Franz Schubert Man And Composer

Of all the great composers, none - not even Mozart - has been so dogged by myth and misunderstanding as Franz Schubert. The notion of Schubert as a pudgy, lovelorn Bohemian schwammerl (mushroom) scribbling tunes on the back of menus in idle moments has never quite been eradicated. In this major new biography, Brian Newbould balances discussion of Schubert's compositions with an exploration of biographical influences that shaped his musical aesthetics. Schubert: The Music and the Man offers an eminently readable description of a musician who was compulsively dedicated to his art - a composer so prolific that he produced over a thousand works in eighteen years. Gifted with an intuitive know-how, coupled with a Mozartian facility for composition, Schubert combined the relish and wonder of an amateur with the discipline and technical rigor of a professional. He moved quickly and comfortably among genres, and sometimes composed directly into score but many pieces required painstaking revision before they satisfied his growing self-criticism. Examining afresh the enigmas surrounding Schubert's religious outlook, his loves, his sexuality, his illness and death, Newbould offers above all a celebration of a unique genius, an idiosyncratic composer of an astonishing body of powerful, enduring music.

In his short, tumultuous life, Franz Schubert (1797-1828) produced an astonishing amount of music. Symphonies, chamber music, opera, church music, and songs (more than 600 of them) poured forth in profusion. His "Trout" Quintet, his "Unfinished" Symphony, the last three piano sonatas, and above all his song cycles Die Schone Mullerin and Winterreise have come to be universally regarded as belonging to the very greatest works of music? Who was the man who composed this amazing succession of masterpieces, so many of which were either entirely ignored or regarded as failures during his lifetime? In this new biography, Elizabeth McKay paints a vivid portrait of Schubert and his world. She explores his family background, his education and musical upbringing, his friendships, and his brushes and flirtations with the repressive authorities of Church and State. She discusses his experience of the arts, literature, and theater, and his relations with the professional and amateur musical world of his day. She traces the way Schubert's manic-depression became an increasingly significant influence in his life, responsible at least in part for social inadequacies, professional ineptitude, and idiosyncrasies in his music. And she examines Schubert's decline after he contracted syphilis, looking at its effect on his music and emotional life.

To this day, Schubert remains something of an enigma, despite the wealth of literature about him. Did he write the 'philistine sonatas' attributed to him by Richard Wagner, or did he have the 'divine spark' which Beethoven recognized in him? Was he the 'cosy Biedermeier character' of Vienna, known to his friends as 'little mushroom', or was he something else--a genius unrecognized? Inspired by his own love of performing Schubert's chamber and instrumental works, the author goes behind the commercially exploited myth of the 'jolly drinking companion', to portray another Schubert, the man who stood between two worlds--the Classican and the Romantic--and who realised works of extraordinary meoldic beauty. He traces Schubert's development as man and musician against an historical and social framework; from his birth in 1797 in war-shadowed Vienna, through his prolific career as composter, to his death of typhus fever at the early age of thirty-one. The portrait emerges is that of the man revealed through his music: 'a complex, sympathetic, always very real human being, a difficult man and an honest artist'.

This searching biography takes a fresh look at this elusive and misunderstood genius.