem was set magnificently to music by Franz Schubert as D 768 in 1823.

Recovering Franz Schubert's concert evening for Princess Charlotte Kinsky in 1828 from Joseph Spaun's obfuscation. A discussion of the concert, which was held in Vienna around the beginning of July 1828 and which involved Schubert and Schönstein and led to the dedication to her of the group of four Schubert songs, Opus 96.

Last year an auction house in California sold a painting done in 1831 by the little known artist Josef Bartholomeus Vieillevoye (1788-1855). The auction house titled the piece 'A portrait of the composer Franz Schubert'. It is easy to demonstrate that the portrait cannot possibly be of Franz Schubert, if only for the reason that Schubert had already been decomposing for nearly three years at the time the portrait was painted.

The collection of Schubert songs marketed under the weepy label Schwanengesang should be allowed to fade into oblivion. Unfortunately, a new website has been created as a 'Schwanengesang resource'.

A review of the background and usage of the simile zittern wie Espenlaub, 'tremble like aspen leaves' as it occurs in German and English culture. The review culminates with an appreciation of Franz Schubert's masterly setting of Johann Gaudenz von Salis-Seewis' poem, Der Jüngling and der Quelle (D 300).

The Canadian musicologist Dr Rita Steblin died in Vienna on 3 September 2019 year. Her death at only sixty-eight is a loss to Beethoven and Schubert scholarship, but she leaves behind a considerable corpus of archival research which has substantially advanced our understanding of these two composers in particular.

Ludwig Rellstab was a fourth-rate writer, whose prose and verse works were soon forgotten after his death, deservedly so. Franz Schubert set six of Rellstab's poems to music in 1828; his settings were published posthumously as part of the Schwanengesang collection. This article analyses in detail the defects of Rellstab's lyrics. Schubert's settings are also uninspired, except for Ständchen, 'Leise flehen meine Lieder', which somehow managed to transcend the incompetence of the text to create one of Schubert's greatest hits.

A look at fourteen of Heine's poems from Die Heimkehr, selected from the nearly ninety poems that Schubert did not set to music in his group of Heinelieder. Although Schubert's choice of poems seems largely to have been the result of his depressed, Winterreise state, other considerations may have been important. We examine Heine's texts in terms of their suitability in tone and content for a Schubertian setting. With Heine's poetry in Die Heimkehr we have moved decisively out of the Romantic period and its Biedermeier conventions. The belljar of repressive censorship over Austria at the time would have made almost all of Heine's poems unpublishable there. In such a cultural climate there was no incentive for Schubert to experiment in the representation of new tones and moods in song.

Schwanengesang is a brand name thought up by a Viennese music publisher after Schubert's death. It consists of fourteen settings: seven of poems by Ludwig Rellstab, six of poems by Heinrich Heine and one of a poem by Johann Gabriel Seidl. The collection lacks all coherence and in a sane world would not be considered as a musical whole. Furthermore, Schubert's settings of the six poems from Heine's Die Heimkehr do not succeed in finding a musical correlative to Heine's complex, ironic verse and cannot be regarded as successful settings.

Schubert was a social nonentity for the whole of his life. That state of irrelevance continued for at least thirty years after his death. Schubert's 'greatness', 'fame' or 'significance' is an entirely modern phenomenon, one that really only came into being by about the beginning of the 20th century. A serious biographical account has to avoid inflating his early insignificance with his later fame.

Goethe's 1778 poem Der Fischer, 'The Angler': an analysis of its subtle metrics, an interpretation of its content and its biographical context. The poem was masterfully set to music by the 18 year-old Franz Schubert in 1815 (D 225).

The 'Abel' portrait of 'The Young Schubert' does not depict Schubert, young or old. It is time to abandon this delusion and look at the interesting role that the painting seems to have played in the Nonsense Society in the years around 1817-1818.

An investigation of the meaning of the word das Mensch put into the mouth of a preacher in Zseliz by Schubert in a letter written to his brothers in 1818. What would be the best English equivalent?

Revisiting Wilhelm Müller's poem Die Nebensonnen, poem 23 in the Winterreise song cycle. Is the optical phenomenon of very cold winters, 'sun dogs', the factual basis for Müller's imagery in the poem?

An analysis of Friedrich Rückert's poem Daß der Ostwind Düfte, which Schubert set as Dass sie hier gewesen . The poem is a tour de force interpretation of the poetry of the medieval Persian writer, Hafez. Both the language and symbolism of the poem demand careful reading and consideration.

An analysis of Johann Friedrich Rochlitz's poem Alinde and Schubert's remarkable musical setting of it. The poem marks the transition from fixed Classical metrical forms to flexible speech forms and Schubert responded masterfully to the complex challenge of setting it to music.

An examination of the chronology of the four months leading up to Franz Schubert's death on 19 November 1828 as well as the medical assessment of Schubert's general ill-health and the immediate cause of death, typhoid fever.

A partial investigation into the suggestions that there was endemic homosexuality or bisexuality among Schubert and the other members of the circles of friends. The article looks firstly at the history of the concept of homosexuality in German speaking countries; secondly, the reaction to homosexual behaviour in Biedermeier times as presented in the 'Poets' War' between Heinrich Heine and August von Platen; and thirdly some aspects of Biedermeier life and the culture of Empfindsamkeit that might be mistakenly interpreted as homosexual behaviour.

Schubert's alleged unrequited passion for Augusta Grünwedel; many questions, few answers. Did he really order a certificate of baptism in 1827? If so, why? And if he had really proposed marriage to someone, who was it?

Schubert's second stay with the Esterházy family in Zseliz in the summer and autumn of 1824. A break from the bleakness of life in Vienna, where so many of his friends were absent. The mystery of the relationship between Schubert and Countess Caroline, unsolved to this day, despite new details of her brief and unsuccessful marriage.

Schubert's syphilis infection. It appeared at the beginning of 1823 and caused him two years' distress of varying intensity. He was unlucky: the disease appears to have dogged and depressed him until the end of his life, but despite that it never really brought the Schubert composing machine to a standstill.

An investigation into Franz Schubert's first stay as music master for the Esterházy de Galántha family at their country house in Zseliz in Hungary in the summer and autumn of 1818. It was a youthful travel adventure with a holiday romance thrown in, but in the end he was glad to get back to his beloved Vienna.

The mysterious excursion to the Monastery of Heiligenkreuz to play Ignaz Kober's famous organ there. Schubert composed a four-handed fugue for the occasion. Schubert's perceived deficits in fugal composition and his efforts to remedy them.

Franz Schubert's only public concert, on 26 March 1828. A success that even generated some income, despite competition from Paganini's concert series, but which was never held again.

Franz Schubert's acclaimed setting of Ave Maria . Yet one more great hit that became popular only after his death. Spiritual feelings from the anti-clerical composer that even surprised his father.

The assessment of Schubert's suitability for the life of a soldier as recorded in the registration and conscription sheet for the Schubert family on their move to the new school in Rossau. Fortunately, Franz was not cut out for the job, as was apparent at the first glance.

The complex and uncertain history of Symphony No. 7 (or No. 8), D 759, the Unfinished Symphony. Was it unfinished, unfinishable, forgotten or did it require no further finish?

The complex and uncertain history of the text of Goethe's Heidenröslein, brilliantly set to music by Franz Schubert (D 257), including a close analyis of the text. The poem has entered the German psyche, but is also remembered for settings by other composers in the tradition of the Volkslied.

A selection of Schubert's works that is intended to help a person unfamiliar with them to get started. It is not comprehensive – much excellent and beautiful music is not on the list – just an attempt to help answer the question that faces all classical music listeners at some time or other: where do I start?

An analysis of Graf Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg's poem Lied auf dem Wasser zu singen, für meine Agnes, first published 1783, set to music by Schubert in 1823 as Auf dem Wasser zu singen, 'To be sung on the water', Op. 72, D 774. This poem is one of the few that Schubert set that was worthy of his genius.

A reconstruction of the life of Johann Senn, Schubert's great friend from the Stadtkonvikt. An independently-minded thinker, an intellectual rowdy, a man of principle who disdained money – just the sort of person to interest the secret police in those nervous times. The loss to the Schubert circle following his arrest and deportation was incalculable.
—The Senn family
—The Tyrolean Fatherland
—Johann Senn in the Stadtkonvikt and after
—Revolting students
—Cooling down the hotheads
—The first exile
—The wilderness years
—Life and literary failure after the army.

Getting Franz Schubert a good education at the Akademisches Gymnasium with board in the Stadtkonvikt , all paid for by the Emperor, was a careful and ingenious plan of his father's that took time and effort. It succeeded.

The Schubert family, seen through its 'Family Chronicle', particularly as it involves Schubert's relationships to his siblings and his step-siblings.

Franz von Schober is an extremely important figure for Schubert scholarship. During the second half of Schubert's life he was probably the composer's closest friend. Schober's life and his relationship with the composer and his other friends is a tangled ball of knotty puzzles. At moments he is revered, at other moments reviled.
—Growing up, growing apart
—On the couch
—Family life
—The cloud of unknowing
—The Schobert wakes
—The cultural circles: 1815-1823
—The dark years: 1823-1826
—The final Schubert years: 1825-1828
—Schober after Schubert

When Schubert's life ended, on 19 November 1828, he was 31 years old. What had the trajectory of that life been? What would he have seen had he been able to turn around and look impartially at that trajectory?

An account of the failed Jacobin revolution in Austria and Hungary, its ruthless suppression and its legacy of half a century of political fear and repression. In the Vienna of this period, making music was the safest thing to do.
—Circles of conspiracy
—Franz Hebenstreit
—Andreas von Riedel
—Joseph Vinzenz Degen
—Making the punishment fit the crime
—The atmosphere under the belljar

In Die schöne Müllerin, one of the most charming and well-executed poems is undoubtably Wohin? It is the first appearance of the stream that will lead the wandering miller to his mill and to his girl and – always the good listener – will accompany him to the bitter end. The rustling stream has its inspiration in the epochal 'rustic' anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1808).

Emperor Franz II/I , 24 years old at his accession to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire in March 1792, reacted quickly to the dangers that faced him. The French Revolution of 1789 would not to be repeated in his territory. In these dangerous, combustible times he needed calm, he needed security; he needed police and he needed censors. Artistic life in Austria existed under a belljar of his repressive measures that directly affected Schubert and his circle.

Schubert fans know of Joseph and Anton von Spaun as early and prominent members of the Freundeskreise , the so-called 'Circles of Friends' around Schubert. Both were respectable and loyal friends who supported the young composer in many ways. Their father Franz Xaver von Spaun was an upstanding member of society in the Austrian town of Linz. In contrast, their uncle, Franz Seraph, was a bloody-minded malcontent whose life was a trail of wreckage. This is his story.

The text and context of Franz Schubert's setting of Gretchen am Spinnrade, Op. 2, D 118, composed in October 1814. Goethe's Faust, Mephistopheles and their pact; Gretchen overheard in the tempest of demonic passion that will ultimately ruin her.

In the course of two generations, Schubert's ancestors moved from the world of feudal peasants living in a distant province of the Holy Roman Empire to the life of a musical genius in its capital, Vienna. Each of those two generations – the composer's grandparents and then his parents – took a gigantic step in raising the family out of its agricultural anonymity into the metropolitan culture of the capital.
—Carl and Susanna Schubert
—The two brothers
—The brothers reach Vienna
—The two sisters
—Franz Theodor and Elisabeth's children

In 1792 Friedrich von Matthisson wrote a poemAndenken , 'Remembrance'. It was first printed ten years later in 1802 and Franz Schubert set it to music in April 1814 ( D 99 ). In the year Matthisson wrote the poem, his friend Friederike Brun wrote her own variation on it, which she titled Ich denke dein , 'I think of you'. Then, in the spring of 1795, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was inspired by a musical setting of Brun's poem to compose his own lyric to that music. He titled it Nähe des Geliebten , 'The proximity of the loved one'. In February 1815 Schubert set Goethe's version to music ( D 162), giving us an example of what happens when two geniuses collaborate.

In the Schubert song Die Forelle the bright rustic idyll of the first two verses darkens when, by a subterfuge, the angler catches the fish – a dark event which hints at a much darker event in real life. This article is a study of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the poem by the musician, writer and journalist Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart around 1782, during his ten year incarceration in the fortress of Hohenasperg at the arbitrary decree of Carl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg.
—The biography of a poem
—Franz Schubert –The Trout Quintet
—Franz Schubert –The Trout
—Christian Schubart – The road to doom
—Christian Schubart – Taking the bait
—Christian Schubart –The Trout: text analysis

A textual and contextual analysis of the poems of Die Winterreise by Wilhelm Müller, music by Franz Schubert (Winterreise, Op. 89, D 911). Müller's poems were published in 1823 and Schubert set them to music in 1827.
—Introduction – Entering the tunnel
—Chapter 1 – The birth of the text of Die Winterreise
—Chapter 2 – Poems 1-12
—Chapter 3 – Poems 13-24
—Chapter 4 – Wilhelm Müller
—Chapter 5 – Franz Schubert

A textual and contextual analysis of the song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, Op. 25, D 795, text by Wilhelm Müller and music by Franz Schubert. Müller's poems were published in 1820 and Schubert set them to music some time between autumn 1823 and spring 1824.
—Introduction
—Chapter 1 – The song-cycle and its prologue
—Chapter 2 – Poems 1-12
—Chapter 3 – Poems 13-23
—Chapter 4 – The context of the work

The story behind the choral work Ständchen, D 920, text by Franz Grillparzer, music by Franz Schubert; written and composed in July 1827 and first performed by the girls of Anna Fröhlich's singing school in Vienna on 11 August 1827. The musicologist Harry Goldschmidt justly called it eine der genialsten Eingebungen Schuberts überhaupt, 'one of the most brilliant of all Schubert's inspirations'. ['Franz Schubert – ein Lebensbild', 1954 311]