Schubert the Romantic

Schubert grew up in an age in which the values of life multiplied and its problems grew diverse. He grew up in the eighteenth century, the age of justice and liberty and the age of thought's revolt against emotion, and he was reared on the principles current in that age. Yet despite the encouragement he met with for the idea of thought's revolt against emotion, all this did not prevent the surging of his feeling and the unruliness of his sensibility. He grew to manhood with an abundant share of ambition and seething emotion.

Schubert was blessed with a soul rich in gifts and inclinations. And since his melodies were a living mirror reflecting the fancies and happenings that stirred within his soul, his melodies were diverse, wearing varied garbs that differed with these many colors of the life of the soul.

He pictured for us in his melodies the various tendencies of the age: he is the creative painter, the rebellious thinker, and the reformer devoted to his homeland, and all these qualities appear in their finest and loftiest forms in every passage of his melodies.

If we listen to his compositions under the title of "Lied," we find first of all a kind of composition unique of its sort, for Schubert was the first to invent the composition of the "Lied" — I mean the musical pieces inspired by pieces of song. Thus he joined the language of books to the language of melodies. The appearance of the "Lied" worked a delightful revolution in the world of music, for the truth of expression, strength of construction, and smoothness of style that it displayed. Such a composition may contain a whole set of positive values for a new life which Schubert proclaims, addressing the different classes of the people in his easy phrase. In these pieces he revolted against feudalism and socialism, and proclaimed a new visionary doctrine that would secure his homeland a happy life and deliver it from the greed of the foreign exploiter. On this idea Schubert grew up, and he began to struggle for it with his art.

As for his set of melodies under the title "Impromptu," it expresses an important capacity for fine composition. It is a collection blessed with an abundant share of magical, romantic melody — a mark by which Schubert came to be known, for he had entered the second decade of his life. His romantic idea was not the prevailing idea of the age; rather, he introduced into it slight modifications to accord with his own inner nature. For a stretch of time he professed the doctrine of the extreme romantics, such as Lamartine, Goethe, and Schiller. Then his inner self began to take shape little by little, borrowing new values from the various doctrines. Schubert merged all these values and formed from them a new idea, built upon some of the foundations of the existentialist idea. He set forth his doctrine in his notebooks, saying: "The further I advance in life, the more my doctrine varies with the demands of the age and of the place I inhabit. As for the foundation of my idea, it is built upon burning emotion, and upon thought arising by way of emotion." And how could we fail to feel the romantic idea close at hand, when we know the measure of the burning, rebellious emotion in Schubert's being? Perhaps the chief cause of the unruliness of his emotion was his failure in the world of love. In all his life he never enjoyed a true love until he made the acquaintance of a village girl called "Christine Loblo," and he firmly resolved to make her a partner in his life; but his material circumstances did not allow him to found a family requiring heavy expenses, when his income did not even give him his daily bread. So his beloved left him and set off back to Switzerland. As for him, the light of his sun began to be eclipsed, and he withdrew into himself, composing, in the wake of this inner strife, the immortal symphony, the Symphonie Inachevée.

The symphony is the most splendid composition Schubert wrote in his life. In it he pictured a complete stage of the entry of emotion into the soul. His melodies came out true and alive, for the real problems of the soul they suggest to the listener. He began composing it when his heart became attached to the love of the girl just mentioned; and whenever the emotion grew, he set down its effect in the melodies, so that when we listen to the composition we feel clearly how the emotion of love grows, and how great is the share of the driving forces in coming to its aid. In the last movement of the symphony, when the measure of love reaches its highest degree, he lets us hear the successive chords, heavy with the thoughts of defeat — for Schubert had begun to feel defeat when "Christine" left him. So he died without completing the symphony, leaving us in the last movement fragments of burning sighs, as though he were saying: let fate finish what it began.

Thus his life was revealed plainly in the "Symphony," for he said after composing it: "The finest music I have produced is the fruit of my pains and my bitterest sorrows and griefs."

And perhaps the sharpest pains in the life of the individual may be a picture of joys and delights in the life of the community. The psychologists say of this: rare, original works of art are decisive proof of a conflict of conscience and a battle of the emotions; and it must follow that Schubert's splendid, immortal symphony, which he died before finishing, is decisive proof that he failed to resolve the problems whose events and causes the breaths of this symphony attempt to describe — that is, that he lost the inner battle. But if Schubert lost the inner battle, he won beyond doubt the esteem of all and the admiration of the people of art and refined taste; and he has also taken his seat upon the throne of the geniuses of the world's music.

September 10, 1947