ABSTRACT
For Schubert, Thursday 13 June 1816 was, as he began in his diary entry, ‘a clear, bright, fine day’ which ‘will remain [with me] throughout my whole life … O Mozart, immortal Mozart …’.1 Thus he described the experience of hearing a Mozart string quintet at a Viennese musical salon to which he himself contributed performances. As Elizabeth McKay puts it, quoting from these ‘few pages of a rare document in Schubert’s hand, a notebook, in which he recorded events and thoughts’ for five days during June 1816 (and later, on 8 September), Schubert here ‘enthused over the beauties of the music and the unforgettable impression it made’.2 This entry from what is essentially the composer’s private diary throws light on his deep devotion to Mozart’s music and on the impact this particular work, the string quintet he heard that day, could have on his impressionable and receptive musical mind. More than that, he felt it deeply imprinted on his heart (‘ins Herz tief, tief eingedrückt’) and believed that such beneficent impressions had the power to touch our souls enduringly (‘O wie unendlich viele solche wohlthätige Abdrücke eines lichtern bessern Lebens hast du in unsere Seelen geprägt’).3 His words convey the intense spiritual and perhaps even physiological effects of listening to the work presumably for the first time. It was certainly not Schubert’s first encounter with Mozart.4 But it is the first such documentary record the composer has left us of what was indeed to be a lifelong love of Mozart’s music.
