Sunday, February 14, 2010

Atzenbrugg transformations, part 1

The first transformation is from: a castle to: a monastery to: a museum commemorating Franz Schubert and the Schubert-Kreis: Atzenbrugg-Schlosspark.

The second transformation is from: the six Atzenbrugger Tänze (also called Atzenbrugger Deutsche) that were composed (or at least written down as a group) in July 1821 and published in two groups of three in D365 and D145 (see list below) to: the visual records of Kupelwieser's watercolor and a remarkable postcard depicting outdoor activities at the castle (see below).
n1 = D145n1 in E
n2 = D145n3 in A minor, ending A major
n3 = D365n29 in D
n4 = D145n2 in B
n5 = D365n30 in A
n6 = D365n31 in C
I just happened across the postcard collection on the website of the UK Schubert Institute (a "fan site" level operation). The link for this specific card is: n218 Atzenbrugg. I know nothing more about its provenance, date of the drawing, etc. Certainly the activities depicted are those we would expect of the summer holidays enjoyed by Schubert and his friends in 1820 and 1821 (Gibbs, 70). I have added two arrows. The lower one points to Schubert lounging on the grass, the upper one to a small building identified in another postcard as the cottage in which he either stayed or, more likely, composed in the mornings (I daresay the cottage is neither so prominent nor so isolated as this drawing suggests).


[update 2-23-10: Dieckmann reproduces the picture as his Figure 4 (a black & white version is Plate XVIII in Deutsch). It was made in 1821 (or 1822) as a collective effort of three persons in the Schubert-Kreis. Deutsch says that Schubert is smoking a pipe. According to Dieckmann's caption, the singer Vogl is on Schubert's left and is playing a guitar, one of the artists is sitting at Schubert's right, and the violinist is Ludwig Kraissl, described by Deutsch as a "landscape painter and violinist" (185) and by one of the Schubert-Kreis as "a mediocre landscape painter who fiddles heavenly waltzes" (325). Kraissl is listed as attending a Schubertiade on 11-11-1823 (302) and a New Year's Eve party the following month (319); he settled in Carinthia (south-central Austria) in 1824 (653). ]

Reference:
Gibbs, Christopher H. The Life of Schubert. NewYork/London: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Dieckmann, Friedrich. Franz Schubert: eine Annäherung. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1996.
Deutsch, Otto Erich. Schubert, a Documentary Diography; tr. by Eric Blom; being an English version of Franz Schubert: die Dokumente seines Lebens. Rev. and augm. ed., with a commentary by the author. London, J. M. Dent [1946].