An Introvert as Musician II
Austrian composer Franz Schubert’s prodigious but brief career shows key indicators of his introverted personality.
Almost 200 years after his death, Viennese composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) remains revered by classical music aficionados for his now exuberant, now introspective chamber music and Lieder – exquisite art songs for voice and piano. Both the development of his career and the nature of his musical works bear the hallmarks of his introverted preference for intimacy.
Because of his remarkable musical talent, Schubert was selected to join the Austrian Emperor’s stable of musicians at the age of 11. He had previously learned piano, and now he played violin and viola and sang in the choir in a setting rather like a conservatory. Someone who knew him in those years recalled that “Even on the walks which the pupils took together, [Franz] mostly walked apart, pacing along pensively with eyes down and with his hands behind his back, playing with his fingers (as though on keys), completely lost in his own thoughts.”
Before the age of 20, Schubert had already composed five complete symphonies (with a sixth in progress), numerous works for small ensembles and more than 500 Lieder. But he came of age in cosmopolitan Vienna not only among musicians but also amidst a small circle of accomplished poets. As with John Maynard Keynes with Cambridge’s Apostles, members of the Bildung Circle would discuss aesthetics and philosophy, prepare papers to read to one another and set new and classic poetry to music. This intellectual background assured that Schubert selected timeless poems of depth and excellence to turn into Lieder.
Those intimate get-togethers and his own introverted tendencies undoubtedly influenced Schubert’s preferred setting for performing his compositions: private at-home gatherings of friends and acquaintances that became known as Schubertiads. In a relaxed atmosphere, poems would be read, solo piano pieces played and songs debuted and celebrated with a drink in hand. At most, a hundred people might be in attendance. A future virtuoso present at one of these occasions in 1827 described the drawing-room concert this way years later:
“Song after song ensued – the performers inexhaustibly generous, the audience inexhaustibly receptive. Schubert had but little technique, Vogl had not much of a voice, but they both had such life and feeling, and were so completely absorbed in their performances, that the wonderful compositions could not have been interpreted with greater clarity and, at the same time, with greater vision. You did not notice the piano playing nor the singing, it was as though the music needed no material sound, as though the melodies, like visions, revealed themselves to spiritualized ears.”
Although Schubert composed several operas and hoped to see them staged, he had no inclination to perform himself in a concert hall. Indeed, he disdained praise and applause as unworthy goals or measures of success. “I never force myself on the public,” he once said. “They must take me as I am.” In his diary, he wryly commented that whether a performer receives applause “will depend on a public subject to a thousand moods.”
As for the composer’s temperament, like many introverts he wrote up a storm in solitude but also enjoyed nights out on the town with close friends. He drank his share, probably consumed opium and would not have won awards for social graces, disdaining boring people and conventions of politeness to an extent that some observers found him “arrogant.” When not at the piano during social gatherings he often sat in a corner, friends said.
Recent biographers aren’t certain of Schubert’s sexual orientation, but he indisputably contracted syphilis in his mid-twenties and most likely died of the disease, directly or indirectly, at just 31 years old.
All in all, in Schubert we can discern a cluster of introvert traits: a penchant for solitary creativity; no interest in social climbing or self-promotion; gravitation toward small gatherings with friends; works designed for intimate enjoyment rather than grandeur; and a reputation among contemporaries of being prickly or aloof. Though he didn’t enjoy much fame during his lifetime, eminent musicians like Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms later championed his work to the extent that he continues to rank among the all-time greats.