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Schubert
Saturday, January 31, 2009
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(TRUMPETS)
(MUSIC UNDER)
TR (ANNC): LIVES OF THE COMPOSERS...(w TK REVERB) FRANZ SCHUBERT. (PIANO UNDER...)
Born January 31, 1797, in a suburb of Vienna, One of fifteen children, his parents were poor and the family lived in a tiny apartment, but they all played instruments (VIOLIN AND PIANO) — so there was music. Which led Schubert into the field of composing, for which he had a great gift — he could write music the way other people could toss a salad — but he didn't earn much money at it, he had to sponge off his friends, he lived in a series of dreadful apartments, he was short and fat and wore glasses and he was bipolar, and women didn't respond to his advances. He went to a prostitute, caught syphilis, and died at the age of 31.
(SCHUBERT PIANO)
GK: You never told me I was fat before. Why didn't you?
SS: You're not that fat.
GK: I am. I'm short and fat and I'm not even a good pianst because I have short fat fingers, so I don't even have that going for me. And I wear these weird little steel-rim glasses. Nobody wears these anymore. I look like a bumpkin.
SS: You're a genius.
GK: I'm tired of being a genius. I want people to like me.
SS: They love you.
GK: They like my music. I want them to like me. As me. I want people to invite me over. I want people to say, "Boy, that Schubert — he sure is a lot of fun. Knows so much about everything. And what a storyteller." But they don't. Do they? Do they—
SS: No. They don't.
GK: No. (SLOW FOOTSTEPS AND STOP)
SS: What's out there?
GK: Just looking.
SS: You expecting someone?
GK: Just looking out the window.
BRAD GREENWALD (SINGS):
Standing by the window,
On a January night,
Softly snow is falling
In the pale moonlight.
I am thirty-one years old now
And I have a bad disease
Everyone forgets that
I write symphonies.
GK: I wish I could do something about my hair.
SS: Why don't you work on your symphony instead?
GK: I'm never going to finish it.
SS: Of course you will.
GK: No, I won't. (HE HUMS A FEW BARS) I keep trying to write more but that part still goes around in my head. You ever have music you can't get out of your head. It happens to composers.
SS: It takes time.
GK: Already they're calling it Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. It's on the sheet music. Should I get different glasses?
SS: Yours are fine.
GK: Maybe a pair with jewels in them.
SS: Stop looking at yourself in the window.
GK: I can't help it.
BRAD (SINGS):
Snow is falling on Vienna,
City lights against the sky.
Other Viennese are stylish
I am short and shy.
And I have weird glasses
I'm a lonely guy.
GK: Why don't people like me?
SS: They do.
GK: No, they don't. They like my music.
SS: They like you too.
GK: Why don't they come up and talk to me?
SS: They're in awe of you.
GK: They don't like me.
SS: You're a genius, you make them nervous.
GK: It's my breath, isn't it.
SS: What?
GK: It's my breath. It's the beer and the sausages.
SS: No—
GK: I can't afford a dentist. My teeth are yellow. My breath is bad.
SS: Your breath isn't particularly bad.
GK: Oh boy. Not particularly bad. Now you tell me. I'm thirty-one and I have a life-threatening disease and now I find out I have bad breath.
SS: I'm sorry.
GK: It's okay.
SS: Would you like a breath mint?
GK: No thank you.
BRAD (SINGS):
I have written music
Symphonies and string quartets
In my dank apartment
Smoking cigarettes
I've written sacred music,
With a glass of whiskey near
Wrote "Ave Maria"
Then went out for beer.
But I'm thirty-one years old now
My life is running out
Beethoven my hero
Knew what it was about
He wrote for the moonlight
And I write for the trout.
(PIANO BRIDGE)
TR: Publishers rejected much of his work —
beautiful things — nobody would publish them, nobody would put on concerts of his work, but his friends stuck by him and bought him meals and put him up in their homes and Schubert kept spinning out songs and sonatas and anthems and masses. Every morning he started composing as soon as he was out of bed, wrote till two o'clock, had lunch, went for a walk, went back to work —
QUARTET: AN DIE MUSIK
GK: You like it?
SS: I do.
GK: It's so short.
SS: It's perfect. How much did you get for it?
GK: I traded it for a dozen glazed doughnuts.
SS: You didn't-
GK: I tried to work it up into an opera but it didn't work.
SS: You're not an opera composer.
GK: I wish I were. Opera composers get invited to parties. They're very popular. Look at Rossini. They love Rossini.
SS: They put on your opera, Die Zwillingsbrüder
GK: Yes, they did Die Zwillingsbrüder.
SS: People liked that?
GK: Die Zwillingsbrüder
SS: Yes. Die Zwillingsbrüder.
GK: It wasn't exactly on people's lips the next day. Die Zwillingsbrüder . You didn't hear people going around town talking about Die Zwillingsbrüder and, O we saw Die Zwillingsbrüder last night. Boy O boy, that Die Zwillingsbrüder. Some opera.
SS: They liked it.
GK: Do you remember the story of Die Zwillingsbrüder?
SS: Of Die Zwillingsbrüder?
GK: Right.
SS: No.
GK: Remember any songs from Die Zwillingsbrüder?
SS: No.
GK: It was no Barber of Seville, I'll say that. Doesn't even sound like an opera. Sounds like a pastry.
SS: It was okay.
GK: You know what the problem was? The umlaut. Die Zwillingsbrüder — it's the ü.
SS: Don't think about it. It's over. Look ahead.
GK: Look ahead to what? I have a terminal illness—Should I be using something on my hair? Tell me the truth. Should I be using oil on this? Or should I get a wig?
(BRIDGE)
TR: And that night, Schubert went to sleep in his bed cluttered with papers and books and bread crumbs and dirty clothes and he had a dream — (FOOTSTEPS. PASSING VOICES IN GERMAN. HORSES) he dreamed that he was walking down the street toward the cathedral and people were walking by, singing his songs— (MARIA, CHRISTINA, DAN) people in the street — a fishmonger (BRAD) a flower girl (CHRISTINA), a policeman (DAN), a nun (MARIA) — and when he got to the cathedral he heard his music coming from inside. He walked in (CREAKING DOOR OPEN, FOOTSTEPS) and there was the bride standing at the altar with her groom. Schubert had never been married, never came close, but he wrote one of the great wedding songs of all time. (PIANO) And when it's played at a wedding, if you look in the back corner pew, you'll see a short, fat gloomy man with glasses sitting there, listening.
(AVE MARIA)
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