A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Schubart, Christian

by George Grove

SCHUBART, Christian Friedrich Daniel, born at Obersontheim in Suabia, Nov. 22, 1743, and brought up, not as a musician, at Nordlingen, Nuremberg, and Erlangen. In 1768 we find him as organist at Ludwigsburg. His life seems to have been a very wild and irregular one, but he must have been a man of great talent and energy to justify the eulogies on him so frequent in the early volumes of the Allg. musikalische Zeitung of Leipzig (see ii. 78, 98, etc.), and the constant references of Otto Jahn in his Life of Mozart. He lived in Mannheim, Munich, Augsburg, and Ulm; was more than once in confinement for his misdeeds, and at length was imprisoned from 1777 to 1787 at Hohenasperg. He died shortly after his release, Oct. 10, 1797. His compositions are few and unimportant. A work of his on musical æsthetics, 'Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkust,' was published after his death by his son Ludwig (Vienna, 1806). From the notices of it in the A. M. Z. (viii. 801, xiii. 53, etc.) and Jahn's citations, it appears to be partly a dissertation on the styles, abilities, and characteristics of great musicians and artists. It also contains some fanciful descriptions of the various keys, which Schumann notices (Ges. Schriften, i. 180) only to condemn. But Schubart will always be known as the author of the words of one of F. Schubert's most favourite songs 'Die Forelle' (op. 32). The words of 'An den Tod' and 'Grablied auf einen Soldaten' are also his. His son further published 2 vols. of his 'Vermischte Schriften' (Zürich, 1812).

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