they/them // @evgenythegreat or @random_house on ao3 // classical composers, goethe's faust, random old documents and apocrypha
current hyperfixation: franz schubert
“We chose the term “asexual” to describe ourselves because both “celibate” and “anti-sexual” have connotations we wished to avoid: the first implies that one has sacrificed sexuality for some higher good, the second that sexuality is degrading or somehow inherently bad. “Asexual”, as we use it, does not mean “without sex” but “relating sexually to no one”. This does not, of course, exclude masturbation but implies that if one has sexual feelings they do not require another person for their expression. Asexuality is, simply, self-contained sexuality.”
— The Asexual Manifesto, Lisa Orlando and Barbara Getz, 1972
It’s 50 years this month since the first version of the Asexual Manifesto was written. Aces have been writing about our experiences under this name for at least half a century. We are not an internet fad.
currently watching a four and a half hour long schubert biopic and by watching i mean skipping randomly through and watching for a bit and every SINGLE TIME it's been either
schober doing interpretive dance
weird foot stuff
this one mustachioed guy (not schober) (who the fuck IS this guy) intensely and overtly flirting with schubert and schubert being extremely not into it
reaction shots of the friends who have to watch all of this happening
i can't IMAGINE what it's like to watch this in the correct order
currently watching a four and a half hour long schubert biopic and by watching i mean skipping randomly through and watching for a bit and every SINGLE TIME it's been either
schober doing interpretive dance
weird foot stuff
this one mustachioed guy (not schober) (who the fuck IS this guy) intensely and overtly flirting with schubert and schubert being extremely not into it
reaction shots of the friends who have to watch all of this happening
i can't IMAGINE what it's like to watch this in the correct order
i think if you put in enough academic investment at some point you should be allowed to talk about long dead historical figures like theyre your friends
thinking about that one wordless calvin and hobbes sunday strip thats just calvins dad ditching his work to go play in the snow... its going to make me cry
”#I LOVE that the comic keeps the lens on Calvin’s dad to the degree of not even showing Calvin’s excited face when his dad surprises him, #You can see the joy and excitement of the moment in his pose and reflected in his dad’s expression, #it’s a great little artistic decision, #I realized what gets me about it it’s the hat covering his dad’s head and hair so the dad just looks like Calvin. #you don’t HAVE to show Calvin! You already see him in the dad becoming a kid for a moment you only have to draw that once”
This concludes our survey of Schubert's closest friends! (part one is here)
Of course there are many names left out (Vogl, for instance, who was a real mentor for Schubert but too high and mighty to hang out with the gang regularly). Ferdinand Schubert was always a close friend and an important presence in his brother's life; and then there is a great crowd of acquaintances, including Anna Hönig and the Fröhlich sisters, who often joined the group for a bit of music-making (this is the era of Schubertiades, after all.)
This second timeline is messier than the first, since Schubert had already known Kupelwieser for years, Bauernfeld didn't join the group until '25, Spaun returned to Vienna around the same time, and Schober was gone for ages in Breslau; but I decided anyhow to mark 1823 as the beginning of a new era, because it was the year Schubert first got sick, and things were never really the same for him afterwards.
schubert's friends weren't only his life and heart and soul. they are also our main source of information about his life. this is bad. they are not reliable.
the boarding school where schubert had a choir scholarship shared student housing with the university of vienna, and this is where the Linz Circle first met each other. this first friend group was all about self-education and hard work, very German Enlightenment liberalism. (schubert vibed with that until all the founding members sold out and got government jobs.) the group would meet regularly, read literature together, and share their own artistic works, even after student associations were banned.
not pictured here: kenner, a rather puritan founding member who moved back to linz early on; spaun's brother anton and his brother-in-law ottenwalt, central members who weren't super close with schubert; hüttenbrenner's brother josef, who was kind of schubert's secretary; and bruchmann, another of the unruly youths and senn’s best friend, with whose sister schober had a drama-filled secret affair.
this era ended in 1820, with senn's arrest. schubert dumped mayrhofer, who tactfully withdrew from the group. spaun moved back to linz; hüttenbrenner moved back to graz. schober and schubert stayed in vienna, wrote a terrible opera together, and eventually founded a new friend group... stay tuned for the ~Vienna Circle~
looking forward to part 2
I didn't know Anselm Hüttenbrenner was so unreliable. Which is a shame considering that we know of the meeting between Schubert and Beethoven from him.
As for Spaun, I rate his reliabilty about the same as Schindler for Beethoven for opposite reasons. I think Spaun would lie to protect Schubert. Not sure you can count working for the government against him. The government employed a lot of people of a certain statues and Spaun certainly fit. Didn't Mayrhofer work as a censor for example?
Yeah I don't trust Anselm farther than I can throw him. and that's not very far
the meeting with beethoven... case in point. according to ferdinand schubert: 'my brother and beethoven met frequently! they were close acquaintences!' according to spaun: 'schubert frequently bemoaned to me at that he never had the chance to meet beethoven'. according to anselm: 'i know for ABSOLUTE FACT that me and schindler [alarm bells start ringing] and schubert were there at beethoven's side when he died [proceeds to snip keepsakes of hair off of the great master's noble head]'.
yeah spaun definitely lied, but i'm grading on a curve LOL. he's the best source we have i think
poor mayrhofer... i think his work caused him a great deal of strain. master of cognitive dissonance, that man.
My dad got a book about Michelangelo for Christmas and he is sharing Important Art History, so I thought I'd pass it along.
So Michelangelo was commissioned to paint a wall commemorating the Battle of Cascina (what this is isn't important), but Michelangelo never did it, because fuck painting. He did draw a plan for it, but he chose a particularly Michelangelo scene to paint. He chose to commemorate the battle with an image of the soldiers startled while bathing in the river, thereby tempering his distaste for painting with his love of man butts.
This wasn't the only time he pulled this. He was later commissioned to paint an image of the Holy Family, but damned if he wasn't gonna put some naked guys in there.
Basically, Michelangelo really was the guy from this tweet:
On that note when asked to make a sculpture of the risen Christ he …. Well let’s just say the loincloth is a later addition by another artist.
However! If you need to see Jesus naked for research you can apply at the Vatican and if they consider your need for naked Jesus valid the loincloth will be removed for your academic perusal.
Honestly I am more interested in how you successfully apply to see Jesus naked than in actually seeing him naked.
I really want to know how you apply to see Jesus naked. That’s all I care about.
Of course Michelangelo was following the Classical tradition of smaller parts being desirable in art. And he was definitely an ass man so he wasn’t too concerned with dick size ;)
The Last Judgment fresco also formerly had naked Jesus but that one was also censored! (It was also very controversial that Michelangelo depicted him without a beard, but not enough that anyone was required to add one.)
The draperies here are the work of Michelangelo's student Daniele da Volterra, who reportedly tried to keep his interventions as minimal as possible but has still come down to us mostly as a historical punchline. I've written in this space before about all of the emotions this gives me. When the Sistine Chapel frescoes were restored in the early 1990s, it was decided to retain all additions made before 1600. To be fair, removing them was probably more effort than removing a loincloth from a statue.
(Also, somewhere on my Michelangelo tag is some discussion of the concept of "ostentatio genitalia" which addresses how this all fits in with incarnational theology. So much of Michelangelo's work is so visibly him trying to reconcile his love of men--buff, sexy, gorgeous men--and his love of God, and it's genuinely kind of heartbreaking.)
schubert's friends weren't only his life and heart and soul. they are also our main source of information about his life. this is bad. they are not reliable.
the boarding school where schubert had a choir scholarship shared student housing with the university of vienna, and this is where the Linz Circle first met each other. this first friend group was all about self-education and hard work, very German Enlightenment liberalism. (schubert vibed with that until all the founding members sold out and got government jobs.) the group would meet regularly, read literature together, and share their own artistic works, even after student associations were banned.
not pictured here: kenner, a rather puritan founding member who moved back to linz early on; spaun's brother anton and his brother-in-law ottenwalt, central members who weren't super close with schubert; hüttenbrenner's brother josef, who was kind of schubert's secretary; and bruchmann, another of the unruly youths and senn’s best friend, with whose sister schober had a drama-filled secret affair.
this era ended in 1820, with senn's arrest. schubert dumped mayrhofer, who tactfully withdrew from the group. spaun moved back to linz; hüttenbrenner moved back to graz. schober and schubert stayed in vienna, wrote a terrible opera together, and eventually founded a new friend group... the ~Vienna Circle~
why does franz schubert know literally everybody. i've been reading everything i can find about him for like 6 months and i'm still coming across names like 'schubert's very close friend randhartinger' 'schubert's bosom companion aßmayer' who the hell are these people. why does he have so many friends
i also happen to have a schubert hyperfix as well but i struggle to make time for my research because of my deteriorating health. i really like your blog—especially how it explores schuberts circle of ‘friends’ rather than schubert himself. i’ve been meaning to look into it deeper but yeah. seeing your schub posts makes me happy. :-)
Keep up the quality posts!!🧡🧡i’ll go evaporate now
omg this is my first ever ask :) :) thank you so much!!!
i started learning about schubert this autumn and i just adore him... if you ever want to chat or share research/resources you know where to find me!! so far i've read the härtling novel (inaccurate, delightful), the gibbs biography (concise and useful), the deutsch edition of his letters, the solomon/steblin essays, and am working through a very entertaining and thorough blog called Figures of Speech written by an independent scholar. but next i want to read the deutsch compilations 'A Documentary Biography' and 'Memoirs by his Friends' (soooo expensive unfortunately but seems to be on the Internet Archive in German??) if you have other recs lmk
you really can't have schubert without his friends... i love their chemistry so much and they're all so diverse and interesting. and the way they interact with each other and depend on each other and show love in the effusive language of their time, ugh, it’s just EVERYTHING
i'm inspired to post more about them now :) thank you for enabling me
Schubert's friends: franz's romantic life? oh, no, we couldn't talk about that. that's such a rude question. that's PRIVATE don't you have any discretion. i don't know what you've been hearing but it's NOT TRUE
Also Schubert's friends: he LOVED countess caroline omg we were so happy for him when he fell in love with caroline. it was so good for him to be in unrequited love with caroline. we were so relieved. did we mention he was in love with caroline. did we mention caroline was a woman
he was the Prince of Song but large structures (symphonies etc) weren't his strong suit
he was not successful in his lifetime
he suspected he was going to die young and lived his last few years with death hanging over him
he didn't advocate for himself (too shy and modest) and was not very business-savvy
i infodump about this below the break.
Schubert was relatively popular and well-known in his lifetime... as a song composer. He was recognized as a master of those genres considered 'trivial' - songs, duets, anything that could be played at home or as part of a social activity. He made a decent amount of money from his songs, too, and he was a pretty beloved public figure. Everyone knew him and he knew everybody.
I think it's fair to say that Schubert is best known for elevating these genres out of the trivial and into the 'great'. I've heard a lot of people today praise Schubert for his contribution to the German song form and claim that's where his greatest influence lies. I thought this was true myself until very recently!
But throughout his life, while financial necessity forced him to continue working (and innovating) in popular genres, Schubert was simultaneously trying to make a name for himself as a 'serious' composer, and the pieces he worked in vain to promote - including chamber music, sonatas, and a symphony (yes, a, singular; more on that later) - were equal to anything Beethoven was writing at the time.
But no one knew. It took decades for these pieces to even be discovered, and when they were, people were blown away. The major reason for this is that Beethoven WAS writing things at the time, and publishers didn't have space for new large-scale instrumental works, which never sold that well anyway. Schubert masterpieces got turned down by publishers again and again and almost none got published.... until Beethoven died in 1827.
With Beethoven's death, a space opened for Schubert, and he made the most of it. His great instrumental works began receiving interest for the first time, and he gave his first concert in 1828, which was a massive success. He was poised to become the next famous, great composer, the successor to Beethoven... when he died, suddenly, at age 31. It came as a huge shock to everyone - not least to Schubert himself.*
(*The myth that he died of syphilis seems to have been disproven... he probably did catch the illness in his early 20s, but he recovered, albeit with a weakened immune system. For the rest of his life he was much more frequently ill, and often worried about his health. He was preoccupied with themes of death, but his own took him by surprise. That very month, he'd been on a long hiking tour with his friends to visit Haydn's grave. Two days before he died, he talked enthusiastically with his friend Bauernfeld about the opera they were writing together**, making grand plans for the future. His friends all report that they were shocked to hear of his death.)
After his death, Schubert compositions were gradually published and many were 'discovered' throughout the following decades. This is the reason he's considered a great composer today... but with a catch.
Firstly, Schubert liked to practice. There are a LOT of unfinished pieces in Schubert's repertoire (the so-called 'Unfinished Symphony' is only the most famous.) They weren't unfinished for any tragic reason... actually, Schubert never intended to publish them. Of the great mass of music posthumously 'discovered' and published, only a handful are pieces that Schubert meant to show the world. For example, his C Major Symphony, called the 'Great', is given the number nine. But when advocating it to publishers, Schubert said it was the only symphony he'd written... because it was the only REAL symphony he'd written. The man was still in his 20s; he knew he would write more; he was in no rush.
Schubert knew how good he was, and he knew he had written masterpieces. The works he tried and failed to publish in his lifetime are peerless. Unfortunately, they've gotten bogged down among a lot of early and 'practice' pieces that, posthumously, were hailed as 'lost Schubert masterpieces' by publishers wanting to make a quick buck. Combined with the fact that Schubert's closest friends and most loyal advocators weren't very musical themselves, and therefore tended to value and promote Schubert as a song composer after his death, this led to the ENDURING perception of Schubert as a composer who couldn't handle long forms.
(**'The Count of Equals.' Schubert had collaborated with his friends on operas before, but Bauernfeld was the first one who could actually write (offense very much intended, Schober). 'The Count of Equals' was rejected by the censors, which is how you know it's good (it's very progressive and i'm pretty sure the central love triangle resolves by all three of them getting together). The rejection didn't dissuade Schubert at all and he was very excited about the project up until his death.
This is also related to the myth that Schubert was this shy, modest kid. He was indeed modest, by all accounts! But modesty only means something if you know how good you are; it shouldn't be confused with self-doubt. Even though his friends couldn't match him musically, and didn't always pick up what he was throwing down, he never abandoned them or thought he was too good for them. He wrote an opera with Schober even though Schober couldn't write for shit. He never belittled, either, the song and duet forms that had made him popular; he composed great music within them and he often referred back to them in his large-scale works, too. His first and only concert is well-balanced; he promotes his new string quartet and his spectacular Trio in Eb, a tribute to Beethoven, but surrounds them with songs he knew the public would enjoy. He wasn't pretentious, but he was certainly self-assured. If his friends were his major advocates when he was younger, by his late 20s he had become savvy enough to promote himself, and with success, too!)
like, not just avoiding an unpleasant thing but actually enjoying putting it off. i've found myself thinking up productive things to do SO THAT I CAN PROCRASTINATE ON THEM
