The Financial Circumstances of Franz Schubert's Parents: New Documents

In response to a 2004 article by Maynard Solomon about Franz Schubert's family, my recent article "The Financial Circumstances of Franz Schubert's Parents: New Documents" sheds new light on the finances of Franz Schubert's parents. The main source on which new insights on this topic are based is the probate file of Franz Schubert's mother which had previously been considered lost. Together with several entries from early nineteenth-century Viennese land registers, the publication of this important document closes a major gap in the body of sources related to Schubert's family. A side issue of this article is Bishop Joseph Spendou's supposed role as benefactor of Schubert's father. This article, whose earliest version was written in January 2005, cannot be published on this blog, because footnotes are not supported by the blog format. The discovery of Elisabeth Schubert's probate file took place on 19 November 2004, on the 176th anniversary of Schubert's death.

A pdf of this article can be downloaded from academia.edu.

The first page of Elisabeth Schubert's probate file which was previously considered lost (A-Wsa, Patrimonialherrschaften, B16/40, fol. 55r)

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2017.

Goethe's Reaction to Schubert's Dedication

The fact that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe neither replied to the package of Schubert Lieder that Joseph von Spaun sent him on 17 April 1816, nor to Schubert's dedication of the three songs op. 19 in June 1825, has always been taken as proof that, because Goethe's musical taste was under the influence of Zelter and Reichardt, the poet was simply unable to acknowledge Schubert's genius.

The third page of Joseph von Spaun's 1816 letter to Goethe (Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv Weimar, GSA 28/70, fol. 170v)

Time and again, the public takes pleasure in being told this story, because it gives every lover of Schubert's songs the feeling of having a better musical taste than the German prince of poets. This phenomenon became apparent again during a concert, which, on 27 March 2014, was given by the singer Julian Prégardien and some of his friends at the Hans-Huber hall of the Stadtcasino Basel. This concert was titled "Schubertiade" and presented a "Schubertiad as it actually might have been". Accordingly, it was broadcast by several radio stations as "Julian Prégardien and friends with a fictitious Schubertiad". The program included various Schubert songs, interspersed with instrumental pieces by Schubert, Matiegka, and Mertz. Prégardien also recited poetry and at one point recounted the story of how Goethe ignored the music that was sent to him by Spaun and Schubert. One could almost see the audience revelling in the feeling of being true connoisseurs of Schubert's music, delightfully enjoying the fact that, unlike the evidently ignorant Goethe, they are able to appreciate Schubert's genius.

The title page of Schubert's three songs op. 19, dedicated to Goethe

Posterity has completely misjudged Goethe's silence. Nothing could be farther from the truth than the poet being too ignorant to recognize the quality of Schubert's work. The truth is that Goethe received so much mail that very early in life, he decided not to respond at all to most of the deliveries. Otto Erich Deutsch was the first to refer to a passage in Johann Peter Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe where Goethe explains his seemingly impolite principle. Goethe's full statement, preserved by Eckermann, was first published in the context of Spaun's shipment and Schubert's dedication, in my article "Dokumente zur Biographie Johann Mayrhofers" in: Schubert durch die Brille 25, (Tutzing: Schneider, 2000). On 21 January 1827, during a conversation concerning the posthumous edition of Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger's letters, Goethe said the following:

Solger hat, wie ich aus diesen Briefen sehe, viel Liebe zu mir gehabt; er beklagt sich in einem derselben, daß ich ihm auf den "Sophokles", den er mir zugesendet, nicht einmal geantwortet. Lieber Gott! – Aber wie das bei mir geht! Es ist nicht zu verwundern. Ich habe große Herren gekannt, denen man viel zusendete. Diese machten sich gewisse Formulare und Redensarten, womit sie jedes erwiderten, und so schrieben sie Briefe zu Hunderten, die sich alle gleich und alle Phrase waren. In mir aber lag dieses nie. Wenn ich nicht jemandem etwas Besonderes und Gehöriges sagen konnte, wie es in der jedesmaligen Sache lag, so schrieb ich lieber gar nicht. Oberflächliche Redensarten hielt ich für unwürdig, und so ist es denn gekommen, daß ich manchem wackern Manne, dem ich gerne geschrieben hätte, nicht antworten konnte. Sie sehen ja selbst, wie das bei mir geht und welche Zusendungen von allen Ecken und Enden täglich bei mir einlaufen, und müssen gestehen, daß dazu mehr als ein Menschenleben gehören würde, wenn man alles nur flüchtig erwidern wollte. (Johann Peter Eckermann: Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, Otto Schönberger ed. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 1994, 229f.)

[translation:]

As I see from these letters, Solger had a lot of love for me; in one of them he complains that I did not even answer him concerning the Sophokles he sent me. Dear God! – But as it happens with me! There is nothing to wonder about. I knew great men who received a lot of mail. They made themselves certain forms and expressions which they used to respond to everything and they wrote hundreds of letters which were all alike and all were empty phrase. This was never my thing. If I could not tell someone something special and appropriate, as the particular issue demanded, I preferred not to write at all. Superficial phrases I considered unworthy, and thus it came to be that I could not answer many an honest man whom I would have liked to have written. You can see for yourself what is going on at my place and what kind of shipments arrive every day from every corner of the world. And you must admit that it would need more than one human lifetime, if one wanted to respond to everything just briefly.

---

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2015.

Updated: 14 March 2023

"The Young Franz Schubert": An Ineradicable Misidentification

In June 2014, Sony Music Japan released the following recording of music by Franz Schubert:

The source for the picture on the cover of this CD is the following curiosity from the database of the Lebrecht Music & Arts picture library:

The misspelling of Leopold Kupelwieser's name already shows that, as far as the attribution of this portrait is concerned, Lebrecht's database is not to be trusted. This picture is not a portrait of Franz Schubert. It is one of two existing portraits of the Austrian physician Karl Joseph Maria von Hartmann (1793–1876).

The misidentification has been revealed decades ago in several scholarly articles all of which have been thoroughly ignored by Schubert scholarship and, even more consistently, by the general public. When you publish an article in German in the journal of the International Schubert Institute, you might as well not publish anything at all, because 95 percent of Schubert scholars do not understand Schubert's language. So much for the "proper dissemination" of scholarly work by publishing articles in print. The essential literature concerning the false Schubert portrait consists of the following articles:

• Deutsch, Otto Erich. 1961. "Zum angeblichen Schubert-Bildnis von 1813". In Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Galerie 49. Vienna: Österreichische Galerie Belvedere 1961, 24.
• Barchetti, Theodor. 1981. "Die Familien v. Hartmann und v. Barchetti. Eigentümer des Hauses Wels, Pfarrgasse 15, im 19. Jahrhundert". In Festschrift Kurt Holter. 23. Jahrbuch des Musealvereines Wels. Wels: Verlag Welsermühl, 247-269.
• Steblin, Rita. 1992. "Die Atzenbrugger Gästelisten - neu entdeckt". In Schubert durch die Brille 9 (Mitteilungen des Internationalen Schubert Instituts 9). Tutzing: Schneider, 65-80.
• Steblin, Rita. 1993. "Nochmals die Atzenbrugger Gästelisten". In Schubert durch die Brille 10. Tutzing: Schneider 1993, 35-41.
• Worgull, Elmar. 1996. "Zwei Fehlzuschreibungen in der Schubert-Ikonographie". In Schubert durch die Brille 16/17. Tutzing: Schneider, 158-171.
• Worgull, Elmar. 1999. "Kunsthistorische Untersuchungsmethoden als ein interdisziplinärer Aspekt in der Schubert-Ikonographie". In Schubert und seine Freunde. Eva Badura-Skoda (ed.), Wien-Köln-Weimar: Böhlau, 343-360.
• Worgull, Elmar. 2001. "Schuberts unbekannter Nachbar in Kupelwiesers Aquarell 'Der Sündenfall'". In Schubert durch die Brille 26. Tutzing: Schneider, 101-108.
• Lorenz, Michael. 2001. "Erwiderung auf Elmar Worgulls Replik". In Schubert durch die Brille 26. Tutzing: Schneider, 109f.

The Origin of the Misidentification

The false Schubert portrait was first published by Otto Erich Deutsch in 1913, as "Angebliches Schubert-Bildnis von Leopold Kupelwieser [?] aus dem Jahre 1813" (supposed Schubert portrait by Leopold Kupelwieser [?] from 1813) in the book Franz Schubert. Sein Leben in Bildern.

 

The basis for the identification of this drawing, which in 1891 was bought at an auction by Prince Johann von Liechtenstein, is an inscription on its back which, between 1888 and 1891, was applied by two of Schubert's half-brothers. Its translation reads as follows: "Franz Schubert in the 16th year of his life. Original chalk drawing by the friend of his youth Leopold Kuppelwieser (anno 1813). P. Hermann Schubert mp Curate and preacher at the Schottenstift. Andreas Schubert mp Senior accountant in the I. & R. Ministry of Finance as Franz Schubert's brother". Deutsch was very sceptical concerning the viability of this testimony. After all, at the time of Schubert's death, his half-brothers Eduard (the future Pater Hermann) and Andreas had only been two and five years old. The attribution to Kupelwieser was dubious as well, because Schubert became acquainted with the painter only around 1820. In spite of Deutsch's doubts and the fact that it had never been reliably attributed, the drawing was accepted as Schubert portrait by the general public. This error was also promoted by several authors of popular books – such as Kurt Pahlen in his book Die Große Geschichte der Musik – where the portrait is described as "Porträtskizze[sic] des jugendlichen Franz Schubert von dem Wiener Maler Leopold Kupelwieser".

The Man at the Piano

The opinion regarding the supposed Schubert portrait experienced a fundamental change, when in 1996 the German painter and art historian Elmar Worgull, in his article "Zwei Fehlzuschreibungen in der Schubert-Ikonographie", pointed out that a man with the face of the supposed "young Schubert" appears on another painting connected with Schubert's circle: on Leopold Kupelwieser's 1821 watercolor "Der Sündenfall" (The Fall of Man), which shows a game of charades being played by Schubert and his friends in Atzenbrugg, this man is sitting on the far left at the piano, resting his arm on the instrument and putting his left hand to his chin.

Leopold Kupelwieser: Gesellschaftsspiel der Schubertianer in Atzenbrugg 1821 (Wien Museum, I.N. 18752)

The man sitting at the piano on the far left of Kupelwieser's 1821 watercolor

Who is this man? In his 1913 book, Otto Erich Deutsch, who obviously knew only one sentence of an entry in Franz von Hartmann's family chronicle, made a hasty and uninformed guess. He identified the "Hartmann" at the piano with the only Hartmann, who, according to Deutsch's knowledge, could have been present in 1821 in Atzenbrugg: the German physician Dr. Philipp Karl Hartmann (1773–1830) who was acquainted with Ernst von Feuchtersleben, and at some time, was involved in the medical treatment of Johann Mayrhofer and Franz von Spaun.

The physician Dr. Philipp Karl Hartmann (A-Wn, PORT_00076771_01)

The other Hartmann among Schubert's friends, Franz von Hartmann, could be ruled out, because he was born only in 1808. In his 1964 edition of the Schubert Dokumente, Deutsch repeated this misidentification which is a classic example of Deutsch's way of jumping to an unfounded conclusion without a bit of scientific evidence and repeating it as if he were an infallible oracle.

The false identification of the man at the piano as Philipp Karl Hartmann in Deutsch's 1913 book Franz Schubert. Sein Leben in Bildern. The name of Kupelwieser's dog was Drago.

Franz von Hartmann's Testimony

Deutsch took the information concerning the name of the man sitting at the piano from a passage in the first volume of Franz von Hartmann's "Familienchronik" (A-Wst, Jc 73234). But Deutsch – who in the preface of the first edition of the Dokumente claimed that "he had in all cases gone to the sources proper" – obviously never consulted the original of Hartmann's chronicle, because he published only one sentence of Hartmann's entry and failed to include the subsequent important information concerning the mysterious "Welser v. Hartmann". Summarizing and commenting his original diary from 1826, in his Familienchronik, Franz von Hartmann wrote the following.

The passage in Franz von Hartmann's "Familienchronik" dealing with his visits to the Burgtheater and to Franz von Schober's apartment on 13 December 1826 where he saw Kupelwieser's watercolor from 1821 (A-Wst, Jc 73234, vol. 1, 339-40)

     Den 12. [Dezember 1826] führte uns Pepi Spaun ins Burgtheater, wo wir "Der Erbvertrag" sahen, am 19. ins "Käthchen von Heilbronn" wo das Anschützsche Ehepaar so herrlich spielte.
    Am 13. besahen wir bei Schober Bilder, darunter ein schönes Aquarell von Kuppelwieser, wo Schubert am Klavier, einige Freunde, darunter Kuppelwieser selbst, dann über das Klavier gelehnt, der Welser v. Hartmann, Professor der Naturgeschichte in Olmütz, welcher später irrsinnig wurde. Als derselbe im Sommer 1825 im Irrsinn aus Olmütz fort gegangen war, kam zu mir in die Wohnung in der Jägerzeile ein Vertrauter der Polizei, und wollte von uns, da wir den gleichen Namen trugen, wissen wohin sich dieser Hartmann gewendet habe. Diese Welser Hartmann stammten aus Bayern, ihr Vater oder Großvater war ein Protomedicus in Linz gewesen u. in der Vorstadt in Wels war das schöne Haus der Familie mit großem von der Stadtmauer eingerahmten Garten, wohin ich während meiner Welser Dienstzeit 1854-1865 oft kam, zu Bar.[on] Pilati u. zum Kreisingenieur Hackher.

[translation:]

On December 12th, 1826, Pepi Spaun led us into the Burgtheater where we watched "Der Erbvertrag", on the 19th, to "Käthchen von Heilbronn" where the Anschütz couple acted so marvelously.
       On December 13th, at Schober's, we looked at paintings, among them a beautiful watercolor by Kupelwieser, where Schubert is at the piano, a number of friends, among them Kupelwieser himself, then, leaned over the piano, von Hartmann from Wels, the professor of natural history in Olmütz, who later went insane. After in summer of 1825 this man had left Olmütz in insanity, a police confidant came to my apartment on the Jägerzeile and, because we had the same family name, wanted to know from us, where this Hartmann had gone. These Hartmanns in Wels hailed from Bavaria, their father or grandfather had been a protomedicus in Linz and the family's beautiful house with a garden surrounded by the town wall was located in the suburb in Wels, where, during my service in Wels between 1854 and 1865, I went many times, to Baron Pilati and to the county engineer Hackher.

Moritz von Schwind: Franz von Hartmann (sketch for one the lunettes in Schwind's illustrations of "Die Sieben Raben")

In 1981, the judge, amateur historian, and genealogist Theodor Barchetti (1931–2006) published an article in the Jahrbuch des Musealvereines Wels, entitled "Die Familien v. Hartmann und v. Barchetti. Eigentümer des Hauses Wels, Pfarrgasse 15, im 19. Jahrhundert" ("The Families von Hartmann and von Barchetti. Owners of the House Wels, Pfarrgasse 15 in the 19th Century"). Barchetti, whose ancestors had once owned the house in Wels which Franz von Hartmann referred to in his chronicle, drew up a detailed history of the house and a meticulous genealogy of the von Hartmann family in Wels. Being aware of Kupelwieser's watercolor and the entry in Hartmann's Familienchronik (as published by Deutsch), Barchetti easily identified "the man at the piano" as the physician Karl Joseph Maria von Hartmann (1793–1876). This major achievement was ignored by Schubert scholarship until 1992, when Rita Steblin referred to Barchetti's research in her article "Die Atzenbrugger Gästelisten - neu entdeckt" in Schubert durch die Brille 9. Steblin pointed out Deutsch's misidentification. She noted that the man at the piano cannot be Philipp Karl Hartmann, because not only does he look much too young, he also shows no resemblance to any of Philipp Karl Hartmann's known portraits. In one point Steblin was wrong, however, namely when she wrote that "Hartmann died in madness". Hartmann became a taciturn recluse, but the lawsuit he filed in 1870 against his brother's estate proves that he was still in possession of his mental powers.

Karl Joseph Maria von Hartmann

Karl von Hartmann's father Dr. Johann Baptist Hartmann was born on 19 June 1752, in Reichenau an der Knieschna (today Rychnov nad Kněžnou). In 1777, he received his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna and moved to Wels, where he was appointed "landschaftlicher Physikus" (public health officer). On 24 July 1786, in the chapel of Feyregg Castle, Dr. Johann Hartmann married Maria Anna Alterdinger with whom, between 1787 and 1805, he would father nine children.

The entry concerning the wedding of Johann Baptist Hartmann on 24 July 1786 at Feyregg (Wels Stadtpfarre, Tom 6, 25). Joseph Wirsing, one of the witnesses, got married on the same day at Feyregg Castle.

On 10 February 1789, Dr. Hartmann bought the house Pfarrgasse 15 in Wels, the building which is referred to as "das schöne Haus" in Franz von Hartmann's Familienchronik. In 1792, Dr. Hartmann made use of the vacancy of the Imperial throne after the death of Leopold II and sucessfully applied for a hereditary knighthood to Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, who until the accession of Francis II ran a profitable business, passing out titles without any serious examination of merits. For a fee of 450 gulden Dr. Johann Hartmann earned the right to call himself "Hartmann Edler von Sternfeld".

Karl Joseph Maria von Hartmann – the man whose portrait gained coincidental prominence and was to grace many CD covers – was born on 29 March 1793, in Wels, fifth child of Dr. Johann Baptist von Hartmann. His godfather was his father's best man Anton Schlossgängl von Edlenbach.

The entry concerning the baptism of Karl Joseph von Hartmann on 29 March 1793 (Wels Stadtpfarre, Tom. 10, 10)

Since Theodor Barchetti's excellent research on Karl Joseph von Hartmann (in spite of having been "disseminated properly") is still completely unknown, I hereby present a translation of the chapter in Barchetti's article which deals with Karl Joseph von Hartmann's life.

Karl Josef María [von Hartmann] is probably the most interesting, but also most tragic figure of the family. Like his brother Anton, he apparently also suffered from a psychopathic disposition which must have been hereditary in the Hartmann family. From 1806 until 1810, he attended  the gymnasium at Kremsmünster Abbey, where he lived in the seminary; There he met Franz von Schober, who from 1808 until 1812, also was a student in Kremsmünster. When in 1810 Karl von Hartmann began studying medicine at the University of Vienna, he met Schober again, who at that time also lived in Vienna. This acquaintance lead to Karl von Hartmann becoming a member of the circle of "Schubertians" where Schober, as one of Franz Schubert's closest friends, played an important role. Thus, Karl von Hartmann – who by now, on 30 August 1817 [actually, Hartmann passed his final exam on 27 June 1817, Vienna University Archive, Med9, 5-256], had received his doctorate of medicine in Vienna – took part in the "Atzenbrugg festivals" of this circle of friends, where in July 1821, he was captured in the famous watercolor by Leopold Kupelwieser "Charades in Atzenbrugg" which now is on exhibition at Schubert's birthplace. As a part of a game of charades, the Schubertians reenact the Fall of Man. At the left Schubert is sitting at the piano and melodramatically accompanies the scene with his left hand. To his left, at the very edge of the picture, Dr. Karl von Hartmann sits leaning against the piano, the left hand on the chin. It is very likely the only surviving portrait of a member of this family.
      After receiving his doctorate in 1817, Dr. Karl von Hartmann – he had also trained as an ophthalmologist – worked as assistant at the chair for special natural history at the University of Vienna under Professor von Scherer; in 1818, he had applied unsuccessfully for professorships in Innsbruck and Olomouc and in 1819, in Prague. Finally, on 15 September 1821, by Imperial decree, based on unanimous recommendation by the University of Vienna, he was appointed professor for general natural history and technology at the Lyceum in Olomouc which at that time, however, did not have university status. But already with Imperial decree of 9 December 1824, he was relieved of this teaching position, because "it had become apparent right after the start of the term that he lacked all gifts of communication and the ability of ordinary lecture, because of reticence and seclusion from all company of such a high degree that there is doubt whether he is still in command of his mental powers". The University of Vienna was reprimanded as to why it had proposed Dr. Karl von Hartmann primo loco, although his uncommon shyness, taciturnity, and the traces of mental disturbance must have been recognizable.
      Dr. Karl von Hartmann never recovered from this blow, and like his brother Anton, he now led the life of an unmarried man of private means. He showed querulative inclinations when he – as Aspernig reports in 1831 – refused to transfer his eighth of his mother's house like his siblings, and did so only shortly before her death on May 1st, 1846; that he was not on good terms with his family in other matters as well, can be seen from his mother's codicil of 10 November 1839, where his inheritance was reduced to the statutory share, if he would not acknowledge the maternal will, not treat his mother and his siblings with the deserved respect or get involved in a legal dispute with the latter. After the death of his brother Ludwig, he tried to use a provision in Ludwig's will that after Ludwig's death the known children of his brother Karl should receive the securities from the estate, to achieve a substitution by an entailed estate in his favor. But he lost the case that he had brought to the supreme court in 1870.
      At first, Dr. Karl von Hartmann seems to have returned to Wels. But in 1854 and 1869, he also lived in Steyr in the former Capuchin monastery, outside of the city. He spent his final years at Pochendorf No. 22 near Kremsmünster where he died on 13 January 1876, of old age. He was buried in the family vault in Wels which in 1887 fell victim to the closing of the old Wels parish cemetery. With him the family became extinct.

In the death records of the Kremsmünster parish Karl Hartmann Ritter von Sternfeld is listed as having died at the age of 83 in 1876, at Pochendorf 22. But on 25 May 1875, an Antonia Hartmann ("led.[ige] Private") also died at Pochendorf 22 at the age of 67. Was she Karl von Hartmann's housekeeper?

The entry concerning Karl von Hartmann's death on 13 January 1876, at Pochendorf 22. The deceased is described as "Dr. der Medizin, pens. kk. Lycenal Proffessor in Olmütz". The given cause of death is marasmus (Kremsmünster, 306/1876, 1).

The entry concerning the death of Antonia Hartmann ("led. Private") on 25 May 1875 at Pochendorf 22. (Kremsmünster, 306/1875, 3).

Discoveries and Delayed Insights

After the publication of Theodor Barchetti's research and its introduction to Schubert scholarship by Steblin, the most important progress that was to be made, was to realize the resemblance between the portrait of Karl Joseph von Hartmann on Kupelwieser's Atzenbrugg watercolor and the face on the supposed "young Schubert in 1813" drawing in the Liechtenstein collection. The merit of having established this pathbreaking connection belongs to Elmar Worgull who, in his 1996 article "Zwei Fehlzuschreibungen in der Schubert-Ikonographie" (Schubert durch die Brille 16/17), dealt with the authenticity of the supposed portrait of "young Schubert". Worgull pointed out the fact that the only person on a painting from Schubert's circle that resembles the supposed portrait of "young Schubert", is the man who is leaning on the piano in Kupelwieser's watercolor of the charades at Atzenbrugg. As a matter of fact, the resemblance between these two faces is so strong that it is surprising that it had not been noticed much earlier. Worgull writes: "When the two portraits which are to be compared are reduced to outline drawings, juxtaposed and then projected over each other, the congruences between the two heads are unmistakable, in spite of different drawing techniques and original sizes. To assess them as (almost) identical, will hardly provoke contradiction." Worgull called this method "isoproportional picture analysis".

Elmar Worgull's outline drawings of the two heads juxtaposed and projected over each other (Schubert durch die Brille 26, 108.)

Worgull continues: "Since on Kupelwieser's watercolor Schubert is unquestionably sitting at the piano and the person that is portrayed on the chalk drawing appears beside him, the chalk portrait [i.e. the "young Schubert"] cannot be a portrait of Franz Schubert. Otherwise Schubert would be sitting opposite his own dissimilar portrait." Worgull was able to prove that the supposed "young Schubert" is not a portrait of Schubert. He also presented credible arguments for a redating of this drawing from 1813 to a much later date. As far as the identity of the person on this portrait was concerned, Worgull was unable to expand our knowledge. He could not proceed further in this regard, because he had obviously not read Barchetti's 1981 article, where the man at the piano opposite Schubert had been conclusively identified as Dr. Karl Joseph von Hartmann. Therefore, Worgull still indulged in random speculations concerning the identity of the man on the Atzenbrugg painting and presented various "Lösungsmöglichkeiten" (possibilities of a solution). He claimed that "a trace leads to Karl-Philipp Hartmann" which is of course a mistaken perspective, because an old error by O. E. Deutsch is not a trace that deserves to be followed. Based on a suggestion from Eva Badura-Skoda, Worgull considered it possible that the man at the piano may be the young Moritz von Schwind and included Johann Mayrhofer and even Kupelwieser into the circle of candidates. But of course, Kupelwieser can be ruled out, because he is the man in the background who personifies the tree in the ongoing game of charades.

In his 1999 article "Kunsthistorische Untersuchungsmethoden als ein interdisziplinärer Aspekt in der Schubert-Ikonographie", Worgull more or less republished his findings regarding the resemblance between the supposed "young Schubert" and the man at the piano in Atzenbrugg. He also repeated his suggestion concerning the identity of this individual: "We could argue splendidly about the identity of the witness of the well-known Schubertiade which is leaning on the piano. My working hypothesis proposes (among others) Philipp Hartmann." In 2000, in my article "Dokumente zur Biographie Johann Mayrhofers" (Schubert durch die Brille 25), I took issue with Worgull's persistent error and pointed out that "his presumption (based on Deutsch) that the man at the piano on Kupelwieser's 'Fall of Man' is Philipp Hartmann, is wrong." This led to a response from Worgull in Schubert durch die Brille 26. Worgull was unwilling to admit that he had never read Barchetti's article and claimed that "he had been aware of Steblin's research concerning the Atzenbrugg guest lists". He also retracted his long-standing "Philipp Hartmann working hypothesis" and presented the following tortured excuse: "I was aware of the fact that the young man beside Schubert cannot be Philipp Karl Hartmann, because his biographical dates are already at odds with this presumption that can be found in the Schubert literature. That in my later text the name [Karl] Philipp Hartmann still appears, instead of for example Karl Josef Maria Hartmann, can be explained by a regrettable oversight of an error that can now be easily corrected. Because my primary concern in 1997 was not to definitely identify Schubert's neighbor on Kupelwiesers group picture, I restricted my published lecture to the aforementioned working hypothesis which included the overlooked careless mistake." In my reply to Worgull's response in Brille 26, I cast doubt on Worgull's excuse and reminded the readers that Worgull had ignored Steblin's and Barchetti's research in three of his earlier publications. I also pointed out that there is absolutely no reason to doubt the testimony of Franz von Hartmann who conclusively identified his namesake, the medical doctor from Wels, on Kupelwieser's painting.

Karl Joseph von Hartmann is the only one of Schubert's friends who made it on CD covers without having written the words to a single Schubert song. Hyperion Records contributed even two releases to (what I chose to call) The Dr. Karl Joseph von Hartmann Memorial Project. It must be noted that these CDs were issued after Dr. von Hartmann had been identified as the man on the misattributed "young Schubert" portrait.

In 1997, Karl Joseph von Hartmann even appeared on a German stamp which was issued on the occasion of Schubert's 200th birthday.

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© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2014. All rights reserved.

Updated: 26 May 2022

Franz Schubert's Entry in the Viennese Death Records

In a recent blogpost I dealt with the fate of Beethoven's third will and the thievish activities of the Viennese amateur researcher Robert Franz Müller (1864–1933). I also addressed the fact that the entry concerning Beethoven's death in the Vienna Totenbeschauprotokoll has already been stolen before 1922. In a bout of boundless optimism, I wrote the following concerning the loss of this document:

We find ourselves wondering how Mozart's and Schubert's entries in Vienna's death registers ever could survive into the 21st century.

I have to correct myself. The Schubert entry has also been stolen, and I remember having already noticed this more than ten years ago, but I forgot about it. Similar to the Beethoven entry, a whole leaf (folio 80) has been cut from the 1828 register and had to be replaced with information taken from p. 1140 of the Wiener Zeitung of 25 November 1828. Of course, this replacement is insufficient, because, contrary to the official death records, the lists in the Wiener Zeitung never give places of birth and times of death of the deceased.

The replacement of Franz Schubert's entry in the death records of the Vienna City Council (A-Wsa, Totenbeschreibamt, 163, S, fol. 80)

The typewritten replacement of the stolen page begins with the following statement:

The missing and in itself worthless leaf was cut out by a user in an act of vandalism. The missing data have been completed from the Wiener-Zeitung.

This is followed by the wrong date "18. November 1828" and the substitute list beginning with Schubert's name.

The original text of Franz Schubert's entry in the Totenbeschauprotokoll is not completely lost. The words that are missing in the Wiener Zeitung (concerning the place of birth and the time of death) survive in the following unpublished (and undigitized) entry in the Bahrleihbuch of St. Stephen's concerning the composer's obsequies on 21 November 1828.

The entry concerning Schubert's obseqies and burial in the Bahrleihbuch of St. Stephen's (A-Wd, Bahrleihbuch, 1.11.1828-31.10.1829, fol. 32v)

[Den 21. November (1828)]

Schubert / Franz
Es ist der H[err] Franz Schubert Tonnkünstler / und Compositeur ledig hier gebürtig alt 32 Jahr / den 19. November nachmittags um 3 1/4 Uhr auf / der Neuwieden Nr° 694 Pf.[arre] Sonenhof verschied[en] / und am Nervenfieber beschaut worden
Wurde im Dorffreydhof Währing beerdiget
Bezahlt worden nach 2. Klaß, 5. Rubrik  .  .  .  20 f 27 [kr]

[translation:]

The musician and composer Franz Schubert, unmarried, born here, aged 32 years, died on 19 November at 3:15 p.m. at Neuwieden No. 694 in the Sonnenhof parish [St. Joseph in Margareten] and was inspected of nervous fever.
He was buried in the village cemetery in Währing
Paid for according to the 2nd class, 5th category .  .  20 florins 27 kreuzer

The unpublished entry concerning Schubert's death in the church record's of St. Josef zu Margareten shows two things: 1) Schubert's body was first supposed to be buried in the Matzleinsdorf cemetery and 2) Schubert only received the anointing of the sick, but not the last rites.

The entry concerning Schubert's death and obsequies in the records of St. Josef zu Margareten: "[Ort, wohin, und Tag, an welchem die Begräbniß geschehen.] den 21tn November in Matzleinsdorfer. [Anmerkungen] Erhielt blos die letzte Oehlung." (St. Josef zu Margareten, Tom 7, fol. 312). The late change of Schubert's burial place is similar to the burial of Ignaz von Seyfried, who was initially supposed to be buried in the Schmelz cemetery, but eventually received a grave opposite that of Beethoven in Währing.

Schubert was not buried on 21 November 1828. The exequies at Margareten, the transport to Währing, and the second consecration at St. Gertrud's Church in Währing took too long for the burial to take place on the 21st. Schubert's body was put into the morgue at the Währing cemetery and buried the following day, on Saturday November 22nd. The entry "21tr 9ber" in the Währing burial register (Währing, Tom 4, fol. 280) only refers to the date of the obsequies.

It is very unlikely that Robert Franz Müller had access to the original death records. Until 1922 – when the protocols were transferred to the City Archive and the thefts were noticed – these documents were held by the Totenbeschreibamt of the Vienna Magistrate and were not accessible to the public. Therefore, these thefts seem to have been an inside job, perpetrated by a city employee. Although we have to accept the loss of the entries of Beethoven and Schubert, there is still occasion to wonder, because the original entries concerning the deaths of Mozart and Haydn are still extant. And since the original protocols are not handed out to readers anymore (following a suggestion that I filed a few years ago), these two documents seem to be safe.

The entry in the Vienna Totenbeschauprotokoll concerning Mozart's death (A-Wsa, Totenbeschreibamt, 96, M, fol. 53v)

The entry in the Vienna Totenbeschauprotokoll concerning Haydn's death (A-Wsa, Totenbeschreibamt, 126, H, fol. 42v)

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© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2014.

Updated: 14 March 2023

The Wienbibliothek Responds

The Wienbibliothek has responded to my query as to why the prayer books of Schubert's sister Maria Theresia Schneider and her daughter Therese Krasser, which had been acquired by the library almost forty years ago, were presented in September 2012 as "new acquisitions". Mag. Christian Mertens, head of the library's "Zentrale Dienste" (central services), answered my question as follows:

Dear Dr. Lorenz!

Thank you for your email. After checking with my (intermittently ill) colleague Mag. Buchberger, who in September 2012 ambiguously placed the two objects on the library's page of "New Acquisitions", the case of the prayer books is as follows:

The two prayer books and the supplements were purchased by the City of Vienna together with the rest of the "Bibliotheca Schubertiana" after the death of Ignaz Weinmann and since then were kept at City Hall. That you saw them in 1993 at the home of Ernst Hilmar, could be due to a temporary borrowing for working purposes by Dr. Hilmar; in any case they were not stolen and we "did not buy back" books as you suggest. There was no "new acquisition" in September 2012 as the web site suggests, but only a "new cataloging" of books. Due to their interesting content Mag. Buchberger filed the books under "New Acquisitions" of the collection to present them to a wider audience.

Anyway, I would like to thank you for your thoughtful note and apologise on behalf of Mag. Buchberger and the library for the resulting confusion and wish you a Merry Christmas!

At this point a number of modest questions come to mind:

• Why did it take the Wienbibliothek thirty-six years to catalog two prayer books?
• What happened to the many other leather-bound books from Ignaz Weinmann's Bibliotheca Schubertiana that were seen in Ernst Hilmar's home? Are they not catalogued yet?
• If no books were stolen and Weinmann's library is still preserved, why was an internal investigation conducted at all?
• If no books were stolen, why was Ernst Hilmar suspended in 1994?
• Which books were "erroneously sold" by Herwig Würtz?
• Where is the "Schubert-box" in the form of a book with gold pressed leather cover, and a Schubert portrait that is listed in the inventory of Weinmann's collection?

It seems that the Wienbibliothek is desperately trying to get rid of this affair that seems never to end. It will not end, because a) the people who are in charge keep covering up the events that led to the suspension of the head of the music collection and refuse to deal with the matter in an open and honest way; and b) as the attempted sale of stolen Strauss autographs in 2010, has shown, stolen material keeps turning up every now and then. And even when the location of a stolen item is known, it is not recovered by the Wienbibliothek, because the people in charge are obviously afraid that such a procedure could lead to their lethargic behavior becoming known to the public. The responsible city councilman Andreas Mailath-Pokorny came up with the following excuse: "We are unable to do more. The Wienbibliothek is not a detective agency."

The lock of hair which in 1863 was recovered from Franz Schubert's skull, was stolen from the Wienbibliothek by Ernst Hilmar, and, as of 2004, was still on display at the Schubert Museum in Atzenbrugg.

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2013. All rights reserved.

Updated: 29 November 2017

The Wienbibliothek Buys its Own Property

The eminent Viennese music collector and scholar Ignaz Weinmann (1897–1976) left his collection and musical estate to the (then) Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek (today Wienbibliothek). While Weinmann's huge collection of musical scores survived the transfer to the library without any loss, other items from Weinmann's collection of Schubertiana did not fare so well. In a blogpost, which I published here on 5 December 2012, I wrote the following.

While the current efforts of the Wienbibliothek to recover stolen Strauss sketches are praiseworthy, it has become evident that these sketches are only the tip of an iceberg, and that the public has not yet been informed of the full extent of the losses suffered by the music collection of the Wienbibliothek (at that time the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek) prior to the retirement of Ernst Hilmar as head of that collection in 1994. In particular, the estates of Otto Erich Deutsch and Ignaz Weinmann, both owned by the Wienbibliothek, suffered massive losses. Items that were demonstrably in the library as part of Weinmann's estate surfaced in a Viennese antiquarian shop as early as 1993, where they were purchased by the Canadian Schubert scholar Rita Steblin. Steblin (for obvious reasons) didn't notify the police, but informed the head of the library, who, however, took no legal action, preferring instead to resolve everything behind the scenes, putatively in the interest of a principle of "confidentiality" that is apparently still in force today. The head of the music collection was suspended and eventually quietly dismissed into retirement. The police and the state prosecutor were not involved. The losses from Weinmann's estate included not only irreplaceable treasures that once belonged to the Krasser family, such as the prayer books of Schubert's sister Therese Schneider and her daughter, but also many other valuable books and a lock of Franz Schubert's hair that had been given to his half-brother Andreas Schubert on the occasion of the composer's first exhumation in 1863

The two prayer books originating from Schubert's sister and her daughter Therese Krasser were part of Weinmann's valuable collection and came to the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek in 1976, together with all the other material that Weinmann had bequeathed to the library. In the inventory of Weinmann's library, titled Bibliotheca Schubertiana (Vienna 1968) these prayer books appear under "Andenken aus dem Nachlass K r a s s e r" (keepsakes from the Krasser estate), right after the lock of Schubert's hair that was stolen from the Wienbibliothek and never recovered from the exhibition premises in Schloss Atzenbrugg.

Just like several other books from Weinmann's estate, the two precious prayer books did not make it into the holdings of the library. They vanished, and all my efforts to find them in the library's catalog in 1999 and order them were unsuccessful. In the course of an internal investigation their loss (and the loss of many other books from Weinmann's estate) was later blamed on "an erroneous sale of supposed doublets" by the former head of the archive Herwig Würtz. Thus, all the embarrassing losses and thefts that the library suffered during the 1990s could be quietly resolved without the involvement of the police or the state prosecutor. 

In autumn of 2012, the lost prayer books from the Krasser family suddenly turned up again. To round up a sad story with a bizarre twist, the two books were presented on the website of the Wienbibliothek as "Neuerwerbungen September 2012" (new acquisitions).

There is no reason to assume that the library is now presenting books as "new acquisition" that had already been it its possession since 1976, when Ignaz Weinmann bequeathed his collection to the City of Vienna. I have made no enquiries yet, as to who sold (or donated) the two prayer books to the Wienbibliothek. I take it as a fact that the Wienbibliothek is now buying back valuable items that already belonged to this library almost forty years ago.

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© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2013. All rights reserved.

The Continuing Mutilation of Schubert's "Der Leiermann"

In November 1999, Naxos released a recording of Schubert's "Winterreise" D. 911, performed by baritone Roman Trekel and pianist Ulrich Eisenlohr. This CD, which was the first volume of Naxos's "Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition" series, generally received positive reviews. The critics deservedly praised Trekel's singing and only had nice things to say about Eisenlohr's playing. The only person known to me, who – contrary to all the supposedly expert critics – immediately realized that something was wrong with this recording and publicly spoke out about it, was retired college professor of Criminal Justice and avid Fischer-Dieskau aficionado Dr. Celia A. Sgroi, who on 19 January 2000 posted the following on the "Lieder, Melodies, Art Songs in any language" mailing list, maintained by the University of Houston Listserv:

The pianist, Ulrich Eisenlohr, who delivers competent, and sometimes quite imaginative, playing throughout the cycle, goes completely off the rails in "Der Leiermann." His hurdy-gurdy is more loudly and jarring discordant than any I have ever heard. It gives the song a strangely "modern" sound that is interesting for a moment, but it palls very quickly and the disadvantages are enormous: the listener ends up completely distracted from the singing, and the dischords in the piano make it sound as if the singer is off-pitch. If this is the judgment of one of the initiators of this complete Schubert edition, Naxos may be in considerable trouble. At any rate, I feel sorry for Trekel, who is singing his heart out at that point and all in vain.

Eisenlohr's interpretation of "Der Leiermann" is very strange indeed. He apparently thought to be the first pianist who realized how Schubert really meant the piano accompaniment of this song to be performed. Eisenlohr not only plays the short appoggiatura in the left hand as an acciaccatura together with the principal note (he plays the dissonant note a tick earlier than the half notes only in the first two bars), he is also convinced that Schubert wanted the dissonant note to be repeated on the beat of every bass chord throughout the whole song in the way of a simile or segue. The first two chords in Schubert's score have an e# as appoggiatura, but the following ones have none. There is no "simile" or "segue" written in the score.

The first page of Schubert's "Der Leyermann" in the autograph b minor version (US-NYpm, Cary 215, Part II, fol. 15r)

The result of Eisenlohr's bizarre idea is fatal. At the beginning of each measure, all the way through the lied, we now hear a dissonant chord in the bass which reaches a peak of tasteless cruelty at that moment when we realize that, for the first time ever, Schubert's song cycle now ends on a dissonant chord. In a personal e-mail, sent to me on 1 May 2000 via Roman Trekel, Ulrich Eisenlohr defended his interpretation as follows:

As you might perhaps know, the "Leier" is always played with bordun-chords. If some of these bordun-strings are not welltuned,-which is quite likely in winter-time and outdoors,-they will sound a little bit "dirty" ; that is why I play the appogiatura on the beat. There is nothing less meant by Schubert than a correct appogiatura, done by a well-aducated musician. Can we presume that the Leiermann will stop his playing after 2 bars to tune his bordun-strings again? Probably not: he will continue as he has begun: "dreht, und seine Leier steht ihm nimmer still." So, why change the playing of the left hand in the third bar? It is just meant like "simile" or "segue", which is a familiar instruction in classical and romantic music, often not even written by the composers, because they trusted in intelligent interpretors who would know how to read and understand the music. Although I don't think that my kind of playing distracts the listener from the voice - even if it did: would it not be the pendant to the fact, that the singer is distracted from himself, his sorrous and pains, by the playing of the Leiermann? Hope I could calm you just a little bit with these explanations. Kind regards, Ulrich Eisenlohr

Eisenlohr firmly rejected the suggestion that by his curious interpretation he may have branded his illustrious predecessors as unintelligent musicians, who for over 100 years, have been unable to understand Schubert's score. Some of these pianists, who (owing to obvious lack of musical intelligence) failed to grasp the whole "never standing still hurdy-gurdy" idea, are Gerald Moore:

Sviatoslav Richter:

Alfred Brendel:

Murray Perahia:

Daniel Barenboim:

and Leonard Borwick:

Making musical pieces sound "like they have never sounded before" is one of the most effective artistic gimmicks in the current classical music business. In their evaluation of the quality of recordings, some critics nowadays seem to apply the following simple rule: "If I've never heard it played like this before, it must be brilliant!" It seems that the commercial success of some flawed "historically informed" performances is mainly based on this crazy paradigm, and the quite obvious fact that most positive reviews of CDs in glossy music magazines are nothing but paid ads of the recording industry. A perfect recent example is René Jacobs's recording of Mozart's Symphony No. 38 "Prague", which was released in 2007 by Harmonia Mundi. The blurb of this recording promises a revelatory listening experience: "The guiding principle of this interpretation is clarity of texture [...] It forsakes the 19th-century symphonic tradition for a quite different style of rhetoric." Such an announcement cannot bode well. And accordingly, Jacobs forsakes what he considers "the 19th-century symphonic tradition" by ruthlessly botching the long appoggiaturas in bars 17-28 of the symphony's slow introduction.

Bars 16-19 of the strings in the slow introduction of Mozart's symphony K. 504

The musicologist Theodor Kroyer considered the interpretation of the aforesaid appoggiaturas so obvious that he had them written out in both of his Eulenburg pocket score editions (Edition Eulenburg No. 446).

Bars 20-25 of the slow introduction of K. 504 in Theodor Kroyer's edition for Eulenburg

Instead of having them played as regular 1/32nds (as intended by Mozart), Jacobs turns the appoggiaturas into short grace notes, because he obviously considers himself more knowledgable in matters of eighteenth-century performance practice than the composer himself. He also misses the point that the five-note motif he is messing up in the introduction is a brilliantly applied thematic inversion of the recurring motif which, from bar 55 on, features prominently in the following Allegro. And yet, this kind of breathtaking musical ignorance goes completely unnoticed, while the critics are raving. Some of them fall for the advertisement ("a quite different style of rhetoric") and the others cannot even read music and do not know the piece to begin with. Jacobs's recording of K. 504 was awarded the "Diapason d'or Arte" from the French magazine Diapason, as well as the highest possible ratings from Classica Répertoire, and ClassicsToday.com. This method of fooling gullible (and totally unqualified) critics works in every genre of classical music, including Schubert songs.

In September 2009, Harmonia Mundi released an eagerly awaited recording of Schubert's "Winterreise", performed by tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Paul Lewis. The British music critics were giddy with excitement. John Steane, critic of the magazine Gramophone ("The world's authority on classical music since 1923") raved as follows:

Ah, this journey! How many have made it, sincerely and imaginatively, two setting out as nearly as possible as one! So many on records too, following the elusive track as with torchlight concentrated upon it. Yet, of all, I cannot think of one (not even Fischer-Dieskau in his 1965 DG recording with Jörg Demus) that leads more faithfully to the cold comfort of its end. And when we get there in this performance, what an end it is! [...] On we go, lulled and tormented by the magic music-box of "Frühlingstraum", till the tragic chord before "so elend nicht" in "Einsamkeit" brings a dreadful reality into focus. The deceptive sweetness of "Die Krähe", the giddy disorientation of "Letzte Hoffnung", the subdued feverish excitements of "Täuschung" find an almost holy stability in "Das Wirtshaus", but still the external world exists, felt as almost an intrusion in "Mut". And soon we meet the organ-grinder. And his secrets must on no account be revealed by reviewer or arts-gossip. And the listener must wait, out of respect to this marvellous partnership of Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis, until time can be taken for it, alone and uninterrupted, to accompany them on the journey through to its unearthly end.

On ClassicalNet the critic Mark Sealey found the following words of praise:

This excellent new Winterreise is one for the twenty-first century. Understated yet passionate; reflective yet not self-indulgent; spare, yet rich in the wonderful melodies in which the cycle abounds, it succeeds in meeting many quite disparate expectations, yet makes no compromises. To sing about recollection, lost love, death and resignation is actually harder than merely to sing mournfully, slowly and wistfully. The two performers here (Mark Padmore, tenor, Paul Lewis, piano) have produced an excellent embodiment of the songs' varying (for variety is key) moods and outlooks.

The London Evening Standard's Nick Kimberley (who also thinks that "Winterreise is about the voice, not the piano") stated: "Schubert couldn't be better served […] Padmore's great gift, apart from his prodigious technical ability,whether to float a line with perfect legato or to enter pianissimo at the top of his range, is to sing from the soul." The recording was awarded the highest honors. It got an "ffff" rating from Télérama, received Gramophone's "Editor's Choice", and "Recording of the Month" laurel, an "IRR Outstanding" from the International Record Review, and eventually won the 2010 Gramophone Award in the category "Solo Vocal". And yet, Padmore's and Lewis's recording is marred by grave musical flaws for which only the pianist bears responsibility. I will not even delve deeper into the embarrassing fact that Lewis – being obviously unaware of the scholarly literature on this topic – still mistakenly aligns the dotted figure in the left hand with the triplet in the right in the songs "Wasserflut" and "Irrlicht". This is not a minor musical detail that can be performed ad libitum. In the Bärenreiter complete edition, Walther Dürr claimed that "The notational style in the sources suggests that triplets and dotted eighths should be treated as rhythmically identical throughout the lied." Dürr was wrong. The whole issue has convincingly been settled once and for all by the American pianist David Montgomery, not only in his article "Triplet Assimilation in the Music of Schubert: Challenging the Ideal" in Historical Performance vol. 6/2 (1993), pp. 79–97, but also in his excellent book Franz Schubert's Music in Performance (2003, Hillsdale: Pendragon Press). In his 1971(!) recording of "Winterreise" with Hermann Prey, the late Wolfgang Sawallisch already showed how the piano introduction of "Wasserflut" is played correctly

As far as the piano part of "Der Leiermann" is concerned, Lewis takes Eisenlohr's mistaken concept to a more extreme and even crueler level. While Eisenlohr, in the first two bars, concedes the dissonance at least a little grace note quality, Lewis plays the dissonant grace note together with the fundamental and the fifth and then releases the grace – but much too late to make it the 1/16 note that is notated in the first two bars. This is the method of playing acciaccature that Artur Schnabel used to recommend: two notes together and then release one of them quickly. But this is not what is written in the score and it does not produce the hurdy-gurdy sound that Schubert was trying to convey. Lewis shows no mercy at all. He ruthlessly repeats the dissonant bass chord up to the final bar of the "Winterreise" which now – in the well-known Eisenlohr tradition – has to end on a dissonant chord (warning to listeners: extremely ugly sound bite!).

Let me explain what Schubert had in mind and why Eisenlohr's and Lewis's interpretations are completely untenable from a musical point of view. Of course, Schubert relied on the "intelligent pianist", but in no way does this mean that Schubert himself was not intelligent enough to unambiguously write down what he wanted the pianist to play. Hurdy-gurdies have multiple drone strings which give a constant pitch accompaniment to the melody, resulting in a sound similar to that of bagpipes. These drone strings are tuned in fifths and fourths, but never in diminished fifths (as played by Eisenlohr and Lewis). Schubert achieves the bagpipe effect of the drone strings with long perfect fifths in the left hand.

The 1/16 grace note, a semitone below the fifth, imitates the short slur caused by the transient state of the string between the first motion of the hurdy-gurdy's wheel and the moment the string reaches its maximum (i.e. continuous) frequency. The grace note in the second bar suggests that the wheel has come to a standstill after the first bar and then is being cranked again. From the third bar on, the short slur (the appoggiatura) is no longer audible, because the wheel must be moved steadily to produce the melody on the hurdy-gurdy's melody strings (i.e. the pianist's right hand). Eisenlohr's argument that his continuing dissonant note shows the "never standing still" of the hurdy-gurdy is the exact opposite of what is going on in Schubert's score: fact of the matter is that the absence of the grace note after two bars proves the steady movement of the hurdy-gurdy's wheel. The dissonant grace note does not represent a third drone string or "a hurdy-gurdy out of tune" (as proposed by Eisenlohr). It cleverly imitates a very short and purely physical event in the course of "warming up" the instrument. There are also esthetic reasons as to why there are only two appoggiaturas in the song. Schubert doubtlessly realized that the repetition of the grace note throughout the whole song would heavily distract from the singing voice and would result in exactly the boring unmusical overkill that Eisenlohr and Lewis achieve with their merciless dissonant redundancy. Schubert knew very well how to repeat a figure if he wanted it. Contrary to a hypothesis, put forward by Nigel Nettheim in The Schubertian (No. 31, January 2001, p. 2f.), there is no "implied simile" in "Der Leiermann". There is no need to even touch the issue of ending the song on a dissonant chord. Not only is it unthinkable from a historical point of view, it is the kind of musical tomfoolery that actually is evidence that Schubert did not want the appoggiatura to be applied in more than two bars: if he had really implied a simile, he would have indicated to end it before the final chord.

None of the above problems in Paul Lewis's performance were ever noticed and addressed by the critics who awarded this particular recording the 2010 Gramophone Award. They seem to have followed Eisenlohr's principle that "there is not just one proper way to read and interprete a work of art" and they were obviously under the impression that Lewis had found some kind of Philosopher's Stone of Schubert performance. Of course, there is a grain of truth in Eisenlohr's point of view. But we must never forget that the number of improper ways to read a work of art is infinite. I have been told that the pianist Wolfram Rieger has been following Eisenlohr's and Lewis's example in his live performances of "Winterreise", together with the singer Thomas Hampson, by droning out the poor "Leiermann" with sixty-one consecutive dissonant bass chords. He will certainly not be the last pianist to do so.

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2013. All rights reserved.

Updated: 23 April 2025

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Update (20 January 2018)

In his next recording of Winterreise, released in January 2018 by Harmonia Mundi, Mark Padmore found yet another willing accomplice in Kristian Bezuidenhout who (performing on a period instrument) ruthlessly mishandles the piano part of "Der Leiermann" in the fashion described above. It seems that Padmore is the driving force behind this mistaken idea that makes his accompanists suddenly lose all their musical common sense.

Update (13 April 2018)

The next proof that stupidity can go viral among musicians was presented by the English pianist Christopher Glynn who, on his recording of "Winterreise" with the baritone Roderick Williams (in an English version titled Winter Journey), mercilessly demonstrates that Schubert's acoustic depiction of a hurdy-gurdy is much too sophisticated to be understood and performed correctly by today's mortals.

Update (16 December 2021)

One should not believe that the reservoir of Drehleier-nonsense will ever be exhausted. More recent recordings of Schubert's "Winterreise" also offer curious abuse of the piano part of "Der Leiermann". On Markus Schäfer's recording of "Winterreise", which was published in June 2021, the pianist Tobias Koch presents a bizarre combination of Eisenlohr's approach and his own arbitrariness: he brutally plays the dissonance through the entire song, including on the final chord, but demonstrates a bizarre inconsistency in the introduction where he sometimes holds the grace note into the chord and sometimes plays it in unison with the chord. Note the final chord in this recording where human stupidity again comes to audible fruition.

In 2015, the tenor Daniel Behle published a double CD on the Sony Classics label, entitled "Winterreisen" where he combined his own arrangement of the cycle for voice and piano trio with the "original version" for voice and piano. Unfortunately, Behle's pianist Oliver Schnyder could not untangle his mind from Behle's "arrangement" (recomposition) of "Der Leiermann" where, at the beginning of the song, a grossly unmusical "grace note" from a third above is introduced by the ruthless arranger (composer). Accordingly (and unfortunately), Schnyder also plays this grotesque note in the supposed original version of "Der Leiermann" – which does not come from Schubert but from Behle. One has to hear it to believe it.

This reminds me of a question I always ask on such occasions: where are the Schubert police when you really need them?

Update (12 February 2022)

Fortunately, only now, it came to my attention that in a more recent recording of "Winterreise", Roman Trekel found yet another accompanist in Oliver Pohl who proudly demonstrates that he has no idea how a hurdy-gurdy works and how to correctly play a Schubert score. Pohl's imitation (parody?) of Ulrich Eisenlohr's misinterpretation of "Der Leiermann" is availablable in a complete recording of "Winterreise" on YouTube.

On 11 February 2022, Alpha Classics released Bernhard Appl's recording of "Winterreise" which had been long awaited by servile journalists who in the past had heaped praise on the German baritone's recordings. Appl's accompanist on this new CD is the South African pianist James Baillieu. One could write a detailed review of this CD, addressing all of Appl's vocal problems, which reveal themselves in the interpretation of Schubert's lieder. Appl has a quite pleasant voice which sometimes sounds very nice in slow tempi. However, the moment he has to sing fast melodic material, his intonation slips completely and he produces (usually slightly sharp) notes that leave the listener in the dark as to which key he is actually singing in. So far, this has been particularly unpleasant in his interpretations of up-tempo arias by Bach, such as "Großer Herr, o starker König" from the cantata BWV 248. Not surprisingly, Appl runs into similar problems in the fast lieder of "Winterreise" and it is certainly no coincidence that a promotional video on YouTube only features the lied "Gute Nacht". In "Der stürmische Morgen" he is close to tipping over into an off-pitch Sprechgesang that merely outlines the melody. But that is a side issue here. The pianist James Baillieu is completely infected with the Eisenlohr virus and plays the well-known dreaded dissonance in the bass in every bar of "Der Leiermann". And of course, he also applies this unmusical tomfoolery in the final chord. What an unrecognized avant-gardist and revolutionary Neutöner this Schubert was! It can be safely presumed that the paid reviews in glossy music magazines will be ecstatic in their praise of this new release.