Three Curious Facts about Franz Schubert and his ‘Winterreise’
Inken Stabell, “Die Krähe,” etching inspired by Franz Schubert’s Winterreise. Image curtesy of Inken Stabell. Click here to see all of Inken’s Winterreise etchings .
Austrian Composer Franz Schubert was born on 31 January 1797 in the deepest winter, making it particularly appropriate that one of his most famous compositions is set in winter. But beware – Schubert’s Winterreise from 1827 is no cheerful homage to Austrian winter joys. The song cycle to piano accompaniment takes the performers and listeners on a dark, emotional journey as we accompany a lonely, heartbroken wanderer through a desolate winter landscape. If you are looking for a composition to mirror your own depressing thoughts on a cold, dark winter day, you have found your match! But thankfully, Schubert’s short life was not all tragedy, even though it had its fair share of it.
Overcoming Shyness
Franz Schubert was born near Vienna. His father was a schoolmaster who had established a successful school, his mother was in domestic service before she got married. Schubert, his three surviving elder brothers and his younger sister grew up in a musical household, regularly performing string quartets together. Schubert played the viola in these house concerts and went on to win a place at the imperial court chapel choir and at the Stadtkonvikt boarding school, where his tutors included the imperial court organist and the famous composer Antonio Salieri.
Salieri was a crucial figure in the development of opera – and the victim of a vicious, false rumour claiming that he had poisoned his younger rival Mozart. Salieri was deeply affected by this false rumour and its damage to his reputation, but after leaving the world of opera in the early nineteenth century, he became an important teacher of composition to future giants including Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt – and Franz Schubert. Young Schubert was initially too shy to show his first compositions to Salieri. But his friends were relentless in their support and enthusiasm, pushing Schubert to overcome his shyness and to approach Salieri, who would teach him composition for several years.
The Rage of Vienna: Schubert Parties, Schubertiaden
In the time that passed between his sixteenth and eighteenth birthday, Schubert composed five string quartets, three full masses, three symphonies and his first opera. But he was particularly drawn to composing Lieder, German art songs, a genre that he would make popular. The German Lied of the Romantic period gave equal importance to the poetry of the lyrics and to the music. Instead of the brilliant virtuosity of the arias at the large opera houses, the German Lied was composed for the intimate setting of the drawing room, allowing the performers and their small audience to go on an emotional journey, often exploring darker feelings connected to lost love, death and fear.
In 1815 alone, while working as a schoolmaster at his father’s school, eighteen-year-old Schubert composed more than 140 songs, bringing the total to over 600 songs by the end of his short life. In the early 1820s, his songs and his dance music became so popular that wealthy Viennese families started to host Schubertiaden in their homes, parties devoted to his music. But Schubert was frustrated about his inability to find success at the opera house and in the concert hall.
Winterreise
Schubert’s health was also deteriorating. In 1823, he contracted syphilis (a sexually transmitted infection), leading to physical problems and depression: syphilis usually ended with dementia, paralysis and death. In 1827, during the last year of his life, Schubert composed one of his most famous song cycles, the dark and brooding Winterreise (“Winter Journey”), based on Wilhelm Müller’s cycle of poems Winterreise. Müller’s Winterreise explores the themes of loneliness, loss and death through the eyes of a heartbroken young man who goes out into the cold winter night, musing about life’s existential tragedies as he wanders through the bleak landscape. His friends were at first shocked by the gloomy character of the songs, even though Schubert had pre-warned some of them that they were spine-chilling.
Schubert’s only public concert fully devoted to his music took place in 1828, the year of his death. The concert was a great success, apparently enabling Schubert to finally buy himself a piano. In October 1828, already a physical wreck, Schubert drank some contaminated water, contracting typhoid fever. He passed away on 19 November 1828 at the age of thirty-one. Today, his symphonies, string quartets and piano works are part of the classical music canon, occupying the place in the concert hall that eluded them during Schubert’s short life.
Click here for the lyrics in German and English.