Schubert

This elegant, lyrical and convincing biographical novel makes an imaginative leap into the mind of Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) while hewing to the facts of his life. The Schubert we meet here is a restless, self-castigating wanderer wrestling with inner demons; a generous friend who still can fly into a drunken rage and pummel a comrade with his fists; a sublime poet of love who visits prostitutes and whose hair falls out due to syphilis or to the mercury treatments intended to cure it. Schubert's love life, as depicted by German novelist, poet and playwright Hrtling (A Woman), is a series of false starts, including his teenage romance with Therese Grob, who finally rejected him, and his unspoken love for his 13-year-old piano pupil, the Countess Karoline Esterhazy. Hrtling's writing is aptly musical, with subtle modulations and thematic variations as he weaves in letters, reviews of Schubert's concerts, verses that the composer set to music and 12 ``musical moments'' that reenact revealing incidents, such as Schubert's break with his self-righteous schoolmaster father. This moving and memorable portrait of a tragic genius rings true. (May)