Life Unfinished

By Martin White

Franz Schubert – genius and ladies’ man? Martin White’s novel explores the complex truth of his sexuality, conflicts, and illnesses – set against the background of Metternich’s police state, and his escape to the Alps and Hungary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: APS Publications
• Release date: May 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781911310853

Book preview

Also by Martin White

To Catch The Conscience Of The King

For my cousin, Trevor, and his grandparents, Dorothy and Brian, all of whom shared and nurtured my love of Schubert.

All translations from the German are by the author and grateful thanks are given to  Myra Talwar for translations from the Latin.

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PART 1

At the Stream’s Source

Chapter I

Cradle Song

August 1797

It is a world full of voices.

In the one roomed family apartment on the Nussdorferstrasse his brothers cry, shout, and babble through their games, whilst his mother hums, then sings, as she goes about her chores, which have their own percussive music. From the school room below myriad schoolboy voices rise up in unison chanting the mysteries of arithmetic, whilst, at a deeper pitch, his father growls and snarls for their better instruction.

Sunlight plays on the blank wall opposite his cradle, but the slow progress of dappled shapes and forms scintillates less than does that world of sound, as voices weave in and out and around each other, creating patterns in his head, thrilling with their dissonance. Sometimes the whir and steady pedalling of his mother’s spinning wheel provide a backdrop and a rhythm, forging unity, giving structure.

In the evening his brothers, Karl and Ferdinand, play at scaring themselves amongst the deepening shadows of the courtyard, their shrieks ignored as his mother rocks his cradle and sings a song from her homeland. Here is the music of warmth, and of smiles and kisses, of milky satisfaction: a music that defines happiness. And for the child, those singing lips, the softness of the voice, those tresses falling on her breast say all that can be said of beauty; and the rhythmic rocking makes him drowsy, slows his heartbeat to the edge of sleep.

Shadows elongate, escape from the courtyard, from the floor below, creep to his mother’s shoulder, where the class-room voice growls with more insistence. Rhythm usurps rhythm, and heartbeat quickens. A face contorts, and leers; a tongue lolls through lips which no longer sing a melody, but pant and groan and hiss the chorus of a nightmare. And all around the night pulsates with chords of terror.

He hears his own voice screaming, screaming, screaming...

12 May 1809

In St Stephen’s Square the dusk of an early Summer evening is thick with acrid smoke, with shouts and screams, with the hurried steps of men carrying water to the latest fire. This dusk has panic on its breath, is heavy with the sweat of fear. Flashes of exploding shells bleach the boys’ faces as they crowd the refectory windows of the Stadtkonvikt School in the smaller square behind the cathedral. The faces vanish into darkness, then glow in the subtler angrier shades of flames taking hold. The boys are cheering: cheering the older pupils who have defied the monks and run out to help, sporting the red and white armbands of Vienna’s civic volunteers. They are cursing too: cursing the French, at every ground-shaking detonation, cursing Napoleon, the tyrant, the monster, the evil hated dwarf-king; as platters totter in the ancient wooden dressers, and one by one crash on to the flagstone floor.

At the refectory table furthest from the open windows, however, one boy seeks to exclude all of this from his mind, to take no part in the awe-struck gawping of his fellows. He sits on a bench, his elbows resting on the table, his hands clamped over his ears. Before him is a lighted candle and an open orchestral score. Franz Schubert is twelve years old, but looks both younger and smaller. He wears the quaint uniform of the Stadtkonvikt, with its dark brown coat (a small epaulet on the left shoulder), long waistcoat, and knickerbockers. His low three-cornered hat is on the bench beside him, and his thick brown curls fall forward over his face as he studies. The glint of candle-light reflects in his spectacles.

He wills himself to ignore the pandemonium which surrounds him: the explosions, the commotion in the cathedral square, the yells and shrieks of his fellows. He also wills himself to forget his prisoner’s existence here in the Stadtkonvikt, with its freezing rooms, its meagre food, the enervating tedium of rote learning in Latin, and the taunts and jeers of other pupils, who laugh at his homely Lichtental accent, snatch his glasses, and mock this music-loving swot.

It is music, though, which is his refuge: his world. It is the babbling brook which has run through his existence from the earliest cradle song, to the infant who sang in tune all day long, to the child who soon excelled his elder brothers at piano and violin, to the youthful chorister whose skill won admission to the Stadtkonvikt School and - which makes all bearable - to the Court Chapel Choir.

Within the flickering radius of pale candle-light, the music he is studying is Beethoven’s second symphony, which is shortly to be performed by the Stadtkonvikt orchestra. He has joined the second violins and also become the assistant to Spaun, a senior student who is the orchestra’s director. (The assistant’s role involves no more than distributing the orchestral parts, lighting the candles for the players, and keeping both the music and the instruments in good condition, but for the twelve-year-old this is a role of solemn responsibility.) As he reads the score, sheer delight at the balance of its structures, clothed in the purest simplest themes, builds like a wave within him. Here is that ideal, that perfection, he has learned to love in Mozart. Yet here too he can grapple with Beethoven, that frightening innovator, that wayward Prometheus, who creates energy, spawns undreamed of forms, has gone on before.

A light touch on his shoulder passes unnoticed, such is the boy’s concentration. When Spaun shakes his arm, though, Schubert leaps to his feet, as if woken from a drugged sleep:

I’m sorry, Schubert, I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that the Brothers are insisting all boarders retire to the dormitory despite the barrage. I think, in fact, it’s dying down, just a bit, so sleep may not be impossible!

It will be for me. The boy’s lips tremble at the news. Instead of lying there tossing and turning for hours, whilst the city’s blown to smithereens, it’d make more sense if I could go on studying this Beethoven score we’re going to rehearse. He softens his tone a little: You know, Spaun, it’s truly remarkable how Beethoven....

Glad you think so, little maestro! Glad you think so! No doubt you’ll be trying your own hand at scherzi in place of minuets before long! But, to be honest, Schubert, my lad, it may be some time before any of us can rehearse again. I hear orchestra practice, as well as Court Chapel performances, are likely to be suspended for at least another week, and who knows what’s going to happen if the French end up occupying the city!

Oh, Spaun, why does life have to be so ghastly! It’s bad enough normally, but to be robbed of our musical evenings too!

Now, come along, young man. Have a sense of proportion! There are more important things to think about than choir and orchestra practice when we have the French at our gates!

Not to me there aren’t, replies Schubert at once, feeling his face redden at his own recalcitrance. And to crown it all, in no time you’ll be leaving, and life will become even more unbearable!

Though Spaun is much older than Schubert – by more than eight years – in just a brief period Schubert has come almost to adore this lanky law student, with his regular features, his high forehead, and his calm expression with that ever kindly look within his eyes. Even the cut of Spaun’s coat seems to Schubert the height of elegance, and he has no thought for the scuffed cuffs and patched elbows which betray Spaun’s still somewhat impecunious position as one of the Stadtkonvikt’s more senior students. That Spaun’s time as a border at the school is almost over, however, and that at the term’s end he must begin to earn his living as a civil servant back in his home-town of Linz, are matters which have blighted Schubert’s joy in their friendship ever since their first acquaintance.

Oh Spaun, why do you have to go? I’ve only known you a few months. Couldn’t you find a post in Vienna? Then you could go on directing the orchestra in your spare time!

I doubt that’d be allowed, if I were no longer resident in the school. Besides, as you’ll find yourself one day, a man must earn his living wherever opportunity dictates. Of course, I hope Fate will bring me back to the capital in due course, but for now I must be content with a provincial post. At least I’ll be back with my family and many of my school friends. And after all, it’s not as if I were being exiled to the remotest outpost of the Empire!

That’s fine for you, Spaun. But what about me? I’ll have no one to talk to any more! It’ll be just as it was when I started here. Schubert’s fists have clenched and are pulled in tight against his body.

My dear young friend, don’t exaggerate! You’ve made a good impression with the teachers, and there are plenty of other boys – many in the choir – who love music as you do, and are sure to grow more friendly with time and as you prove yourself. I’ve seen it before! Besides you still have your family close at hand. You’ve often told me how close you are to your brothers, to Ferdinand in particular.

Schubert blushes, purses his lips, and looks away towards the windows, which a prefect is now struggling to close. He thinks of Karl and Ferdinand - of his mother too, and Ignaz, his eldest brother – but at present he can only see their blank expressions as he explains about the orchestra, about his compositions, even simply about lessons. It seems to him that in that other world they inhabit they now only half hear what he says, always talk to him of other things; whereas Spaun... Then there is his father, whose irritation shows when he mentions any music he has been writing, who wants only to test him on his Latin verbs and his religious knowledge – as if that were not a daily occurrence in the school itself – always to prove what a good scholar he is, how well on the way to life as yet another teacher in this family of pedagogues! Ten minutes helping Spaun at rehearsal, he thinks, are worth ten hours of his fortnightly visits home - a few words of praise for his compositions from Spaun far more valuable than any amount of grunting approbation of his declensions and conjugations!

I’m sorry Spaun, he says, and bites his lip. I know I’m being selfish. You have your career to pursue, and I suppose I must buckle to and make the most of things.

But before Spaun can answer the very world explodes.

Only as their eyes recover from the glaring flash, as the ringing in their ears begins to subside, and the cloud of dust which has fallen from the ceiling extinguishing the candle begins to dissipate, do they realise what has happened.  (There is shouting in the cathedral square and the sound of footsteps running towards the Stadtkonvikt. From other parts of the building they hear yells and screams, and through the thick atmosphere they can just make out the tide of pupils which had begun to ascend the stairs to the dormitories, and which is now going into reverse and flooding back into the refectory.) A Howitzer shell has landed on the Stadtkonvikt roof, almost certainly piercing right through the building’s fourth storey.

In the chaos and fear of the moment Spaun and Schubert have clasped each other for safety and stand now in a tight embrace, but as their senses begin once more to reduce the world to some form of order, they separate, turn without speaking to each other, and join the hastening throng of pupils exiting the building.

30 May 1812

A little over three years later Spaun’s predictions for his friend’s immediate future have been fulfilled. At fifteen Schubert is a leading treble in the choir, plays first violin in the orchestra, and has friends who admire his burgeoning talent as a composer. Spaun too has returned to Vienna to take up a post with the Ministry of Finance and, whilst no longer resident at the Stadtkonvikt, indulges his young friend with occasional trips to the opera.

Today, however, there has been another explosion, and one of quite a different order to that experienced when the Howitzer struck. In a pause between lessons this perfect Spring morning a Piarist monk has informed Schubert that his mother has passed over – that she is dead.

Dead...dead. He says the word over to himself again and again, trying to make sense of it. Somehow, he knows, he must understand and accept whatever it means, somehow feel its shattering impact, which must surely cause his other world of home and family to implode. Yet he cannot take it in: this news from outside; cannot feel it to be true in his heart, cannot tear himself apart in grief, as he imagines he should.

For two days he attends lessons, sings, plays, feels an unaccountable strength.

Released from his studies only an hour before the funeral, he speeds by coach northwards out of the city to the Black Horse Schoolhouse in the Himmelpfortgrund, where the family now resides. As one world dissolves into the other, the tourniquet round his heart at last begins to loosen. Familiar sights – streets his mother would have known – wrench tears from his eyes, make his stomach sick with sudden anguish.

Coffin bearers are waiting outside the house, and neighbours cluster, heads bowed, in the forecourt leading to the stairs. He wipes his eyes, and runs to the first floor living room, surprised to hear sounds of music coming from behind the closed door. He enters, takes in at first only his father sitting opposite stumbling through a cello piece by Bach, his jaw firm, his lips clamped together, those livid grey rings around his eyes a darker hue than normal. Then he sees what he has dreaded most: her kitchen table has become his mother’s catafalque. The painted wooden coffin barely extends across its width (so small – can she really be inside?). Its lid is sealed. The priest, the undertaker and his brothers, Ignaz, Ferdinand, and Karl in their black mourning cloaks (where is his?) stand in a circle round it. At the side of the room Schubert’s young sister is standing with his aunt and cousin.

The last knot within him unravels, and he falls to his knees sobbing. He cannot look at the mournful faces, now fixing him with their baleful gaze, nor at the chairs, nor the dresser; nor smell the last faint odour of a meal (she had cooked?) For everything screams back at him her absence, his misery, her loss.

His father breaks from his playing, glares first at him, then at Ferdinand, who crosses to comfort him, then raise him to his feet. Their aunt hurries to place a mourning cloak around his shoulders, and the brothers take their places in the circle.  The playing resumes, but soon scrapes and stutters to a conclusion. His father stands head bowed beside the priest. A prayer is said. Then Ignaz hobbles down the stairs to summon the red-clad coffin bearers.

Grief released, Schubert feels little other than a weariness, and a sense that it is now he who is unreal, displaced: a spectator to what is happening in the vivid rawness of this world. Ferdinand’s arm round his shoulder comforts him a little, but within him certainty has melted. There can be no more joy untinged with grief, no life without a glimpse of death.

As the family processes behind the coffin on its short way to the Lichtental parish church, he remembers the notes of an old cradle-song he once knew well.

Chapter II

An Opera

1813

During the months following his mother’s death visits home are few and brief (for the rooms are cold, now there is no fire in the hearth). At school sweat often pours from Schubert’s febrile brow, as he rushes from lesson to lesson, from rehearsal to rehearsal and then back again, all in a thought-evading frenzy of activity, only for that sweat to chill after dark in the dormitory, when memory’s candle will not let him sleep.

It is not a time, though, of unrelenting trial and sadness, for he has his music: rehearsals, performances too, and also a new focus for his endeavours - studies with Salieri, Court Kapellmeister, pupil of Gluck, and himself the teacher of Beethoven. When Schubert had first applied for admission to the Stadtkonvikt, it had been Salieri who had chosen him as a chorister. They now meet twice weekly at the older man’s apartment, where they study counterpoint and fugue, then progress to the other musical forms – or, at least, to those at which Salieri has made his own name during the latter years of the previous century.

Opera trips with Spaun also help to divert and cheer him. In January 1813 they go to see one of Gluck’s operas, Iphigenia in Tauris. For several weeks previously Schubert has been absorbing every note of this and several other scores - all in fact inherited by Salieri from his illustrious mentor, and now made available to his pupil. Schubert, moreover, has been ecstatic at the opportunity Iphigenia will provide for him to hear the soprano, Anna Milder, one of Salieri’s former students, and very much a star of the moment. She is to sing the title role.

After the performance, they emerge from the Kärntnertor Theatre enthusing at what they have seen, when they meet the playwright and poet, Theodor Körner, whom Spaun knows well and to whom he now introduces Schubert. He agrees to join them as they retire for refreshment to The Hunter’s Horn in the Dorotheergasse.

I hope I shall be able to eat something, says Schubert, as they squeeze round the last available table in the restaurant. But to tell the truth, I feel so excited after that performance, my stomach’s all aflutter!

Calm down, young man, says Spaun. Think of your health! You should eat decent food when you have the chance. Don’t forget, I know the fare you’re used to!. ..Come along, I’m sure you can manage a schnitzel or some sausages and kraut. I think I’ll go for the pigeon and chestnuts. What about you, Körner?

I’ll have the fried Leberkäse with two fried eggs, says the playwright. But this is all on me, and so are the drinks – at least the first bottle! – for I’ve something to celebrate. As they place their orders and Körner asks for the best Szegzard of the house, he explains that he has been appointed resident dramatist at the Burg Theatre itself, from that very month, and for a full three year term.

Why Körner, that’s tremendous news, exclaims Spaun, endeavouring to slap him on the back, and managing to dig his elbow into a middle-aged gentleman at the table behind.

It most certainly is. Congratulations! Well done, sir. Well done, joins in Schubert. "Though Spaun, who is kindness itself, normally takes me only to operas, he also treated me last year to a performance of your play, The Night Watch. It was very very good!"

As the wine has now arrived, they stand to drink a toast; and then another for good measure, so that Spaun soon calls for a further bottle. In high good spirits, Körner explains the duties he will have, and his plans for plays over the next twelve months, whilst Spaun and Schubert listen, occasionally exclaiming and hammering on the table.

Oh, how I envy you, Körner, says Schubert as the food arrives. He has to shout to make himself heard over the din which now fills the restaurant. You’ll be able now to devote all your time to your art, and receive a regular salary for it into the bargain! How I hope one day I shall be able to do something similar!

If all’s true that Spaun tells me about your compositions, young Schubert, I have no doubt you will. Actually, it’s a moot point if such is the state to which every artist should aspire, or whether it’s better for him to live entirely by his own art, and beholden to no one employer. This, Maestro Beethoven has done already – though not without help from some rather rich patrons – and where Beethoven has led, in a few years Schubert will follow. I just know it to be true! He drains his glass and slaps Schubert across the back.

Just imagine, says Spaun leaning back in his chair and again knocking against his neighbour, in a couple of years it could be you, Schubert, writing arias and duets for Johann Vogl and Anna Milder.

"Oh, don’t, Spaun, don’t. That prospect is just too tantalising! And don’t start me off again about Anna Milder – her voice just pierced me to the