Music: Schubert Ecstasy

On Nov. 19, 1828, Franz Schubert died. He was one of 14 children of a schoolmaster and a cook. He himself had tried to be a schoolmaster but teaching tormented him and instead he scribbled music. When he died, at 31, he left some 600 songs, 6 masses, 2 sacred cantatas, 24 piano sonatas, 20 string quartets, 18 dramatic works, 10 symphonies and personal effects valued at $10. Last week, under the leadership of the Columbia Phonograph Co., Europe and the U.S. celebrated the Centennial of his death.

¶ In Vienna, a little room in an upholsterer’s house was draped in black, lit with candles. A hundred years ago it was Schubert’s death chamber. Last week it was empty save for an altar and a marble bust. Yet there, for tribute, gathered highest dignitaries to hear the solemn mass pronounced by His Eminence Gustave Frederic Cardinal Piffl, Archbishop of Vienna. Outside the little house the street was roped off, guarded by police. Only honored guests were admitted—and 500 school children who sang Schubert songs.

For five days Schubert requiems were held in Vienna, Schubert symphonies played in the concert halls, Schubert songs sung in schools, over the radio. Outstanding was the visit to the grave by Austrian officials and ten German mayors, the unveiling of a fountain in his memory. Vienna paid Schubert scant notice when he lived. Now, 100 years dead, he is indeed her own.

¶ In Budapest was reported the timely finding of Schubert’s Gastein symphony, missing now for 102 years. It came from one Feri Vambery, a book collector, who got it from Irme Havasi, a bookkeeper who inherited it from a great granduncle, servant in the house of Count Esterházy at Zélesz (Hungary). There the shy, round Schubert used to go to teach young Caroline Esterházy. He left his manuscript one day and Great Granduncle Havasi stole it, left it when he died as his legacy. Last year the Columbia Phonograph Co. offered $1,000 for the Gastein’s return, deposited it with the Vienna Society of the Friends of Music. Vienna has it now. Judges will pass on its authenticity, divide the prize money between. Bibliophile Vambery and Great Grandnephew of Thief Havasi.

¶Chancellor Ignaz Seipel of Austria cabled Chairman Otto H. Kahn of the Centennial’s Advisory Board, greeted Schubert week as “the finest sign of the cultural and spiritual unity of America and Austria.”

¶ In Manhattan, Chairman Otto Kahn opened his house for an inaugural reception. Guests heard him speak on the scope of Schubert ‘Week, heard Olga Samaroff outline the plans of a Schubert Memorial to help talented young U. S. musicians, heard Young Pianist Jerome Rappaport in evidence, heard the Musical Art Quartet. For refreshment then, there were vast quantities of paté de fois gras, chicken à la king, ice cream, cakes, cigarets, coffee. Some imagined later they had been served Scotch highballs, champagne cocktails, mixed by Brother Felix Kahn.

¶ In 59,000 churches, congregations listened to special Schubert music.

¶ In some 5,700 museums and libraries were exhibited facsimiles of Schubert manuscripts, of his diary, of first Schubert programs in the U. S.

¶ From some 300 radio stations were broadcast Schubert addresses, Schubert’s music.

¶ In schools all over the U. S. teachers read a printed Schubert address by Professor Daniel Gregory Mason of Columbia University. Students themselves made the music. Some sang Schubert songs. Some with their own orchestras played a movement from the Unfinished Symphony. Some listened to Schubert records distributed gratuitously by the Columbia Phonograph Co.

¶ From Albany Governor Alfred E. Smith had a letter directed to Chairman Kahn. in it called the Centennial celebration a cause for rejoicing and Schubert himself “the most beloved, the most lyrical and the most inspired of all the great composers. . . . Simple, modest, thoughtful and straightforward. He joined to a divinely inspired gift for melody a character rare among men. . . . With every wish for the success of Schubert week. . . .”

¶ In Washington, President Coolidge received Austrian Minister Edgar L. G. Prochnik and Director Frederick N. Sard of the Centennial Celebration, was presented with eight albums of records, all music of Schubert, all recorded by the Columbia Phonograph Co.

¶ In Manhattan, the Philharmonic-Symphony Society gave the U. S. premiere of Kurt Atterberg’s $10,000 prize symphony,* chosen by an international jury as the best of “the original symphonic works presented as an apotheosis of the lyrical genius of Schubert, and dedicated to his memory.” High expectations had preceded the performance of a $10,000-symphony. Elaborate press notices had spread the name of Swedish Composer Atterberg who is civil engineer as well. But the hearing itself aroused scant enthusiasm. Critics found it noisy, dull, in all ways unworthy of its supposed inspiration who in all his life never earned so much as $3,000.

¶ In Manhattan, the Beethoven Association gave Schubert. To Contralto Schumann-Heink, now 67, went undisputed honors—for Der Wanderer, Wokin, Die Allmacht, Der Erlkönig sung so skillfully, made so compelling that the audience rose to its feet, cheered her.

¶ In Cleveland, Nikolai Sokoloff and his Cleveland Orchestra gave the U. S. premiere of the E major Symphony. Schubert had left it in sketch form and after his death it went to Mendelssohn, presumably to orchestrate. But Mendelssohn, too, died young and it went to Sir George Grove who left it to the Royal College of Music in London. John Francis Barnett, a minor Britisher, made the only orchestration in the ’80s, but it was never published. From manuscript, 107 years after Schubert wrote it, Conductor Sokoloff played it and thereby surpassed the rest of the celebrating world in enterprise.

¶ In Vienna, Dr. Robert Lach, a professor of Musical History, evidently became tired of it all, offended many by publicly pronouncing Schubert “a self-satisfied, humdrum individual; a harmless little schoolmaster, conscious of his own deficient ethics and moral qualities and of the inferior value of his soul.”

¶ In Manhattan it was learned that 100,000 Columbia records had been sold during the Centennial. Director Frederick N. Sard (of the Centennial and of the Columbia Company) denied all commercial interest.

* Prize given by the Columbia Phonograph Co.