(V) Independence.

In the autumn of 1816 Schubert would have been pondering his return for a third year of teaching at his father's school. His youthful resentment of major claims on his time would have been understandable, and his failure to attain the Laibach position may have further soured his attitude to teaching. Some time that autumn Schubert refused to return to his father's school, left home and moved to the lodgings of Franz von Schober, who lived with his sister and mother in the inner Ring. He could not have left his father's household because of its hostility to his music, for the Schuberts were among his most enthusiastic supporters; and the symbolism of leaving the modest, pious household of his father for the dandified Schober and the luxurious Persian décor of the inner city must have been painful for the elder Schubert. In 1876 Schober remarked somewhat self-servingly that ‘I shall always retain the eternally uplifting feeling of having freed this immortal master from the constraint of school, and of having led him on his predestined path of independent, spiritual creation’. For the first few months after the move, Schober was himself in Sweden. He returned towards the end of the year and Schubert was to remain with him until the following August. Around the time of his move Schubert's Fifth Symphony (d485) received its first performance at one of Otto Hatwig's house concerts. It is ironic to note that the not quite 20-year-old composer of five symphonies, over 300 solo songs (more than half of the surviving total), several dozen partsongs, four Singspiele, four masses, seven string quartets and innumerable smaller works had not yet received a single public performance in Vienna, a single public notice in a newspaper, or enjoyed a single publication. Now, gradually, these circumstances would begin to change.

It was inevitable that Schubert's phenomenal rate of productivity throughout 1815–16 would prove unsustainable. About 60 solo songs, almost a third of them to texts by Mayrhofer, survive from 1817. They include some of the most popular and enduring: Der Schiffer (d536), Ganymed (d544), An die Musik (d547), Die Forelle (d550) and Gruppe aus dem Tartarus (d583). An die Musik was one of a pair of poems by Schober; together with Trost im Liede (d546), both songs and poems express the intense idealism of music as the ultimate balm for the burdens of life. They also express the most idealistic dimension of the Schubert-Schober relationship.

Another ambitious attempt at an opera, Die Bürgschaft (d435), faltered in the third and final act. In the early months of 1817 Schober presented Schubert to the highly regarded baritone Johann Michael Vogl, whom Schubert had admired in a performance of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride four years earlier (he may also have known Vogl's Pizarro in the 1814 première of Beethoven's Fidelio). Schober insisted that Vogl – who physically towered over Schubert – read some songs on the spot. The singer is said to have heard in them ‘fine ideas’ and ‘something special’. It marked the beginning of an advocacy that lasted until Schubert's death.

Schubert's short-lived independence came to an end in the autumn of 1817, when he moved abruptly back to his father's house in the Himmelpfortgrund. The reversal may well have been triggered by financial difficulties and was perhaps hastened by his unenthusiastic resumption of teaching duties at the school. Countering this sobering development was growing public recognition. On 27 September Franz Xaver Schlechta, a member of Schubert's circle who had first met the composer at the Stadtkonvikt, published a poem, An Herrn Franz Schubert (Als seine Kantate Prometheus aufgeführt ward), in the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung; it marked the first time that Schubert's name was mentioned in a periodical. On 1 March 1818 one of Schubert's two overtures ‘im italienischen Stile’ (d590–91) was performed at the inn Zum römischen Kaiser. It marked the first performance of a Schubert work at a public concert. 11 days later an overture (probably the same one) was performed, arranged for piano eight hands, at a private entertainment at the same inn presented by the actor Karl Friedrich Müller; Schubert was one of the four pianists. About the performance Schlechta wrote: ‘Each of his shorter or longer compositions is characterized by profound feeling, spontaneous but controlled force and appealing charm …’.

Only a few months after Schubert's return home, his father was finally transferred to a school in the Rossau district; the whole family moved there to 11 Grünetorgasse. Around this same time Schubert's Symphony no.6 (d589) received its première in a house concert at Otto Hatwig's. Nearly simultaneously, the song Erlafsee (d586) was published under the title of Am Erlaf-see in the Mahlerisches Taschenbuch für Freunde interessanter Gegenden, Natur- und Kunst-Merkwürdigkeiten der sterreichischen Monarchie (Vienna) – the very first publication of Schubert's to appear in print. On 5 March Schubert applied for membership as an accompanist in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. His catalogue now included more than 500 works and he doubtless believed that he was as qualified for membership in this prestigious amateur group as anyone in Vienna. Hence his rejection, ostensibly on the grounds that he was not an amateur, must have come as a deep disappointment – especially since the society already included professional musicians. However, to block his admission only a single member of the admissions committee would have needed to raise questions about Schubert's politics or social standing. All of the composer's resentments must have evaporated when he reapplied three years later and was accepted.

In the spring Otto Hatwig moved from the Schottenhof to the Gundelhof, where his private orchestra now met. When he fell ill the concerts were moved to the apartment of Anton von Pettenkoffer where, with Schubert frequently on the viola, it met on Thursday evenings for the next two years. Leopold von Sonnleithner reported that the informal performances came to an end when Pettenkoffer, a worker in the wholesale trade, won a lottery and moved from Vienna to his own country estate. For Schubert there was, alas, no lottery. His teaching duties at his father's school became more burdensome than ever and his relationship with his father grew increasingly strained. Works such as the Sixth Symphony or the Rondo in D (d608) seem to portray a certain stylistic indecision. Evenings spent drinking Bavarian beer at the inn Zur schwarzen Katze with friends such as Anselm Hüttenbrenner offered only temporary relief. On one of these evenings in February Hüttenbrenner claimed that Schubert, after helping empty several bottles of Hungarian red wine, ‘composed the wonderfully lovely song’ Die Forelle. But Hüttenbrenner was mistaken in claiming that Schubert had composed the work on the spot; he had set down the first version more than a year earlier. It was his frequent practice to write out multiple versions (Die Forelle exists in no fewer than five), sometimes in an effort to improve the work and other times simply to make a presentation.

Schubert, Franz, §1: Life