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Updated: June 5, 2025
Such was really his intention, and he said so when he had a portrait of Mörike put on the title-page of the songs. Wolf even tried to identify himself with the poet's line of thought; and in this we often find him in rivalry with Schubert.
The old world is very remote from us now, but it is worth while making a small attempt to realize how it stood to Wagner. When he was born, in 1813, Bach had been dead only a little over sixty years; Mozart had been dead about twenty years, and Haydn about ten; Beethoven was in the full splendour of his tremendous powers; Weber and Schubert had still their finest work to do.
No one expresses the grace of Ländler and dainty waltzes and mournful reveries better than he; and perhaps no one is nearer the secret of Schubert's moving and voluptuous melancholy; and it is Schubert he recalls at times, both in his good qualities and certain of his faults. But he wants to be Beethoven or Wagner. And he is wrong; for he lacks their balance and gigantic force.
When Schubert paid another visit to the bedside of the master, it was almost the end of his life, though he could recognize all who stood about him. Overcome with emotion, Schubert left the room. A couple of weeks after this Schubert was one of the torch bearers who accompanied the great master to the last resting place. Little did the young man of thirty dream that he would soon follow after.
The day of Beethoven and Schubert was apparently passing, and only the lighter and more trivial styles of composition held sway. Her father, however, Friedrich Wieck, was a piano teacher of extensive reputation and most excellent qualities, and did his best to raise the standard of the place. From him, and from her mother as well, the young Clara inherited her innate musical taste.
With laughter and light words the party broke up. At a touch from the count the musician lingered. The others had left the room. The count walked to the open window and stood for a moment staring into the darkness. Then he wheeled about. "What was it you played?" he said swiftly. "A Hungarian air," replied Schubert briefly. The count looked incredulous. "It was your own," he said.
We speak with scornful contempt of the Viennese of a former generation, who allowed a rare genius like Schubert to starve; but posterity will look back with quite as great astonishment on the sluggishness of a generation which did not eagerly accept the offer of the greatest dramatic composer of all times, to instruct gratuitously a number of pupils in his own style and those of Gluck, Mozart, and Weber.
It cannot be denied that the pupils turned out by the average vocal teachers are quite unable to sing a Franz or even a Schubert song correctly and with proper emotional expression. Now, it is evident, as Ehlert says, that "that art of singing which abides with the bel canto and is unable to sing Bach, Beethoven, and Schumann, has not attained to the height of their period.
Especially will this be found true in Beethoven's case, but it applies also to Schubert and other composers. If George Frederick Handel never married, it was certainly not from lack of an opportunity to do so. In 1703, while still in his teens, he journeyed with his friend Mattheson, who was in search of a post as organist, from Hamburg to Lübeck.
Beside this there is a marble tablet fastened above the doorway, which says that Franz Schubert was born in this house. At the right of his name is placed a lyre crowned with a star, and at the left a laurel wreath within which is placed the date, January 31, 1797.
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