Schubert’s Serenade

Like Beethoven, Franz Schubert carried a small notebook so he could jot down musical ideas the moment they appeared. Many beautiful themes would have vanished without that habit. When inspiration ran dry, the notebook could wake the sleeping muse with sparks from better days.

Wherever he was—in the city or the fields, in a tavern or a beer garden—if a good idea arrived, out came the notebook and the theme was scratched down for later shaping. If no music paper was at hand, he would write on the first scrap he could find.

That, the story says, is how the famous ‘Ständchen’ first came into being (and the same is told of ‘Hark, the Lark’).

One Sunday in the summer of 1826, Schubert and a few friends were strolling among the villages outside Vienna. They stopped at a beer garden, chatting and enjoying the company. Schubert picked up a book of poems someone had left on the table, leafed through it, and suddenly froze on one poem.

“Such a delicious melody has just come into my head,” he blurted. “If only I had a sheet of music paper!”

A friend quickly drew a few staves on the back of a bill of fare and passed it to him. And in the middle of the hubbub of a German beer garden, Schubert wrote down the melody that has delighted countless music lovers ever since.