CHAP. VI - Schubert and his Music

Summary

Whether the theory of the influences of Austrian life and society upon the well-being and the well-doing of the musician and his art, indicated in the foregoing pages, be overstrained, or the reverse, it receives further illustration in the story of the last of the classical composers of Vienna, who lived, died, and was buried, comparatively unknown, in the midst of a world unworthy of him.–For a genius that–while Beethoven was existing, and where Rossini was reigning–could strike out a path for itself so original as Schubert's, amounts to a phenomenon rare in the annals of Music, meriting kind entertainment in a city the music of which has been so long its boast. How far fortune followed desert, may be gathered from a brief memoir of Schubert by Herr Bauernfeld, on the leading facts contained in which we may dwell for a moment.

Francis Schubert was born in the Lichtenthal suburb of Vienna, on the last day of January, 1797. His father was in the humble circumstances of a schoolmaster; but the German instructor of boys must command some musical acquirement, and Father Schubert was able to teach Francis the rudiments of music and the violin, while an elder brother instructed the child on the pianoforte.