Of Mushrooms and Lilac Blossom

History

Introduction

One of the Schubert melodies which became a big hit in Das Dreimäderlhaus, was the so-called Trauerwalzer (Mourning waltz, D365/2) one of the waltzes from the 36 Original Dances, Op. 9. When Schubert heard this name, attached by the publisher, he apparently asked "what ass would compose a mourning waltz" ^[1].

The Trauerwalzer or, as it has also been known, Sehnsuchtwalzer, was well known in Vienna even before its publication in 1821, and despite that publication, was attributed to other composers during Schubert's lifetime, including Beethoven ! Maurice Brown, in an essay "The Story of the Trauerwalzer"^[2] refers to Das Dreimäderlhaus as being "based on fictitious events in Schubert's life and decked out with melodies butchered from the whole body of his work" …he continues… "The popularity of this pastiche has done Schubert far more harm than good". Similarly, Otto Erich Deutsch (also whilst discussing the Trauerwalzer^[3]), refers to Lilac Time as "Notorious". However, perhaps accepting that his audience might know Lilac Time better than even this most familiar of Schubert dances, he goes on to quote the words "I ask the Spring, blossom-laden" that the Trauerwalzer is set to.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau^[4] criticises our operettas with "We no longer need to accept Moments-Musicaux-with-words-attached or a Schubert steeped in Kitsch", but cannot bring himself to mention them by name ! This tenor of criticism has continued up to the present day. Brian Newbould^[5] says that Das Dreimäderlhaus "was put together with shamefully scant regard for truth or taste". And in the newly published BBC Magazine Schubert special^[6], Rob Cowan refers to Schubert's work being "sentimentalised in an irresponsible manner" in these operettas, though that doesn't prevent them from using a Das Dreimäderlhaus postcard as an illustration ! Finding less critical comment is difficult, although Peter Gammond in his biography of Schubert^[7] is willing to credit Das Dreimäderlhaus with making "discerning use of some of his minor yet, in its way, important music - naturally of a melodic nature - finding all kinds of half-hidden gems in songs, small piano pieces and stage music…".

Franz von Suppé's Franz Schubert

Most of these critical comments discuss our operettas as if they were the only such works. This is far from the truth - indeed they were not the first nor the last - just the most notorious. The first such operetta was produced at the Carl Theater in Vienna as far back as 1864. To put this date in context, it was before the publication of the first full sized biography of Schubert - Heinrich Kreißle von Hellborn's work being published in the following year. At the premiere, Franz Schubert was played by Karl Treumann, with this part being played by Fritz Schrödter in the 1886 revival at the Hofoper. It was also performed in Budapest in 1867, and had further Viennese revivals in 1897 (inevitably^[8]) and 1922. Simply called Franz Schubert, the libretto of the 1 Act Liederspiel was by Hans Max^[9] and the composer was Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppé Demelli better known to us as Franz von Suppé. von Suppé was born in 1820 in Dalmatia and became conductor at the Theater an der Wien and Leopoldstadt Theater in Vienna and produced over a hundred operettas and similar works before his death in 1895. Although we now think of von Suppé as a minor composer of overtures and light operettas (most of which have now vanished from the repertory), his standing in Vienna at his death may be judged by the fact that in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna, he is buried in the inner circle of the musicians' grove with the Mozart memorial and the graves of Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms and Strauss.

The operetta told a fictitious story of how Schubert wrote Die schöne Müllerin. This was the work that established another famous, but fictitious, Schubert connection - that between Franz Schubert and the Höldrichsmühle near Mödling, which was supposed to have given him his inspiration. There was a miller maid, of course, but at least Max did not have Schubert himself falling in love with her - if only because in this work Schubert was enamoured with Countess Karoline Esterházy !

In his operetta von Suppé also adapted Schubert melodies, in a relatively crude and unsophisticated manner. It was very much a melange of 'greatest hits', including 5 of his Lieder. It has, of course, completely vanished from the repertory, and there is no current recording available. However, recordings of the overture can be found. Given his 'butchered' comment about Das Dreimäderlhaus one wonders what Maurice Brown would have said about it !

Of special interest here is the much earlier use of the melody (D783/7, one of the 18 German Dances and Ecossaises, Op 33) which is also a key theme in Das Dreimäderlhaus as the Lied aus Wien, and in Lilac Time as the famous Golden Song. Gammond^[10] refers to this setting as "a stroke of genius, effectively done and in excellent taste".

Franz Schubert composing outside the Höldrichsmühle near Mödling
Drawing by Gustav Feith, from a postcard

Schwammerl

Das Dreimäderlhaus was based on a Schubert-Roman entitled Schwammerl. 'Schwammerl', of course, was one of Schubert's nicknames. This was, rather unfortunately in my view, translated by Eric Blom as "Tubby" throughout Deutsch's Documentary Biography, although a note in his Memoirs explains the connection to Schwammerln, the Viennese word for mushrooms.

Schwammerl was written by Rudolf Hans Bartsch, who was born in Graz in 1873, and died at St. Peter near Graz in 1952. He was the son of an army officer, and was a lieutenant-colonel working at the war archives in Vienna until retiring to Graz in 1911. His first novel, Als Österreich zerfiel was published anonymously in 1905, but was successful enough for him to use his own name for his later works. His last work was published in 1949, although by this time his novels had lost their earlier popularity, perhaps due to their over sentimentality. In 1909 he won the Viennese Bauernfeld prize, named after the playwright Eduard von Bauernfeld, who was, of course, a close friend of Schubert. Perhaps it was this which prompted him to write a novella about Schubert, for he had finished Schwammerl: Ein Schubert-Roman by the end of 1910, and in 1911 it appeared in instalments in the Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung, before being published in book form by Staackmann in Leipzig in 1912. It was a huge hit, with over 100,000 copies produced in the first year.

The story weaves fact and fiction together, but is largely about Schubert's love for Hannerl, one of three daughters (the elder ones being Hedderl and Heiderl) of the court glass maker, Christian Tschöll. Many commentators assume that the three girls were based on the Fröhlich sisters (or at least the 3 unmarried ones) but there is only circumstantial evidence to support this, and, of course, there is no evidence that Schubert was especially attracted to any of them. The book included pictures by the Viennese art nouveau illustrator, Alfred Keller, one of which shows the three girls in front of a building on the Mölkerbastei in Vienna (it is still standing, and is now Schreyvogelgasse 10^[13]). This building, constructed in 1803 by Christian Pölzl in decorative baroque style, has been known as "Das Dreimäderlhaus" ever since.

Rudolf Hans Bartsch (1873-1952)
From a signed postcard

Heinz Reichert (1877-1940)

Das Dreimäderlhaus

At first Bartsch did not want his book to be turned into a stage work, and only relented after long negotiations. The libretto was written by Alfred Maria Willner and Heinz Reichert, and the first of a series of name changes were made when the middle daughter had the spelling of her name changed (from Heiderl to Haiderl). The music was written by Heinrich Berté.

Heinrich Berté was born in 1857 in Galgócz in Hungary, which today is Hlohovec in the Slovak republic, and died in 1924 in Perchtoldsdorf near Vienna. After their father died he and his elder brother Emil moved to Vienna, where they studied piano and composition at the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde with, amongst others, Josef Hellmesberger, Robert Fuchs and Anton Bruckner.

Berté was a minor composer of ballets and operettas, his second ballet, Die goldene Märchenwelt ('the golden fairy-tale-world') receiving a favourable reception at the Vienna Opera in 1893, with Eduard Hanslick referring to it as 'skilfully made'. His operettas, however, seem to have been undistinguished. His brother Emil, who was later to write his own Schubert Singspiel^[14], became a successful music publisher, and it was he that arranged for Heinrich to set Das Dreimäderlhaus.

We study the plot on another page, but a key scene is when Schober sings Ungeduld (Ich schnitt' es gern in alle Rinden ein - I'd like to carve it on every single tree) from Die schöne Müllerin, D795/7 to Hannerl on Schubert's behalf. Initially, Berté set just that one Schubert melody, and wrote the rest of the music himself, in what Ernst Hilmar has described as a rather Schoolmasterly manner^[15]. In this form the operetta was rejected by the Carltheater, and William Karczag of the Raimundtheater demanded that all the music should be adaptations of Schubert: Berté, apparently, agreed to do this only reluctantly, after persuasion by his brother. Berté fashioned the adaptations from a wide range of Schubert's compositions (of which more on another page) and his arrangement was then largely orchestrated by Oskar Stalla.

Das Dreimäderlhaus opened in Vienna at the Raimundtheater on the 15th of January 1916. In the midst of war, it was just what the audience wanted - a picturesque representation of the 'good-old-days' (in this case Biedermeier Vienna), with a comfy and sentimental story and fine and familiar music. The original stars were Fritz Schrödter as Schubert (who was already in his sixties and who, you will recall, had played Schubert 30 years earlier in the 1886 revival of von Suppé's operetta) and Anny Rainer as Hannerl. It was an enormous hit. With 6 different Schubert's and some guest appearances at the Theater an der Wien it ran until the 7th of February 1918, clocking up well over 600 performances, before it was replaced by a sequel, Hannerl (of which more later). It remained in the repertory and passed its 1,100th performance at the Raimundtheater in 1927. The success was repeated in Berlin, where the show passed its 1000th performance in November 1918.

Das Dreimäderlhaus Vocal Score
Published by Doblinger's in Vienna, 1916
The picture of Schubert and the three girls is by the famous Schubertian artist Otto Nowak. The trousers hanging from the balcony with their pockets turned out are a sign from Schubert to the boy from the local restaurant that he has no money !

A large Poster (approx 4' x 2'9") for Chanson d'amour. The poster is the work of Georges Dola (a pseudonym of Edmond Vernier, 1872-1950) a leading operetta poster designer. It is dated 1936.

Hannerl

Hannerl, the sequel to Das Dreimäderlhaus also had a libretto from Willner and Reichert, and used Schubert melodies. This time the arranger was Carl Lafite (probably the same Carl Lafite who wrote the 1928 book Das Schubertlied und seine Sänger). Schubert does not appear, but a few characters from Das Dreimäderlhaus do, including Schober and Christian Tschöll, played at the premiere by Franz Glawatsch, who had also premiered the part in Das Dreimäderlhaus. The action was set in 1849: Schober's wife was called Johanna, and Hannerl was his daughter, again played by Anny Rainer. They also has a son named Franz. Amongst the smaller parts were a Kupelwieser and a Bruneder, but these appear to have had no connection to the characters in Das Dreimäderlhaus. The first and third acts were at Schober's house, the second act at a Vienna Ballroom. It's first production was in February 1918 at the Raimundtheater, but it was not a lasting success.

Chanson d'amour

The French adaptation of Das Dreimäderlhaus was by Hugues Delorme and Léon Abric. It was named Chanson d'amour (song of love), and subtitled La maison des trois jeunes filles (the house of the three girls). It had its debut at the Marigny Theatre in Paris on May 7th 1921. This was close to a straight translation of Das Dreimäderlhaus into French, and Berté's arrangement of the music was not adapted further - it was announced as being music by Schubert with 'adaption musicale de Henri (not Heinrich) Berté'. It, too, long remained in the repertory with frequent revivals.

Chanson d'amourVocal Score

Programme from the opening run of Blossom Time at the Ambassador Theatre (hey, Americans still knew how to spell 'Theatre' back then) in New York

Blossom Time

The American rights to Das Dreimäderlhaus were bought by the Shubert brothers. That's Shubert without a 'c'. They were no relation to Franz Schubert. Indeed, they were not really Shubert's at all: they had been born as the Szemanski Brothers in Russia in the 1870s and had emigrated to the United States in 1882. They seem to have acquired the new name as a misspelling, misreading and then corruption of the town they came from: Shervient in Lithuania. The Shuberts went on to dominate the legitimate theatre^[16] in America, both as managers and producers, gathering a vast fortune in the process and were renowned for their lawsuits and sharp business practices.

Jake Shubert didn't think the plot or the music of Das Dreimäderlhaus were quite right for American audiences (which makes you wonder what he thought he had bought). They were turned over to Dorothy Donnelly (the libretto) and Sigmund Romberg (the music) who, three years later, were to work together on another famous operetta: the third Shubert production of a play called Old Heidelberg - this time named The Student Prince. Their adaptation of Das Dreimäderlhaus was called Blossom Time.

Jake Shubert loved violins and sentimentality. There is a story about him when the cast was rehearsing the Song of Love the big hit from Blossom Time:

"Hold it!" he bellowed, "hold it!" And he charged down the aisle toward the pit. He glared at Romberg, who was conducting the orchestra. "That beautiful song. That place where they sing 'Song of Ecstasy.' You wrote it, didn't you ?

Romberg replied that he had had a small assist from Franz Schubert, but yes, for the purpose of the show, he had written it.

"Don't lecture me," Jake roared. "That God-damned song is beautiful and I want to hear every God-damned word. Understand ?" Romberg, dumfounded, nodded. Jake went on. "So, why is the God-damned orchestra playing so loud I can't hear the words?"

"But, Mr. Shubert," protested Romberg, "only the fiddles are playing. That's all. Just the fiddles."

Jake glared at him suspiciously. Finally, he shrugged triumphantly. "Only the fiddles, hey? Well, tell the ******* fiddles to play on just one string! I want to hear the words!"^[17]

Romberg was born in 1887 in Nagykanizsa (now Szeged) in Hungary, and died in 1951 in New York. Although he was very musical, his parents wanted him to have a 'practical' career, and he completed an Engineering degree in Vienna. After a brief spell in the military he emigrated to American at age 22.

After a spell as house musician in restaurants, he was employed by the Shubert brothers as house composer, and scored his first musical, The Whirl of the World in 1914. He continued to write musical comedies and reviews, but his greatest fame came from writing operettas, which in addition to Blossom Time, included The Student Prince and The Desert Song. He wrote over 2000 songs and contributed to nearly 80 film and stage productions. The 1954 MGM film Deep in My Heart starring Jose Ferrer was based on the life of Romberg and featured many of his most famous songs.

The show opened at the Ambassador Theater on Broadway on 29th September 1921, with Bertram Peacock as Schubert and Olga Cook as Mitzi Kranz (the new name for Hannerl Tschöll). It ran for 592 performances before starting on a very, very long series of tours and revivals. An operetta such as this was a big money spinner for the Shuberts. It didn't need star names, because the show was the star. They could hire has-been's and never-will-be's to form a company. They could replace the regular cast on Broadway for a night (the audience didn't notice), and then send the company out on tour 'direct from Broadway'. Blossom Time toured incessantly until the second world war, often in such shabby mountings that "a road company of Blossom Time" became a term of derision^[18].

Lilac Time

In England, Das Dreimäderlhaus was adapted by Adrian Ross (the libretto) and George Clutsam (the music), and named Lilac Time. George Clutsam, an Australian, was born in Sydney in 1866, and died in 1951. After much travelling he settled in London, where he worked as an accompanist and a music critic. In his 40s, he produced a number of works, both symphonic and for the stage, which established his name as a serious composer. In 1912, he even wrote a small biography of Schubert^[19], part of the 'Mayfair' series. Then, in the rather pompous words of H. C. Colles^[20], he "turned to a field of activity which has been more profitable from the material point of view" - that of producing Musical Comedies.

Clutsam's adaption stayed much closer to Berté's than did Romberg's, and the credits read 'Music from Franz Schubert arranged by Heinrich Berté and G. H. Clutsam'. The show, produced by Chappell & Co., premiered on 22nd December 1922 at the Lyric Theatre in London. Schubert was played by Courtice Pounds (who had been one of the principals of the D'Oyly Carte, and starred in the premiere of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Gondoliers), and his love (now named Lili Veit), was played by Clara Butterworth. Schober was played by Percy Heming from the struggling British National Opera Company. Its first run was for 626 performances and, as with Blossom Time, there were frequent revivals and tours, until it quietly faded away in the 1950s.

The history of Lilac Time is not quite complete. As the most famous lyric tenor of the age, Richard Tauber was a natural candidate to play Schubert. He starred in a number of productions of Das Dreimäderlhaus on the continent, especially after the reaction to his half-Jewish blood had caused him to leave Germany. Tours of Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium and Holland with Das Dreimäderlhaus were so successful, that it was presented in 1933 at the Aldwych Theatre: as Lilac Time ! It was described as a new version by Richard Tauber and Sylvio Mossée, and was almost certainly simply a new translation of Willner and Reichert's libretto, performed to Berté's arrangements. The names of the characters were all from Das Dreimäderlhaus, but there was one change of scene: the third act was in a pastrycook's shop !

Finally, to further confuse matters, Tauber and Clutsam worked together on a new stage work, this time called Blossom Time, but based upon the film. Clutsam included yet more new material in this. It started out by touring the provinces, and then started a successful run at the Lyric Theatre in London on 17th March 1942.

Vocal Score of Lilac Time
The score shows a picture from the first production: note how closely the scene matches the Nowak picture used by the Das Dreimäderlhaus and Chanson d'amour vocal scores.

Programme for the 1933 Lilac Time (probably Das Dreimäderlhaus) at the Lyric Theatre. Richard Tauber is seen in the role of Schubert.

Versions in other languages

Wartime circumstances probably prevented the immediate spread of Das Dreimäderlhaus to the rest of the world, but it was soon a success in Budapest, opening on the 23rd April 1916 with a run of 151 performances, and becoming firmly established in the repertory. Here the work was adapted by Zsolt Harsányi, and named Harom a kislány, with "Hannerl" becoming "Medi". I have a recording of a selection from this Hungarian adaptation, though I have not found any sheet music. On the strength of the recording, this seems to be a fairly straight version of Berté's music, though there is at least one additional interpolated 'greatest hit' (Heidenröselein). I also have a recording of a selection from the Italian version La casa delle tre ragazze, but no sheet music. The Italian version quotes just Schubert and Berté for the music, and also seems to be a fairly straight version of Berté's music, though there is at least one additional interpolated piece. The Spanish version was called La casa de las tres muchachas: I have not found a recording, or sheet music of this. Berté's adaptation was adapted further by Pablo Sorozábal, and the libretto was rewritten by Jose Tellaeche and Manolo Góngora in verse ! Schubert was sung at the first performance in Madrid in 1935 by the Tenor Pedro Terol. Sorozábal, made a total overhaul of the book and the score for the 1978 celebrations of the 150^th anniversary of Schubert's death.

We have so far concentrated on Das Dreimäderlhaus and its better known adaptations. But there were many further versions, as it was a world-wide hit. According to Gruhn^[21], up to the start of the 1960s, when performances of these works had practically ceased, Das Dreimäderlhaus had been translated or adapted into 22 languages, with versions presented in 60 countries, and of the order of 85,000 performances. When we consider the efforts that Schubert made and the significant proportion of his composing life that he spent in an unsuccessful attempt to establish himself as a writer of operas, it is ironic in the extreme that a fictitious story of his life using his music, should be ranked amongst the most successful musical stage works of all time.

With the world-wide success of Das Dreimäderlhaus and its derivatives, it was perhaps inevitable that a flood of similar works would be produced for other composers. Composers such as Offenbach (with The Love Song), Chopin (with Chopin in Hungary which became The Charmer and then White Lilacs on Broadway and also with a flop - Damask Rose by George Clutsam), Mendelssohn, Grieg (with the Song of Norway), Tschaikovsky, the Strauss family (with Waltzes from Vienna) and Schumann all found their love-lives transferred to the stage, in some cases with considerable success. None, however, approached the success of Das Dreimäderlhaus and its derivatives.

Notes

[1]	Quoted by Josef von Spaun in his Some observations on the Life of Schubert by Herr Ritter von Kreissle-Hellborn (1864), reprinted in Otto Erich Deutsch: Schubert. Memoirs by his friends, Dent, London 1958, p359.
[2]	In Maurice JE Brown: Essays on Schubert, Macmillan and Co., London, 1966. p305
[3]	Otto Erich Deutsch: Schubert. A Documentary Biography Dent, London 1946. p292
[4]	Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: Schubert Songs: A Biographical Study, Knopf, New York, 1978. p299. Translated from the German by Kenneth Whitton.
[5]	Brian Newbould: Schubert: The Music and the Man, Gollancz, London, 1997, p406
[6]	BBC Music Magazine Schubert Special Issue, BBC Worldwide, London, 1999. ISSN 0966-7180. p27.
[7]	Peter Gammond: Schubert, Methuen, London, 1982. pp166-169.
[8]	The centenary of Schubert's birth.
[9]	Pseudonym of Johann N. Frieherr von Paümann.
[10]	Ibid, p168.
[11]	ibid, p297.
[12]	ibid, p189.
[13]	The building was being used as a shoe shop on my last visit in the Summer of 2000.
[14]	Emil Berté: Der Musikus von Lichtental. A 3 act Singspiel, Vienna, 1928.
[15]	"in seine eigene eher schulmeisterliche Musik". Ernst Hilmar: "Berté, Heinrich" in Hilmar and Jestremski (eds): Schubert Lexicon, Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz, 1997. p39.
[16]	Many places in America still have their 'Shubert Theater'.
[17]	Quoted in: Jerry Stagg: The Brothers Shubert, Random House, New York, 1968. p187ff.
[18]	The Oxford Companion to American Theatre, 2nd edition, p88.
[19]	Clutsam George: Schubert, Murdoch, Murdoch & Co, London, n.d. (1912).
[20]	H.C. Colles: "Clutsam, George" in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 3rd Edition, Macmillan and Co, London, 1928.
[21]	B. Gruhn: Die leichte Muse: Kulturgeschichte der Operette, Munich, 1961.