A Kind of Truth
Schubert: Memoirs by his Friends. Collected and
edited by Otto Erich Deutsch. (Black, 70s.) MR. BROWN prefaces his book with a reproduction of Dialer's noble memorial bust of Schubert. Despite the sensitivity and sensuality of the mouth, the composer's profile is strikingly power- ful; and it is this power, in both man and artist, that Mr. Brown's critical biography reveals. No great composer has suffered more from misrepre- sentation and sentimentalisation. Over the past fifteen years Mr. Brown has devoted formidable scholarship to disposing of irrelevant and pre- sumptuous myth-making; now, in this book, he retells the story of Schubert's life in close associa- tion with the growth of his art : and the story is the more moving when we see that Schubert was not an untutored songbird but a man with intel- lectual and moral equipment adequate to the demands of his complex emotional nature. I am not sure that romantic legend is as tenacious as Mr. Brown suggests. But if it is, then Mr. Brown's book should convince even the most lilac-drunk fuddy-duddy that Schubert's fantastic fertility did not preclude hard labour and second, or even third, thoughts. In range and depth of experience and technique (Mr. Brown's approach reveals how inseparable they are) there is no composer except Mozart who, at the age of thirty, can come within a stone's throw of Schubert.
Occasionally, perhaps, Mr. Brown indulges in a paradoxical extravagance of caution. He re- peatedly belabours critics for suggesting that Schubert was, in his last years, acutely conscious of death : as though such an awareness were necessarily morbid. But surely anyone of richly sensuous temperament, without the consolation of religious faith, is bound to be more than nor- mally responsive to the certain fact of the senses' end; moreover, Schubert knew he had syphilis and probably suspected he had not long to live. Is it surprising that there should be a hint of frenzy in the gaiety of his last allegros? Isn't what matters the strength of mind and feeling that gives such objective realisation to both his gaiety and his anguish—his search for a lost innocence?
This, however, is the only slight distortion into which Mr. Brown's unwillingness to be bam- boozled leads him. For the most part, his love of his subject complements his honesty. We are grate- ful for the evidence his industry has accumulated; we are still more grateful that he regards the facts as significant only for the light they shed on Schubert's music. His commentary on the works is consistently lucid and humane, and his judg- ments are supported by musical facts. My only qualification is that I think there is more to be said for the conventional view of Schubert's early instrumental works than Mr. Brown allows. Professor Deutsch's latest compendium offers us, in one stout, handsome volume, most of the contemporary material on which Mr. Brown s account of Schubert's life is based : and also most of the material which gave birth to Schubertian mythology. Wise after the event—after Mr. Brown's siftings—it seems remarkably easy to distinguish, from internal evidence, betwee chroniclers disinterestedly devoted to Schubert and the mild emotional exhibitionists. To read both the sober and the sentimental is a disturbing experience. All myths—though they degenerate with the passing years—are revelatory of the human heart; and after reading these memoirs I was left with the feeling that Mr. Brown's kind of truth may be partial. In reinstating Schubert's moral power and intellectual integrity he has performed an invaluable service; but are these qualities necessarily inconsistent with, on occa- sion, a state of clairvoyance? Vogl apparently thought not : and he knew Schubert and his music better than myself or Mr. Brown.
WILFRID MELLER9
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