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Franz Schubert, the First Bohemian
Franz Schubert's immense outpouring of songs, sonatas, symphonies and chamber works netted him only about $12,500 (current dollars) during his lifetime. Many composers had no way of capitalizing on their talents.
Piano Is Easy
Since "Music publishing" was only first coming into being. Schubert simply gave away the rights to his great works, often for a meal, a few dollars, a room for a few nights.
Beethoven Was A Rich Man
By contrast, Beethoven was an excellent businessman, and negotiated his own lucrative publishing contracts with all the major publishers of Europe. Beethoven was one of the first composers to make a success out of music publishing, and had amassed a small fortune.
Schubert may have been the worst businessman of any of the great composers, and perhaps the first Bohemian artist. He once traded a symphony to pay his bill at the local bakery. That is the source of the famous story about him selling a piano sonata for a cream puff.
Schubert Was A Bohemian
Schwammerl, (Tubby) preferred coffee and hot chocolate and hot rolls, and lots of wine. He had a private booth at the local pub and wrote the theme to one of his string quartets on the back of the restaurant tab.
Schubert never owned a piano, never rented one, and didn't need one to compose. Schubert didn't even have an apartment, so where would he put a piano, anyway? He could compose anywhere.
Schubert's Friends Supported Him
Schubert told a friend, "The state should support me. I have come into the world for no purpose but to compose." But it was Schubert's many friends, many of them aristocrats, who, recognizing his genius, gave him their homes as their own. Schubert repaid his aristocratic friends with a constant stream of masterpieces.
Schubert once met Beethoven and showed him several manuscripts with trembling hand. The aging, gruff master Beethoven is said to have softened and remarked, "Truly, he has the divine fire."
Schubert was perhaps one of the first hippies or socialists, and was in no way a member of the establishment. It was Viennese society who sought him out, but he returned their affection with indifference, so absorbed was he in composing.
Schubert was very short
Schubert's Youth Movement
He and two equally poverty-stricken artist friends started an enclave in which there was no private, personal property. They were the predecessors of the "Wandervogel," a youth movement that advocated sharing and getting away from urban areas into the wild.
They each shared what the other had. Whoever had money at the moment was in charge of paying the bills.
Schubert, admitted to the immortal pantheon of the great composers, was alone among them a pauper, an outsider and a failure.
He lived a short but merry life and died all too soon, at the age of thirty-one.
REFERENCES
Music History
What Killed the Golden Age of the Piano
Carl Tausig Cooks His Cat
I Meet Aaron Copland
George Sand Killed Chopin
Why Brahms Must Have Been Fat
Artur Rubinstein Was A Vampire
Igor Stravinsky Loses His Cool
Vladimir Horowitz Goes To The Racetrack
Beethoven Was No Beauty
The World’s Largest Blue Danube Waltz
Was Mozart Murdered?
Beethoven’s Rage Over A Lost Penny
Chopin’s Singing Piano Tone
Stravinsky’s Good Luck
Tchaikovsky’s Greatest Fan
Hector Berlioz and the Orchestral Train Wreck
Piano Lessons with Papa Bach
Piano Lessons with Frederic Chopin
The Great Piano Craze of 1910
The American Piano Wars
Why Hugo Wolf Went Insane
Rachmaninoff and the Evolution of Pop Songs
Musical Feuds
Piano In The Past Was Better
The Master’s Hands
Einstein’s Piano
Einstein’s Violin Improvisations In Gypsy Style
A History of Piano and Numbers
Ryan Seacrest’s Piano Concerto #2
