THE GREAT COMPOSERS

By JOSEPH BENNETT.

No. XVIII. - SCHUBERT ^[1]

Introduction

What follows is the full text of an old, and largely ignored biography, which you simply never see quoted in the standard bibliographies. There is a simple reason for this - it was not published as a book, but in a series of articles, one per issue, in the Musical Times of 1886, starting in January, and ending in September. Nevertheless, it is one of the very earliest biographies of Schubert written in the English language, and is of a significant size. If we ignore the translations of Kreissle von Hellborn's sketch and book by Coleridge and Wilberforce, the only earlier English language biographies that I am aware of are the very famous article by Grove in the first edition of his dictionary, which this biography draws heavily on, the book by Frost (a detailed review of which can be found by following the link) which was first published in 1881, and the first American biography, by Austin, which also draws very heavily on Kreissle.

There is, regretfully, relatively little original research or comment in this biography, but it is still a very nice period piece. Despite his heavy reliance on Grove and Hellborn, it is nice to see that Joseph Bennett was capable of independent thought, and that he is prepared to question Grove's assertion of the existence of a 'lost' Gastein/Gmunden symphony, a theory which, despite considerable initial opposition, became universally accepted until research (largely by John Reed) in the last couple of decades showed it to be false.

I scanned as much of this as I could, so most of the mistakes of names, etc., are in the original. The three footnotes are original. I was tempted to do lots of footnotes pointing out the errors, but restrained myself. There are many errors in it, from things he could not reasonably have been expected to know, to discredited 'old wives tales', to glaring errors undoubtedly on his part (Vogl's Christian names were Johann Michael, for example). Note also that the original has no pictures.

This is a loooong document. I suggest that you download it, and read it offline, but it's your phone bill. Here are some quick bookmarks to get you to the 'chapters' - the titles are mine.

Jan - Birth, Childhood and the Convict

Feb - 1813-16, Teaching and Independence

Mar - 1817-19, Zelész, Schober, Vogl and Mayrhofer

Apr - 1819-21, Holidays, Operas and Testimonials

May - 1821-22, Publications, more Operas, the Unfinished

Jun - 1823-24, Rosamunde, Die schone Mullerin and Illness

Jul - 1825-26, On tour, Gmunden Symphony, Scott songs

Aug - 1827-8, Final journey, and final works

Sep - 1828, Death

Notes