Last night I attended a performance of Franz Schubert's Death and the Maiden Quartet. (Partial audio here.)

Said to have been composed shortly after Schubert learned he had syphilis, this poignantly, beautifully morbid quartet is based on a morbidly beautiful dialogue:

It is in the form of a dialogue between a young woman and Death, who promises her, "You shall sleep softly in my arms". The second movement of this quartet is a set of variations based on the theme from the song which is why it bears this title.

The scherzo is a grotesque dance of death, sharp and offbeat, with a gruff sort of allure. The finale is all coiled tension and bundled energy, culminating in a vertiginous acceleration to a breathless conclusion – we all know that the destiny of humanity ultimately is to lose the battle against mortality, but Schubert urges us (and himself, of course) to resist.

A traditional (Hans Baldung Grien) and a more modern (Egon Schiele) depiction:

People in "those" days (including Schiele, who died in the 1918 Influenza epidemic) were more accustomed to death than we are today, and of course many a beautiful young maiden met death. It was no less tragic simply because it was more commonplace.

Schubert's life was of course tragic, and while he was obviously depressed, his music (certainly the piece I heard last night) seems to have fused brightness and gloom. Modern phrases like "manic depression" and "bipolar" immediately come to mind, and books like this have been written on Schubert and his struggle with what physicians now call "cyclothymic depression." (A quasi-functional variety of the illness.) Considering the syphilis, I'm inclined to agree with this reviewer:

It appears that Schubert suffered from a form of manic depression, which was exacerbated when he contracted syphilis in 1822.

More on the dualistic nature:

The poems Schubert chose to set in his more than 600 songs show a lifelong obsession with death, and -- as in so much Viennese art -- dark moods often lurk beneath the gaiety. The frequent wistfulness of his music, the laughing through tears, or crying with laughter, conspire to seduce us into believing we know something of the man.

Just as Schubert's compositions explore oppositions and contrasts, some in his circle noted a "dual nature" in the man himself. They said he possessed "a black-winged demon of sorrow and melancholy" but was also a "hedonist" who indulged in "sensual living." Whether we call this mild manic depression, as has one recent biographer, Elizabeth Norman McKay, or use the Romantic label "melancholy," stark contrasts are found also in his most significant letters, which often juxtapose laments of "misery" with buoyant talk of friends, musical life, and composing.

Here's a quote from Schubert reflecting on his mental state:

In a word, I feel myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair over this ever makes things worse and worse, instead of better; imagine a man, I say, whose most brilliant hopes have come to nothing, to whom the joy of love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain, at best, whose enthusiasm (at least of the stimulating kind) for all things beautiful threatens to vanish, and ask yourself, is he not a miserable, unhappy being?—"My peace is gone, my heart is sore, I shall find it never and nevermore." I may well sing every day now, for each night, I go to bed hoping never to wake again, and each morning only tells me of yesterday's grief.

"I am now the most miserable man living," the 31-year-old Lincoln confessed. "Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not; To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better."

But I did enjoy the quartet.