This soil, a stranger to ideals

Which poets were most set to music by Franz Schubert? That Johann Wolfgang Goethe occupies the first place in this ranking will surprise few Lied lovers; many of the most famous songs are set to his poems. That Friedrich Schiller, another great figure of German literature, occupies the third place is also understandable, although if we were asked to name well-known Schubert lieder with his poems, barely three or four would come to mind.

But what is truly striking is to find Johann Mayrhofer between the two, in second place, a poet whom few people today would know if not for these songs. Since Mayrhofer was a friend of Schubert, we usually dismiss the matter with a few lines, saying that Schubert wanted to please him. But forty-seven lieder to please someone is a lot, isn’t it? And since on November 19 we commemorated the 197th anniversary of the death of the apple of my eye, and at this time of year I like to write a special article, I thought I would devote a few more lines to him.

Johann Baptist Mayrhofer was born in 1787 in Steyr, Upper Austria. After finishing primary school he went to study in Linz (where the little boy stood out for his knowledge of Latin and Greek classics), and then entered as a novice in the nearby monastery of Sankt Florian, apparently at the wish of his parents, who wanted him to take religious orders. For the boy, life there was unbearable; he found the atmosphere oppressive and felt constantly watched, and everything suggests that it was then that he suffered his first depressions. He left after three years (some sources say he fled) to go to Vienna to study Law and Theology.

It was then that he befriended Joseph Spaun, a year younger and from Linz (I wonder if they had known each other before, or if when they met they had a conversation like “You’re from Linz? Well, I studied there!”). As you can imagine, it was Spaun who introduced Schubert and Mayrhofer, though not directly; first he introduced their respective works. To the poet, who had a good ear and loved music, he showed some of Schubert’s songs; at first he showed little interest, but soon admitted he liked them very much. To the composer he gave some of Mayrhofer’s poems to read, and from that came their first common lied, though at a distance: Am See.

The two met personally some time later; Spaun, Franz Schober, and Mayrhofer were for a long time the inner circle of Schubert’s circle of friends. Schober (or rather, his mother) invited Franz to live with their family for a period that lasted from autumn 1816 to autumn 1817, and this was the first time the young man left his bustling parental home. About a year later, Schubert went to live with Mayrhofer. The economic situations of the two friends were very different; Schober came from a wealthy family and lived comfortably off his income, while Mayrhofer had to work to survive. Not only that, which most of us do, but he had to endure such hardship that he accepted a job that went against everything he believed in: censor.

Let us situate ourselves: after the Napoleonic wars, the Emperor of Austria was Francis I, whose ideas were far removed from those of his uncle, the enlightened Joseph II. Francis I maintained that “he did not need geniuses, only good subjects,” and had delegated the government of the empire to the disastrous Klemens von Metternich. This government basically consisted of making life impossible for any citizen who dared to think for himself. Even tombstones had to pass censorship, just in case. I imagine he needed an army of censors to cover everything, an army of underpaid people, because Mayrhofer could only afford to live in lodgings in a widow’s house. And it was in that room that Schubert settled.

Mayrhofer was an extremely cultured, reserved person, a lover of freedom above all. His ideas clashed with the era he had to live in and the profession he had to exercise, and he maintained a strict separation between his work, which he carried out zealously, and his private life, where, among friends, he could be himself. He had a complex character and was difficult to deal with; often, overwhelmed by the contradictions of his life, he was harsh and sarcastic. He was sickly, or hypochondriac, or both, and spent long periods depressed; his double life took its toll and worsened his health problems. One of his refuges was nature; whenever he could, he left Vienna for Upper Austria and enjoyed nature on long walks. The other refuge was poetry, through which he expressed, as freely as he could, his longings and contradictions. Surely the only good thing about his job was that he knew exactly how to avoid censorship, even if that sometimes meant writing enigmatically. His work was never a public success, but it was sufficiently recognized, and finally, in 1824, he yielded to his friends’ pleas to publish it.

The time Schubert and Mayrhofer shared that room was beneficial for both, at least from a creative point of view. Schubert’s music inspired and gave peace to his friend; Mayrhofer’s poems inspired songs, but so did his wisdom and profound knowledge of literature. A couple of years later, in 1820, their cohabitation ended and their friendship cooled. It is not known what happened; probably it was Schubert’s decision to leave, since Mayrhofer soon dedicated a poem to him, An Franz. For his part, Schubert continued writing lieder with his poems until 1824, when he wrote the last one, Auflösung. The death of his friend affected Mayrhofer deeply; someone said that “the harmony of his life had been extinguished with Schubert’s death.” Two years later he tried to commit suicide by throwing himself into the river, but was rescued. In 1836, he finally succeeded in his purpose by throwing himself from the window of his office.

Of the forty-seven lieder Schubert composed with his poems, we have listened to eleven. This week we will listen to one more, Sehnsucht, D. 516, composed in 1816 or 1817 and published in 1822 as op. 8/2. The poem begins by speaking of the arrival of spring, and of how everything blossoms, then turns to the soul, enclosed within itself, consumed by its longings. The poetic voice assumes it will never attain what it desires, and that it will exhaust itself striving to achieve it. A sad poem, and quite explicit if we know the context. Schubert composed a song with four musical stanzas that begins with idyllic music, in which we hear the lark’s song, and gradually darkens as the verses do. I hope you enjoy this song, Robert Hall i Konrad Richter, I have chosen to remember Franz Schubert on the anniversary of his death. Infinite thanks for your music, dear Franz.