13 German reception: Schubert’s “journey to immortality”
Leopold von Sonnleithner, an early and ardent champion of Franz Schubert, remarked in 1857: “Without any doubt the description of how his compositions gradually gained recognition must also find a place in Schubert’s biography; but this requires laborious study” (SMF 119). Robert Schumann had already sounded a similar theme nearly two decades earlier, warning that “he who is not yet acquainted with [the “Great” C Major] Symphony knows very little about Schubert.” 1 Unpublished compositions should be immediately released, Schumann urged, so that “the world finally arrives at the full appreciation of Schubert” (SMF 405). The lack of a truly representative selection of Schubert’s music prompted his biographer Heinrich Kreissle von Hellborn to write in 1865 that
Schubert in his totality is only known and appreciated by a few. There are vocal works of all kinds, cantatas, overtures, orchestral, opera, and church music, of which until now not a single note has ever been heard. For forty years and more this music has remained unused, in some cases mere objects of painful solicitude, as though the composer had written his enchanting music only for himself, and not for ourselves and our children. 2
These three concurring views of Schubert’s problematic reception, expressed by his friend Sonnleithner, by his most passionate and articulate critical advocate, and by his first biographer, all point to the unusual difficulties caused by the posthumous release of so many extraordinary pieces. To borrow the phrase of another acquaintance, Josef Kenner, Schubert’s “journey to immortality” encountered significant obstacles and detours (SMF 82). The history of Schubert’s musical reception is thus largely the story of the gradual dissemination and increasing appreciation of his compositions.
Critical assessments reflect evolving tastes and cultural practices, and often reveal as much about the concerns and values of the historical period making the judgments as they do about the specific composer under consideration. The history of a composer’s reception charts not only the changing evaluations and interpretations of his individual works, but also the broader revaluations of his overall artistic stature. In Schubert’s case the sudden availability at mid century of so much of his greatest music confounded critical understanding and called for constant revision. As more than one nineteenth-century critic remarked in response to the steady stream of new publications, it was as if Schubert were still alive and composing.
This chapter explores Schubert’s nineteenth- and early twentieth-century critical reception in German-speaking countries, and the following two chapters consider his reception in England and France. The German reception conveniently divides into three periods. The first, encompassing Schubert’s lifetime, saw hundreds of his works performed and/or published, usually to popular and critical acclaim. The second, at mid century, saw the first appearance of masterpieces that expanded his reputation from a composer known primarily for songs and dances to one also esteemed for instrumental music. The third, beginning in the 1860s and lasting well into the twentieth century, saw Schubert achieve immortality, and was characterized by a curious juxtaposition of positivist scholarship and an increasing trivialization of his life and music in popular genres, such as novels, operettas, and musical arrangements.
Schubert in his own time: fame and neglect
The appearance of Franz von Schlechta’s poem “An Herrn Franz Schubert” in the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung on September 27, 1817, marked the first mention of Schubert in the press, a versified tribute that seems symbolically appropriate for a composer who made his reputation with the Lied. Only a limited group in Vienna then knew the music of the unpublished Schubert, aged twenty. During the next few years public and semi-public performances of individual Lieder, partsongs, overtures, as well as the cantata Prometheus (now lost) and two Singspiels (D647, D644), attracted some brief comment in the Viennese press, and occasionally in other German-language periodicals.
Usually laudatory, these notices are frustratingly superficial. Even though music criticism was still quite young, it already displayed the split between insight into musical compositions, which marks genuine criticism, and the chronicling of public events, which characterizes reviews. Viennese attention to Schubert’s music first came from concert reviews (Konzertberichte) and from notices of published works, which amounted to consumer reports commenting on the level of technical difficulty that a player might expect, or remarking on the quality of the engraving.
Although of limited quantity and quality, the early criticism does point to some significant features of Schubert’s initial reception. Most critics were supportive, and a few swiftly recognized his genius. They took serious note of his Lieder, and often remarked that although the genre did not, as a rule, warrant much consideration, Schubert’s accomplishments justified extended treatment (e.g. SDB 353, 418). Schubert’s startling innovations were thus quickly acknowledged; his eventual status as the composer who raised the Lied to full artistic status is prefigured in the enthusiastic initial 1821 reviews of Erlkönig , Op. 1, which would remain his preeminent work throughout the nineteenth century. 3 Viennese acclaim continued to the end, with a review of Winterreise just months before Schubert died: “Herein lies the nature of German Romantic being and art, and in this sense Schubert is a German composer through and through, who does honor to our fatherland and our time” (SDB 758). 4
In contrast to the breadth of Beethoven criticism, 5 however, hardly more than a dozen substantial articles on Schubert appeared during his lifetime; 6 this scarcity was due in part to Viennese critical practices, to Schubert’s youth, and, most importantly, to the unassuming genres for which he was best known – Lieder, partsongs, dances, and keyboard music. With the exception of a few notable Viennese articles, most of the significant criticism of Schubert’s music appeared in foreign periodicals, and after 1824 primarily in Leipzig’s Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. This higher criticism weighed only published compositions, thereby sharply limiting discussion of Schubert’s large-scale works, and further underscoring the importance of publication for the advancement of his fame.
The inaugural release, in 1821, of Schubert Lieder by the firm of Cappi & Diabelli triggered two articles that provide invaluable insights into Viennese views of the Lied, indicate Schubert’s early stature in the genre, and offer an unusually high level of interpretive insight. The first article praised “the young composer with a rich lyrical gift” and “excellent talent,” and applauded the sensitivity Schubert typically brought to the poems he set: “Not often has a composer had so large a share of the gift for making the poet’s fancy so profoundly impressive to the receptive listener’s heart. 7
The second article, Friedrich von Hentl’s “Blick auf Schuberts Lieder,” also hailed Schubert’s achievement: “Schubert’s songs elevated themselves by ever undeniable excellent features to the rank of masterpieces of genius.” 8 Hentl stressed “the spirit which unifies the whole, the poetry which animates it, and the organization which imparts expression to it” (SDB 214). Hentl immediately recognized those qualities that would most often win Schubert praise: the caliber of the poetry chosen and his understanding of it (“translation” is the word some commentators use), the extraordinary role accorded to the piano, and the originality of his imaginative conceptions. Although this was one of Schubert’s first substantial reviews, Hentl seemed to make a preemptive strike against future complaints: “Whoever is inclined to doubt whether Schubert can write pure melody and to reproach him with relying for the effect of many of his songs on harmony and characteristic expression alone by means of excessive accompaniments, as in Gretchen am Spinnrade , has only to hear his lovely and extremely simple Heidenröslein , [among other songs]” (SDB 218).
In the coming years just such doubts were raised, especially in German journals. North-German critics tended to be more thorough than their Viennese counterparts, and also more conservative; having heard less of Schubert’s music, they were more likely to harbor reservations about his compositional innovations. The most important and authoritative reviews appeared in Leipzig’s Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung , which repeatedly mentioned Beethoven in its discussions of Schubert. As early as 1820 – thus before the publication of Schubert’s Erlkönig , Op. 1 – one critic wrote: “In this first dramatic essay [the Singspiel Die Zwillingsbrüder , Schubert] seems to attempt to fly as high as Beethoven and not heed the warning example of Icarus” (SDB 139). Comparisons continued throughout the decade, sometimes to Schubert’s benefit: the “freedom and originality” of Schubert’s A Minor Sonata, Op. 42 (D845), can “probably be compared only with the greatest and freest of Beethoven’s sonatas. We are indebted for this uncommonly attractive and also significant work to Herr Franz Schubert, who is, we hear, a still quite young artist of and in Vienna” (SDB 512). Reviewing the Sonata in G, Op. 78 (D894), some years later, a critic proclaimed: “The composer, who has made for himself a numerous following by not a few excellent songs, is capable of doing the same by means of pianoforte pieces.” The same critic then promptly warned the young composer once again about the dangers of using a unique genius as a model: “Beethoven appears to us to be in a class by himself alone, as it were, especially as he showed himself in his middle and later period, so that in truth he should not by any means be chosen as an absolute model, since anyone who desired to be successful in that master’s own line could only be he himself” (SDB 694).
An entrenched conception of the Lied genre is apparent in the AmZ reviews of Schubert’s efforts. One critic commented that while Schubert had written “several very good, and a few excellent, pieces,” he was less suited for “real song” (das eigentliche Lied , i.e. strophic settings) than for “continuously composed pieces, for four voices or for one voice with an independent, sometimes excessively full accompaniment.” 9 Such excesses were found in Erlkönig , which “may be a highly overladen [überladen] piece of work, very difficult to perform; but it does contain spirit and vitality in general as well as a certain secret deviltry of expression” (SDB 543; cf. 690). In general, it was Schubert’s unconventional harmonic adventures, not his melodies or formal structures, that most struck critics. Schubert’s first big review in the AmZ was unusually negative, lamenting that he sought to compensate for the “want of inner unity, order and regularity by eccentricities which are hardly or not at all justified and by other rather wild goings-on” (SDB 353). Schubert’s harmony might be praised as “original,” chided as “excessive,” or both: “original” was the word critics used most often, although it was sometimes coupled with “bizarre” or “eccentric.”
Such ambivalence surfaced often in AmZ reviews: “he shows originality of invention and execution, sound knowledge of harmony and honest industry: on the other hand he often, sometimes very greatly, oversteps the species at hand [Lieder] … he likes to labor at the harmonies for the sake of being new and piquant; and he is inordinately addicted to giving too many notes to the piano part, either at once or in succession” (SDB 718). The year before, reviewing the Op. 59 Lieder, a critic wrote: “He modulates so often and often so very suddenly towards the remotest regions as no composer on earth has done … but it is equally true that … he does not seek in vain, that he really conjures up something which had truly much to communicate to our fancy and feeling, and does it significantly” (SDB 636).
As serious criticism was limited to Schubert’s published compositions, no reviews appeared of symphonies and only a few concerned his chamber music; large-scale keyboard pieces received most of the attention. Although Schubert’s music was briefly mentioned in hundreds of reviews during his lifetime, critics rarely indicated what was new or special about his compositions. (Some published works, such as Die schöne Müllerin , were mysteriously ignored altogether.) Not until Robert Schumann began writing in the mid 1830s did Schubert enjoy concerted critical support and understanding that went much beyond grade assignments. The writings from the 1820s – brief or extended – were usually more evaluative than interpretive, their value and interest more historical than hermeneutic. A declaration from 1827 in Vienna’s Theaterzeitung is illustrative: “The name ‘Schubert’ has a fair sound and his works, wholly enwrapped in the rosy veil of originality and feeling, stand high in public favor” (SDB 660). The information given here – that Schubert’s music is both original and esteemed – is useful and consistent with other reports, but we learn nothing more substantive about the music itself.
Together with advertisements, reviews account for most of the published comment on Schubert in the 1820s. (After Schlechta’s poem, a few more poetic tributes appeared in Viennese journals [SDB 557, 838, 925].) Although Schubert received ever-increasing attention during his lifetime, he still went unmentioned in biographies, histories, and musical reference works. 10 The brevity of his career and its confinement primarily to Vienna, the modest genres with which he first attracted public attention, and the formidable amount of music that remained unpublished and unknown – these factors limited criticism and account for the discrepancy between his stature then and in the decades that followed. 11
Schubert in mid century: “working invisibly”
In his classic study of Viennese concert life (Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien , 1869), Eduard Hanslick succinctly captured Schubert’s unusual posthumous career: “If Schubert’s contemporaries rightly gazed astonished at his creative power, what shall we, who come after him, say, as we incessantly discover new works of his? For thirty years the master has been dead, and in spite of this it seems as if he goes on working invisibly – it is impossible to follow him.” 12
It may be inevitable that when a composer dies so young, with so unrepresentative a portion of his music published, his artistic legacy will be received with a sense both of revelation and of uncertainty. This phenomenon had curious repercussions for Schubert, occasionally prompting suspicions that such posthumous productivity could not be authentic: “All Paris has been in a state of amazement at the posthumous diligence of the song-writer Franz Schubert,” commented The Musical World in 1839, “who, while one would think his ashes repose in peace in Vienna, is still making eternal new songs, and putting drawing-rooms in commotion.” 13
Shortly after Schubert’s death, the publisher Tobias Haslinger shrewdly assembled his final fourteen songs, attached the title Schwanengesang (D957), and marketed it as his Letztes Werk. The bulk of Schubert’s unpublished legacy went to his older brother Ferdinand, who valiantly sought publication in the decades following. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, hundreds of Lieder appeared for the first time, mostly released by Schubert’s first publisher, Anton Diabelli, as part of a series with the title Franz Schuberts nachgelassene musikalische Dichtungen.
The fame of Schubert’s Lieder also spread rapidly through an astounding number of reworkings, which included all manner of arrangements, fantasies, and medleys. Piano transcriptions outnumbered the rest, although nearly every domestic instrumentation was accommodated. 14 Song orchestrations by Liszt, Berlioz, Brahms, and countless others facilitated the entrance of the Lied into public concerts and played a role in the creation of the orchestral Lied that flowered with Mahler, Strauss, and others at the end of the century. 15 Reworkings served a vital aesthetic and social function in nineteenth-century musical life. As recordings do today, they made music widely known and accessible. Arguably, commercial factors – which lay behind most nineteenth-century arrangements – are less significant in explaining the extensive reworkings of Schubert’s music. For example, the already popular works of Rossini were the most often reworked in Vienna during the first half of the nineteenth century. In Schubert’s case, during the same time, reworkings largely created his fame across Europe. In particular, Franz Liszt’s reworkings, primarily dating from the 1830s and 1840s, spread Schubert’s name far and wide. 16
For all their importance in disseminating his music, albeit in altered form, the compositions attractive to arrangers were invariably already published; reworkings simply made available works much better known. Throughout the 1830s, however, an increasing number of outstanding instrumental pieces appeared for the first time. Diabelli published the Piano Trio in B flat, Op. 99 (D898), in 1836 and the Sonata in C, the “Grand Duo” (D812) dedicating it to Clara Wieck, in 1837. 17 Until published, compositions had little chance of public performance (although handwritten copies, primarily of Lieder and dances, circulated widely). Publication thus offered the chance for exposure beyond Vienna and for criticism as well. 18 Table 13.1 lists the posthumous publication and première dates of other significant works.
Some exceptional additions to the Schubert canon owed their discovery, publication, and promotion to Robert Schumann. After he learned of the “Great” C Major Symphony (D944) during a visit to Vienna, Schumann encouraged his friend Felix Mendelssohn to premiere the work in Leipzig (1839), and wrote one of the most famous of all his critical essays on the work – the occasion of his remark on the “heavenly length” of the symphony. 19 Schumann’s criticism marked an interpretive high point in Schubert’s reception. He recognized, valued, and extolled Schubert’s genius as had no other critic to date; he repeatedly paired him with Beethoven and asserted that his music initiated a new era of Romanticism. 20 Moreover, his criticism probed keyboard and instrumental music, not Lieder, which mostly go unmentioned. 21
Nineteenth-century commentary about Schubert can be informative and revealing; but the penetrating criticism of Schumann and, more importantly, the esteem and promotion of celebrated composers and performers, had a more lasting effect on Schubert’s reception. The advocacy of Liszt was not limited to reworkings, but extended to his numerous performances as pianist and conductor and his activities as essayist and editor. 22 Mendelssohn had played some of Schubert’s music as early as 1827 (SDB 690), and later Brahms became an especially passionate advocate. 23 Many composers not only arranged Schubert’s music, but also used it as a model for compositions of their own. While most commentators have emphasized Schubert’s reliance on Beethoven, they have played down the ways in which later nineteenth-century composers looked to Schubert for inspiration. 24
Table 13.1. Selected posthumous premières and publications
| 1829 | Schwanengesang (D957) |
| Piano Sonata in A Minor (D664) | |
| Fantasy in F Minor, Op. Post. 103 (D940) | |
| Piano Quintet in A Major, “Trout,” Op. Post. 114 (D667) | |
| 1831 | Quartet in D Minor (D810) |
| 1836 | Piano Trio in flat, Op. 99 (D898) |
| Violin Sonatas, Op. Post. 137 (D384, 385, 408) | |
| 1837 | Mass in flat, Op. Post. 141 (D324) |
| “Grand Duo,” Op. Post. 140 (D812) | |
| 1839 | Last three piano sonatas in C Minor, A Major, and B flat Major (D958–60) |
| 4 Impromptus, Op. Post. 142 (D935) | |
| Mendelssohn premieres “Great” C Major Symphony (D944), published the following year | |
| 1840 | Allegro in A Minor, “Lebensstürme” (D947) |
| 1846 | Piano Sonata in B, Op. Post. 147 (D575) |
| Mass in G (D167) | |
| 1850 | Violin Fantasy in C Major, Op. Post. 159 (D934) |
| 1851 | Quartet in G (D887) |
| 1853 | Octet (D803) and String Quintet in C (D956) |
| 1854 | Liszt conducts première of Alfonso und Estrella (D732) |
| 1856 | Mass in F (D105) |
| 1861 | Première of Die Verschworenen (D787) |
| Piano Sonata in C “Reliquie” (D840) | |
| 1865 | Première of the “Unfinished” Symphony (D759, published 1867) |
| Mass in E flat (D950) | |
| 1866 | Lazarus (D689) |
| 1870 | Quartettsatz (D703) |
| 1871 | “Arpeggione” Sonata (D821) |
| 1875 | Mass in A flat (D678) |
| 1884 | Collected edition of Schubert’s works begins to appear from Breitkopf und Härtel (ASA) ; first publication of symphonies nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; and of all of Schubert’s dramatic works |
| 1897 | Schubert Centennial, collected edition is completed |
With so many prominent champions, important mid-century premières, the publication of so much music, glowing critical promotion by Schumann and others, and an ever-expanding amount of biographical information, Schubert’s reputation grew steadily, even while a large amount of music awaited undiscovered, and both critical and biographical commentary remained meager. The first recognition of his historical significance came from the Lied, with the acknowledgment of Schubert as the composer whose works exemplified the genre. 25 The sites of Lieder performances changed as mixed programs, semi-private concerts by musical societies, and Schubertiades gradually expanded into more formal, public Liederabende , recitals, and symphonic concerts. 26 Julius Stockhausen’s innovative concerts in the 1850s, especially those featuring the Müller song cycles, marked an important transition to the Lied recital as we know it today.
By the 1860s Schubert was more than just the foremost Lied composer. Beginning in the previous decade the Hellmesberger Quartet premièred string masterpieces such as the G Major Quartet (D887) and the C Major Quintet (D956) at Vienna’s Musikverein, which led to their publication, together with the Octet (D803). Even dramatic works received some limited exposure, albeit in abridged, sometimes mangled, form. In 1854 Franz Liszt conducted the première of Alfonso und Estrella (D732) in Weimar; Die Verschworenen (D787) was given a concert performance in Vienna in 1861 (and staged in Frankfurt later that season); and the unfinished oratorio Lazarus (D689) was heard in 1863.
Most significantly, Johann Herbeck premiered the “Unfinished” Symphony in B Minor (D759, written in 1822) on December 17, 1865, in the Musikverein at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Hanslick, Vienna’s leading critic, had previously warned of “over-zealous Schubert worship and adulation of Schubert relics,” but he hailed this work and its performance, which “excited extraordinary enthusiasm” and “brought new life into our concert halls.” According to Hanslick, after hearing only a few measures
every child recognized the composer, and a muffled “Schubert” was whispered in the audience … every heart rejoiced, as if, after a long separation, the composer himself were among us in person. The whole movement is a melodic stream so crystal clear, despite its force and genius, that one can see every pebble on the bottom. And everywhere the same warmth, the same bright, life-giving sunshine! 27
Such significant premières, combined with the increased amount of publications, were both evidence of and catalyst for Schubert’s growing stature. By mid century, lexicons, which serve as repositories of received opinion, placed Schubert among the elect for the first time. Eduard Bernsdorf’s Neues Universal-Lexikon der Tonkunst (1856–61) is typical: “The famous master of song and generally one of the most god-gifted German composers” (“Der berühmte Liedermeister und überhaupt einer der gottbegnadetsten deutschen Tondichter”). 28 A more symbolic gesture came in 1863 with the exhumation of Schubert’s and Beethoven’s bodies from Vienna’s Währing Cemetery; they were submitted to a scientific process that measured, studied, and compared their skulls so as better to understand the mechanisms of genius. 29 (Twenty-five years later their bodies were moved to the “Grove of Honor” at the Central Cemetery.)
Serious biographical and scholarly investigation of Schubert only began in the second half of the century. 30 After the composer’s death, several people failed in their attempts to write his biography. 31 In the late 1850s, Ferdinand Luib, former editor of the Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung , solicited accounts from Schubert’s acquaintances in the hope, likewise never realized, of producing a substantial study of the composer. The watershed date for Schubert biography is 1865, 32 when Heinrich Kreissle von Hellborn published, in Vienna, the first full-scale work – Franz Schubert. 33 Using accounts from Schubert’s friends, together with additional documents collected by Luib and others, Kreissle examined the composer’s life and, albeit superficially and uncritically, his works. Scholars such as Philipp Spitta, Max Friedländer, and Hermann Kretzschmar were quick to point out that Kreissle’s scholarship did not match the high caliber of such studies as Jahn’s of Mozart (1856–59), Chrysander’s of Handel (1858–67), Thayer’s of Beethoven (1866–79), or Spitta’s of Bach (1873–80). Although Kreissle drew heavily on anecdote and gossip, his book filled a void and decisively influenced writers and writings on Schubert until Otto Erich Deutsch began his far more comprehensive and reliable documentary compilations in the first decades of the next century. 34
Positivism and kitsch
A third stage of Schubert’s critical reception encompasses both the emergence of modern musical scholarship in Germany toward the end of the nineteenth century and popular celebrations of Schubert, exemplified by the 1897 centennial. Mixing scholarly positivism with popular trivialization of Schubert’s life and works, this period featured unprecedented access to scores, catalogues, documents, and iconography.
Facts and verification preoccupied the newly defined discipline of Musikwissenschaft. 35 The move away from aesthetic concerns in favor of objective scientific approaches produced studies dealing more with form than content, with musical analysis rather than interpretation. The dominance of the critics, composers, and performers in the earlier periods of Schubert’s reception now yielded to that of scholars, first to Sir George Grove and Gustav Nottebohm, then to the editors of the Schubert critical edition, and later to Max Friedländer, Otto Erich Deutsch, and others – those who catalogued and edited Schubert’s music, and documented and narrated his life.
Sir George Grove visited Vienna in 1867 and left with newly discovered pieces – and with a heightened passion for Schubert. The catalogue of works that he prepared formed an appendix to an English translation of Kreissle’s biography, and his own Schubert study appeared in an 1882 volume of the celebrated Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. By that date Nottebohm had already issued his impressive catalogue of Schubert’s published and unpublished music. 36 Friedländer, trained as a singer under Stockhausen before beginning musicological studies under Spitta, devoted himself primarily to investigating the German Lied. He sought to establish authoritative texts in his collections of Lieder for Edition Peters and to give in his dissertation a scholarly assessment of available biographical information concerning Schubert. 37
The sine qua non of positivist musicology is a critical edition of a composer’s works, which the Berlin firm of Breitkopf und Härtel had already undertaken for Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Chopin, among others. Finally, in 1884, such an edition was initiated for Schubert (ASA). This ambitious project, commendably edited by Eusebius Mandyczewski and others (including Brahms), drew upon modern musical editorial practices and was finished in time for the centennial. Although relatively minor compositions continued to surface in the next century, almost everything Schubert composed, including all the multiple Lied variants, was at last available for performers to play and for critics and scholars to assess. 38
Beginning in the first decades of the twentieth century, Deutsch’s pioneering collections of documents – letters, reviews, reminiscences, and iconography – provided unusual entrance to primary materials. 39 His later efforts to catalogue Schubert’s oeuvre chronologically earned him lasting citation through “Deutsch numbers.” Generally avoiding explicit interpretation, Deutsch concentrated on facts, figures, and bibliography, even though his own perception of the man and the music inevitably emerges in the way he assembled, presented, and annotated the documentation. The central importance of Deutsch’s scholarship is readily apparent in this Companion , as it is in nearly all twentieth-century writing on Schubert. 40
Even as scholarship delivered new access to music and documentation, the celebration and marketing of Schubert’s popularity was recasting the man and his music for a mass audience. As his stature grew, so did public tributes, along with other trappings of immortality. By the mid nineteenth century, Schubert’s admirers had begun to erect statues, place plaques on appropriate buildings, and rename streets in his honor. (In Vienna such activities were usually spearheaded by the Wiener Männergesang-Verein and the Wiener Schubertbund. 41 )
Schubert’s election to the musical pantheon is apparent in illustrations from the centennial year. In Otto Böhler’s “Die Feier von Schubert’s 100 Geburtstag im Himmel,” he is crowned in heaven with a host of the greatest composers in attendance. 42 This popular assignment of Schubert to the immortals is consistent with the “scholarly” assessment found in Julius Fuchs’s Kritik der Tonwerke: Ein Nachschlagebuch für Freunde der Tonkunst (Leipzig, 1897). The preface promises a “scientific and practical” work in which almost every imaginable composer since Bach, is ranked in order of achievement; specific works are also evaluated. 43 The positioning of composers (overwhelmingly German) according to “the lasting worth of their creations” gives Schubert an extraordinarily high position; he is literally in a class by himself:
| I.1 | I.2 | I.3 | |
| Bach | Schubert | Gluck | |
| Beethoven | Haydn | ||
| Handel | |||
| Mozart | |||
| II.1 | |||
| Brahms | |||
| Mendelssohn | |||
| Schumann | |||
| Wagner | |||
| Weber |
The trivializing features in Schubert’s fin-de-siècle reception only accelerated in the years between the centennial Schubertjahre of 1897 and 1928. Poems, short stories, and novels offered distorted, sentimental visions of his life and loves, and cast Schubert as the “Liederfürst,” a melodic genius who spontaneously composed immortal songs. As mentioned in chapter 2 , legends also spread extensively through operettas, and eventually through films. These trivializations influenced not only which of his pieces were most often performed and published, but also must have certainly affected how the music was heard.
Schubert’s popular and serious reception attests to his “journey to immortality.” Scholarship made available almost all of his music and brought to light essential biographical documentation. 44 Along with all the kitsch, more dignified biographies appeared (such as those by Richard Heuberger and Walter Dahms), 45 the opera Fierrabras received its belated première, and extraordinary performers such as Artur Schnabel promoted virtually unknown masterpieces in concert halls and on early recordings. By the first decades of the twentieth century the nature of musical culture had undergone profound changes, with audiences that listened to music in different ways. One became more likely to “play” Schubert on the phonograph than on the piano with a friend or family member. What may be most remarkable is how easily Schubert’s music could adapt, and be adapted, to serve new times and new audiences.
