Extracts from a talk about Schubert for the Portsmouth Festival in 2012
.... Already by the age of 23 Schubert had written enough to make him famous today- the fifth and sixth symphonies, the Trout Quintet, many of the famous songs etc.. There were many performances of his music in Vienna and the surrounding areas, admittedly mainly the songs, and Schubert was a published composer as well as becoming a member of the prestigious Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna (the precursor of the Musikverein) where he met other performers and patrons who might be able to help his career.
However a self destructive aspect of Schubert’ s nature was rearing its head. It has been suggested by the scholar, Elizabeth Norman Mackay, that Schubert showed classic signs of cyclothymia, or in other words, he was bi-polar, inclined to swings from moods of ecstatic elation to periods of depression. Perhaps this may explain why his music covers such a vividly expressive range - from the sunny disposition of the Trout Quintet to the bleak dark colours of Winterreise.
Suddenly in 1823 Schubert writes in a letter “the state of my health does not allow me to venture out of doors”. It would appear that at this point he suffered the first symptoms of his fatal illness, syphilis. In those days the condition was incurable and if you didn’ t die of the disease you often died of the treatment with mercury which was unpleasant and debilitating. Schubert would have suffered horrible rashes and bone pains as well as pustules on his head which meant that he had to have it shaved and wear a wig. Added to this, lesions in his mouth meant he couldn‘ t sing. Even when the worst symptoms were over, he still complained of the intense headaches which were another symptom of syphilis as well as the feeling of having been poisoned which came upon him because of the mercury treatment.
A note book he wrote in 1824 shows that his thoughts were bleak and that he felt alone in his suffering: “people imagine that they can reach each other, but in reality they only pass one another by. Oh misery for him who realises this!”.
However at the same time Schubert writes of being excited that he has written two quartets and an octet and he is preparing the way for writing a symphony; so it would seem that on some level he recognised that depression was something he had to put up with. It was a natural part of his creativity. In fact in his note book of 1824 he writes that depression “is the fate of most intelligent people in this miserable world”. Also “pain sharpens the understanding and strengthens the character”. “All that I have created is born of my own understanding of music and my own sorrow“.
Schubert’s illness and confinement gave a new urgency and concentration to his writing so that his last three years produced un unbelievable richness of material: the great C major symphony and the G major quartet, the B flat and E flat piano trios as well as the Impromptus and Moments Musicals for piano and Winterreise as well as String Quintet with two cellos, the three last piano sonatas, the Fantasy in f minor for piano duet and Schwanengesang. These last years are truly a swan song, a flowering of music of the highest quality. One wonders how Schubert had time for anything else other than music and in fact he didn't. His friend Schwind, a young intellectual and artist, visited him during the day when he was in mid flow writing the Octet and Schubert, such was the depth of his concentration on what he was doing, hardly registered his visitor and barely said hello whilst carrying on writing........
And looking back over Schubert’ s life, despite the suffering he had to undergo, it seems that his love affair with music was so intense that he spent many ecstatically happy hours in its company. In doing so he provided us with many musical treasures which help take us out of ourselves into “regions never before explored”.
No piece encapsulates this transcendental power of music better than Schubert’ s setting of words by Schober “An Die Musik”:
“You lovely art, in how many gloomy hours when life’ s fierce cycle entangled me, have you kindled my heart to a warmer love, have you carried me away to a better world.”
©Emma Johnson
