Soon after his arrival in Vienna, Spohr received a singular proposition from one Herr von Tost, to the effect "that for a proportionate pecuniary consideration I would a.s.sign over to him all I might compose, or had already written, in Vienna, for the term of three years, to be his sole property during that time; to give him the original scores, and to keep myself even no copy of them. After the lapse of three years he would return the ma.n.u.script to me, and I should then be at liberty either to publish or sell them. After I had pondered a moment over this strange and enigmatical proposition, I asked him whether the compositions were not to be played during those three years? Whereupon Herr von Tost replied: "Oh, yes! As often as possible, but each time upon my lending them for that purpose, and only in my presence."" He desired such pieces as could be produced in private circles, and would therefore prefer quartettes and quintettes for stringed instruments, and s.e.xtettes, octettes and nonettes for stringed and wind instruments. Spohr was to consider the proposition and fix upon the sum to be paid for the different kinds of compositions. Finding on inquiry that Herr von Tost was a wealthy man, very fond of music, Spohr fixed the price at thirty ducats for a quartette, thirty-five for a quintette, and so on, progressively higher for the different kinds of composition. On being questioned as to his object, Von Tost replied: "I have two objects in view: First, I desire to be invited to the musical parties where you will execute your compositions, and for that I must have them in my keeping.
Secondly, possessing such treasures of art, I hope upon my business journeys to make extensive acquaintance among the lovers of music, which may then serve me also in my manufacturing interests." This singular bargain was duly consummated and faithfully carried out, and the wealthy patron proved of great service to the Spohrs in procuring their housekeeping outfit from various tradesmen with whom he had dealings, and he would not suffer Spohr to pay for anything, saying only, "Give yourself no uneasiness; you will soon square everything with your compositions."
The most important of Spohr"s works is his great school for the violin, published in 1831. He left also a vast amount of chamber music, fifteen concertos for violin and orchestra, nine symphonies, four oratories, of which "The Last Judgment" is perhaps the best, ten operas, many concert overtures, etc.--in all more than 200 works, many of them of large dimensions. His best operas are "_Jessonda_" (1823), "Faust" (1818), "The Alchemist" (1832) and "The Crusaders" (1845). His orchestral works are richly instrumented, and the coloring is sweet and mellow, yet at times extremely sonorous.
During his residence in Vienna, Spohr met Beethoven many times. He was one of the first to introduce the earlier quartettes, in his concerts throughout Germany, and valued them properly. But in regard to the Beethoven symphonies he placed himself on record in a highly entertaining manner. He says of the melody of the famous "Hymn to Joy," in Beethoven"s ninth symphony, that it is so "monstrous and tasteless, and its grasp of Schiller"s ode so trivial, that I cannot even now understand how a genius like Beethoven could have written it."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Book Fifth.
THE
Period of the Romantic.
WEBER, PAGANINI, SCHUBERT, BERLIOZ, MEYERBEER, MENDELSSOHN, SCHUMANN, CHOPIN, LISZT, WAGNER; THE VIRTUOSI; MUSIC OF THE FUTURE.
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, THE ROMANTIC; MUSIC OF THE FUTURE.
In ordinary speech a distinction is made between the musical productions of the eighteenth century and those of the next following; the former being called _Cla.s.sic_, the latter _Romantic_. The terms are used rather indefinitely. According to Hegel, whose teaching coincided with the last years of Beethoven"s life, the cla.s.sic in art embraces those productions in which the _general_ is aimed at, rather than the _particular_; the _reposeful_ and _completely satisfactory_, rather than the _forced_, or the _sensational_; and the _beautiful_ rather than the _exciting_. The philosopher Hegel, who was one of the first to employ this distinction in art criticism, took his departure from the famous group of Laoc.o.o.n and his sons in the embrace of the destroying serpents. This group, so full of agony and irrepressible horror, belongs, he said, to a totally different concept of art from that of the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of Greece, in the beauty and freshness of their eternal youth. These qualities are those of the general and the eternal; the Laoc.o.o.n, in its nature painful, was not nor could be permanently satisfactory in and of itself, but only through allowance being made by reason of interest in the story told by it. According to more recent philosophers, the romantic movement in literature and art (for they are parts of the same general movement of the latter part of the eighteenth century) has its essential characteristic in the doctrine that what is to be sought in art is not the pleasing and the satisfactory, so much as the true. _Everything_, they say, belonging to life and experience, is fit subject of art; to the end that thereby the soul may learn to understand itself, and come to complete self-consciousness. The entire movement of the romantic writers had for its moving principle the maxim, _Nihil humanum alienum a me puto_ ("I will consider nothing human to be foreign to me"). Yet other writers make the romantic element to consist of the striking, the strongly contrasted, the exciting, and so at length the sensational.
Whichever construction we may put upon this much used and seldom determined term, its general meaning is that of a distinction from the more moderate writings and compositions of the eighteenth century.
_Individualism_, as opposed to the general, is the key to the romantic, and in music this principle has acquired great dominance throughout the century in which we are still living. Moreover, if the principle of individualism had not been discovered in its application to the other arts, it must necessarily have found its way into music, for music is the most subjective of all the arts; having indeed its general principles of form and proportion, but coming to the composer (if he be a genius) as the immediate expression of his own feelings and moods, or as the interplay of his environment and the inner faculties of musical phantasy.
In this sense there is a difference between the music of Bach and Mozart, on the one hand, and that of Beethoven and Schubert, on the other. Beethoven was essentially a romantic composer, especially after he had pa.s.sed middle life, and the period of the "Moonlight"
sonata. From that time on, his works are more and more free in form, and their moods are more strongly marked and individual. This is true of Beethoven, in spite of his having been born, as we might say, under the star of the cla.s.sic. He writes freely and fantastically, in spite of his early training. The mood in the man dominated everything, and it is always this which finds its expression in the music.
The romantic, therefore, represents an enlargement of the domain of music, by the acquisition of provinces outside its boundaries, and belonging originally to the domains of poetry and painting. And so by romantic is meant the general idea of representing in music something outside, of telling a story or painting a picture by means of music.
The principle was already old, being involved in the very conception of opera, which in the nature of the case is an attempt to make music do duty as describer of the inner feelings and experiences of the _dramatis personae_. Nevertheless, while leading continually to innovations in musical discourse for almost two centuries, it was prevented from having more than momentary entrances into instrumental music until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the general movement of mind known as the romantic was at its height. In France the writers of this group carried on war against cla.s.sic tradition--the idea that every literary work should be modeled after one of those of the ancient writers; subjects of tragedy should be taken from Greek mythology or history; and the characters should think like the cla.s.sics, and speak in the formal and stilted phraseology of the vernacular translations out of the ancient works. These writers, also, were those who upheld the rights of man, and produced declarations of independence. In short, it was the principle of individualism, as opposed to the merely general and conventional, for we may remember that the conventional had a large place in ancient art. Plato says (see p. 38) that the Egyptians had patterns of the good in all forms of art, framed and displayed in their temples. And new productions were to be judged by comparing them with these, and when they contained different principles, they were upon that account to be condemned and prohibited.
In farther evidence of the correspondence between the musical activity in this direction, and the general movement of mind at this period, including the shaking up of the dry bones in every part of the social order, (the French revolution being the most extreme and drastic ill.u.s.tration), we may observe that the composer through whom this element entered into the art of music in its first free development was Franz Schubert, who was born during the years when this disturbance was at its height, namely, in 1797. Moreover, the manner in which his inspiration to musical creation was received corresponded exactly to the definition of the romantic given above; for it was always through reading a poem or a story that these strange and beautiful musical combinations occurred to him, many instances of which are given in the sketch later. It is curious, furthermore, that the general method of Schubert"s musical thought is cla.s.sical in its repose, save where directly a.s.sociated with a text of a picture-building character, or of decided emotion. Thus, while it is not possible to separate one part of the works of this composer from another, and to say of the one that it belongs to an older dispensation, while the other part represents a different principle of art (both parts alike having the same general treatment of melody, and the same refined and poetic atmosphere), it is, nevertheless, true that if we had only the sonatas, chamber pieces, and the symphonies of Schubert, no one would think of cla.s.sing his works differently from those of Mozart, as to their operative principles. But when we have the songs, the five or six hundred of them, the operas and other vocal works, in which music is so lovely in and of itself, yet at the same time so descriptive, so loyal to the changing moods of the text, we necessarily interpret the instrumental music in the same light, especially when we know that there are no distinct periods in the short life of this composer concerning which different principles can be predicated.
Almost immediately after Schubert there come composers in whom the new tendency is more marked. Mendelssohn entered the domain of the romantic in 1826, with his overture to the "Midsummer Night"s Dream,"
and directly after him came Schumann, with a luxuriant succession of deeply moved, imaginative, _quasi_-descriptive, or at any rate _representative_, pianoforte pieces. Schumann, indeed, did not need to read a poem in order to find musical ideas flowing in unaccustomed channels. The ideas took these forms and channels of their own accord, as we see in his very first pieces, his "_Papillons_," "_Intermezzi_,"
"_Davidsbundlertanze_" and the like. So, too, with Chopin. There is very little of the descriptive and the picture-making element in his works. Nevertheless, they chimed in so well with the unrest, the somewhat Byronic sentiment, the vague yearning of the period, that they found a public without loss of time, and established themselves in the popular taste without having had to find a propaganda movement for explaining them as the foretokens of a "music of the future."
This representative work in music has been very much helped by the astonishing development of virtuosity upon the violin, the pianoforte and other instruments, which distinguishes this century. Beginning with Paganini, whose astonishing violin playing was first heard during the last years of the eighteenth century, we have Thalberg, Chopin, Liszt, Rubinstein, Joachim, Tausig, Leonard, and a mult.i.tude of others, through whose efforts the general appreciation of instrumental music has been wonderfully stimulated, and the appet.i.te for overcoming difficulties and realizing great effects so much increased as to have permanently elevated the standard of complication in musical discourse, and the popular average of performance.
Nor has virtuosity been confined to single instruments. There have been two great virtuosi in orchestration, during this century, who have exercised as great an influence in this complicated and elaborate department, as the others mentioned have upon their own solo instruments. The first of these was Hector Berlioz, the great French master, whose earlier compositions were produced in 1835, when the instruments of the orchestra were combined in vast ma.s.ses, and with descriptive intention, far beyond anything by previous writers. In his later works, such as the "d.a.m.nation of Faust," and the mighty Requiem, Berlioz far surpa.s.sed these efforts, every one of his effects afterward proving to have been well calculated. Directly after his early works came the first of that much discussed genius, Richard Wagner, who besides being one of the most profound and acute intelligences ever distinguished in music, and a great master of the province of opera (in which he accomplished stupendous creations), was also an orchestral virtuoso, coloring when he chose, with true instinct, for the mere sake of color; and ma.s.sing and contrasting instruments in endless variety and beauty.
The activity in musical production during the nineteenth century has been so extraordinary in amount and in the number of composers concerned in it, and so ample in the range of musical effects brought to realization, as fully to ill.u.s.trate the truth of the principle enunciated at the outset of this narrative, namely: That the course of musical progress has been toward greater complication of tonal effects in every direction; implying upon the part of composers the possession of more inclusive principles of tonal unity; and upon the part of the hearers, to whom these vast works have been addressed, the possession of corresponding powers of tonal perception, and the persistence of impressions for a sufficient length of time in each instance for the underlying unity to be realized.
As an incident in the rapidity of the progress on the part of composers, we have had what is called "the music of the future"; namely, productions of one generation intelligible to the finer intelligences of that generation, yet "music of the future" to all the others; but in the generation following, these compositions have gone into the common stock, through the progress of the faculties of hearing and of deeper perceptions of tonal relations. Meanwhile there has been created another stratum of music of the future, which may be expected to occupy the attention of the generation next ensuing, to whom in turn it will become the music of the present.
In the nature of the case, there is not, nor can there be, a stopping place, unless we conceive the possibility of a return to the conservatism of Plato and the ancient Egyptians, and the pa.s.sage of statute laws permitting the employment of chords and rhythms up to a certain specified degree of complexity, beyond which their use would const.i.tute a grave statutory offense. It is possible that the ideal of art might again be "reformed" in the direction of restriction from the uncomely, the forced and the sensational, and in favor of the beautiful, the becoming and the divine. Nevertheless, it is the inevitable consequence of a prescription of this kind to run into mere prettiness and tuneful emptiness. Protection is a failure in art. The spirit must have freedom, or it will never take its grandest flights.
And it is altogether possible that the needed corrective will presently be discovered of itself, through the progress of spirit into a clearer vision, a higher aspiration and a n.o.bler sense of beauty.
This we may hope will be one of the distinctions of the coming ages, which poets have foretold and seers have imagined, when truth and love will prevail and find their ill.u.s.tration in a civilization conformed of its own accord to the unrestricted outflowing of these deep, eternal, divine principles.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER x.x.xII.
SCHUBERT AND THE ROMANTIC.
The first two great figures of the nineteenth century were those of Carl Maria von Weber, whose work will be considered later, and the great song writer, Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828). This remarkable man was born of poor parents in Vienna, or near it, his father being a schoolmaster, earning the proverbially meager stipend of the profession in Germany at that time, amounting to no more than $100 or $200 a year. The family was musical, and the Sundays were devoted to quartette playing and other forms of music. The boy Franz early showed a fine ear. He was soon put to the study of the violin and the piano--while still a mere child being furnished with a small violin, upon which he went through the motions of his father"s part. He had a fine voice, and this attracted the attention of the director of the choir in the great Cathedral of St. Stephen"s, as it had in Haydn"s case, and he was presently enrolled as chorister and a member of what was called the "Convict," a school connected with the church, where the boys had schooling as well as musical instruction. Early he began to write, among his first works being certain pieces for the piano and violin, composed when he was a little more than eleven. In the "Convict" school there was an orchestra where they practiced symphonies and overtures of Haydn, Mozart, Kotzeluch, Cherubini, Mehul, Krommer, and occasionally Beethoven. Here his playing immediately put him on a level with the older boys. One of them turned around one day to see who it was playing so cleverly, and found it "a little boy in spectacles," named Franz Schubert. The two boys became intimate, and one day the little fellow, blushing deeply, admitted to the older one that he had composed much, and would do so still more if he could get the music paper. Spaun saw the state of affairs, and took care thereafter that the music paper should be forthcoming. In time Franz became first violin, and when the conductor was absent, took his place. The orchestral music delighted him greatly, and of the Mozart adagio, in the G minor symphony, he said that "you could hear the angels singing." Among other works which particularly delighted him were the overtures to the "Magic Flute" and "Figaro." The particular object of his reverence was Beethoven, who was then at the height of his fame, but he never met the great master more than once or twice.
Once when a few boyish songs had been sung to words by Klopstock, Schubert asked his friend whether _he_ could ever do anything after Beethoven. His friend answered, perhaps he could do a great deal. To which the boy responded: "Perhaps; I sometimes have dreams of that sort; but who can do anything after Beethoven?" The boy made but small reputation for scholarship in the school, after the thirst for composition had taken possession of him, which it did when he had been there but one year. One of his earliest compositions was a fantasia for four hands, having about thirteen movements of different character, occupying about thirty-two pages of fine writing. His brother remarks that not one ends in the key in which it began. He seems to have had a pa.s.sion for uncanny subjects, for the next work of his is a "Lament of Hagar," of thirteen movements in different keys, unconnected. After this again, a "Corpse Fantasia" to words of Schiller. This has seventeen movements, and is positively erratic in its changes of key. It is full of reminiscences of Haydn"s "Creation"
and other works. The musical stimulation of this boy was meager indeed. Not until he was thirteen years of age did he hear an opera; and not until he was fifteen a really first-cla.s.s work, Spontini"s "Vestal," in 1812. Three years later he probably heard Gluck"s "_Iphigenie en Tauride_," a work which in his estimation eclipsed them all. During the same year there were the sixth and seventh symphonies, the choral fantasia and portions of the ma.s.s in C, and the overture to "Coriola.n.u.s," of Beethoven. He was a great admirer of Mozart, and in his diary, under date of June 13, 1816, he speaks of a quintette: "Gently, as if out of a distance, did the magic tones of Mozart"s music strike my ears. With what inconceivable alternate force and tenderness did Schlesinger"s magic playing impress it deep into my heart! Such lovely impressions remain on my soul, there to work for good, past all power of time and circ.u.mstance. In the darkness of this life they reveal a bright, beautiful prospect, inspiring confidence and hope. Oh Mozart, Mozart, what countless consolatory images of a bright, better world hast thou stamped on our souls!"
Presently Schubert entered his father"s school, in order to avoid the rigorous conscription, and remained a teacher of the elementary branches for three years. His first important composition was a ma.s.s, which was produced honorably October 16, 1814, and many good judges p.r.o.nounced it equal to any similar work of the kind, excepting possibly Beethoven"s ma.s.s in C. By 1815 the rage of composition had fully taken possession of the soul of Schubert, and thenceforth poured out from this receptacle of inspiration a steady succession of works of all dimensions and characters, very few of which were performed in his lifetime. Among these works in the year 1815, there are 137 songs, of which only sixty-seven are printed as yet. And in August alone twenty-nine, of which eight are dated the 15th, and seven the 19th.
Among these 137 songs some are of such enormous length that this feature alone would have prevented their publication. Of those published, "_Die Burgschaft_" fills twenty-two pages of the Litolff edition. It was the length of these compositions which caused Beethoven"s exclamation upon his death bed: "Such long poems, many of them containing ten others." And this ma.s.s of music was produced in the interim of school drudgery. Among these songs of his boyhood years are "_Gretchen am Spinnrade_," "_Der Erl Konig_," "Hedge Roses,"
"Restless Love," the "_Schaefer"s Klaglied_," the "Ossian" songs, and many others, all falling within the production of this year. It is said that when the "Erl King" was tried in the evening, the listeners at the convict thought it of questionable success. The music of the boy at the words "My father, my father" seemed to be inexcusable, for overwhelmed with fright, he sings a half a tone sharp of the accompaniment.
At length, after about three years, Schubert"s services as a schoolmaster becoming less and less valuable, an opening was made for him by Schober, who proposed that Schubert should live with him. He was now free to devote himself to composition, and so thoroughly did he do this that in the year following, 1816, he experienced the novelty of having composed for money, a cantata of his having not only been performed upon the occasion of Salieri"s fiftieth anniversary of life in Vienna, but money was sent him for it, 100 florins, Vienna money, about $20 American. He was already composing operas, and in 1816 there was one, "_Die Burgschaft_," in three acts. In the same year there were two symphonies, the fourth in C minor, called "The Tragic," and the fifth for small orchestra. The songs of this year, however, were of more value. Among them were the "Wanderer"s Night Song," the "Fisher," the "Wanderer" and many others now known wherever melody and dramatic quality are appreciated.
The rapidity with which he composed songs was incredible. October, 1815, he finds the poems of Rosegarten, and between the 15th and 19th sets seven of them. "Everything that he touched," says Schumann, "turned into music." At a later date, calling upon one of his friends, he found certain poems by Wilhelm Muller, and carried them off with him. A few days later, his friend desiring the book, called on Schubert for it, and found that he had already set a number of them to music. They were the songs of the "_Schone Mullerin_." A year or so after, returning from a day in the country, they stopped at a tavern, where he found a friend with a volume of Shakespeare open before him.
Schubert took up the volume, turned a few pages, became interested in one of the pieces, took up some waste paper, and scribbling the lines proceeded to write a melody. This was the so-called "Shakespeare Serenade," "Hark, Hark, the Lark." The "Serenade," in D minor, is said to have been conceived in a similarly impromptu manner. In 1816 the great tenor, Vogl, made Schubert"s acquaintance, having been brought by one of Schubert"s admirers. At first the songs did not make much impression upon him; later they grew upon him, and he introduced them among the best circles of the Vienna aristocracy. Vogl appreciated the value of these songs. "Nothing," said he, "so shows the want of a good school of singing as Schubert"s songs. Otherwise, what an enormous and universal effect must have been produced throughout the world, wherever the German language is understood, by these truly divine inspirations, these utterances of musical clairvoyance. How many would have comprehended for the first time the meaning of such terms as speech and poetry in music; words in harmony, ideas clothed in music, and would have learned that the finest poems of our greatest poets may be enhanced and even transcended when translated into musical language. Numberless examples might be named, but I will only mention the "Erl King," "Gretchen," "_Schwager Kronos_," "The Mignon"s and Harper"s Songs," "Schiller"s Pilgrim," the "_Burgschaft_" and the "_Sehnsucht_.""
We are told that within the next two or three years Schubert made a number of friends, and the circle of his admirers was considerably extended. The same remarkable productivity continued. In the summer of 1818 he went to the country seat of Count Esterhazy, where he remained several months. This was in Hungary, and the Hungarian pieces are supposed to date from his residence there. It was not until 1819 that the first song of Schubert was sung in public. This was the "Shepherd"s Lament," of which the Leipsic correspondent of the _Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung_ says: "The touching and feeling composition of this talented young man was sung by Herr Jaeger in a similar spirit." The following year, among other compositions, was the oratorio of "Lazarus," which was composed in three parts--first, the sickness and death, then the burial and elegy, and, finally, the resurrection. The last part, unfortunately, if ever written, has been lost. He made attempts at operatic composition, producing a vast amount of beautiful music, but always to indifferent librettos, so that none of his music was publicly performed. It was not until 1827 and 1828 that his continual practice in orchestral writing resulted in the production of real master works. In this year the unfinished symphony in B minor was produced, in which the two movements that we have are among the most beautiful and poetic that the treasury of orchestral music possesses. The other was the great symphony in C, which was first performed in Leipsic ten years after Schubert"s death, through the intervention of Schumann. During all these years since leaving his father"s school, Schubert had been living in a very modest manner, with an income which must have been very small and irregular.
He was very industrious, usually rising soon after five in the morning, and, after a light breakfast of coffee and rolls, writing steadily about seven hours. The amount of work which he got through in this way was something incredible. Whole acts of operas were composed and beautifully written out in score within a few days. Upon the same morning from three to six songs might be written, if the poems chanced to attract him. He scarcely ever altered or erased, and rarely curtailed. All his music has the character of improvisation. The melody, harmony, the thematic treatment, and the accompaniment with the instrumental coloring, all seem to have occurred to him at the same time. It is only a question of writing it down. Very little of his music was performed during his lifetime--of the songs, first and last, many of them in private circles, and the last two or three years of his life, perhaps twenty or twenty-five in public. A few of his smaller orchestral numbers were played by amateur players, where he may have heard them himself, but his larger works he never heard. All that schooling of ear which Beethoven had, as an orchestral director in youth, Schubert lacked. His studies in counterpoint had never been pursued beyond the rudiments, and the last engagement he made before his death was for lessons with Sechter, the contrapuntal authority in Vienna at that time.
In spontaneity of genius Schubert resembles Mozart more than any other master who ever lived. His early education and training were different from those of Mozart, and musical ideas take different form with him.
While Mozart was distinctly a melodist, counterpoint and fugue were at his fingers" ends, and his thematic treatment had all the freedom which comes from a thorough training in the use of musical material.
Schubert had not this kind of training. He never wrote a good fugue, and his counterpoint was indifferent; but on the other hand he had several qualities which Mozart had not, and in particular a very curious and interesting mental phenomenon, which we might call psychical resonance or clairvoyance. Whatever poem or story he read immediately called up musical images in his mind. Under the excitement of the sentiment of a poem, or of dramatic incidents narrated, strange harmonies spontaneously suggested themselves, and melodies exquisitely appropriate to the sentiment he desired to convey. He was a musical painter, whose colors were not imitated from something without himself, but were inspired from within.
Schubert was a great admirer of Beethoven, and upon one occasion called upon him with a set of works which he had dedicated to the great master. Beethoven had been prepared for the visit by some admirer of Schubert"s, and received him very kindly, but when he began to compliment the works the bashful Schubert rushed out of doors. Upon another occasion during his last illness Beethoven desired something to read, and a selection of about sixty of Schubert"s songs, partly in print and partly in ma.n.u.script, were put in his hands. His astonishment was extreme, especially when he heard that there existed about 500 of the same kind. He pored over them for days, and asked to see Schubert"s operas and piano pieces, but the illness returned, and it was too late. He said "Truly Schubert has the divine fire in him."
Schubert was one of the torch bearers at Beethoven"s funeral. In March 1828, he gave an evening concert of his own works in the hall of the Musikverein. The hall was crowded, the concert very successful, and the receipts more than $150, which was a very large sum for Schubert in those days. For several months before his death Schubert"s health was delicate. Poverty and hard work, a certain want of encouragement and ease had done their office for him. He died November 19, 1828. He left no will. His personal property was sold at auction, the whole amounting to about $12. Among the a.s.sets was a lot of old music valued at ten florins. It is uncertain whether this included the unpublished ma.n.u.script or not. In personal appearance Schubert was somewhat insignificant. He was about five feet one inch high, his figure stout and clumsy, with a round back and shoulders, perhaps due to incessant writing, fleshy arms, thick, short fingers. His cheeks were full, his eyebrows bushy and his nose insignificant. His hair was black, and remarkably thick and vigorous, and his eyes were so bright that even through the spectacles, which he constantly wore, they at once attracted attention. His gla.s.ses were inseparable from his face. In the convict he was the "little boy in spectacles." He habitually slept in them. He was very simple in his tastes, timid and never really at ease but in the society of his intimates and people of his own station. His att.i.tude toward the aristocracy was entirely different from the domineering, self-a.s.sertive pose of Beethoven, but he was very amiable, and dearly beloved.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 67.
FRANZ SCHUBERT.]
His place in the history of music, aside from the general fact of his possessing genius of the first order, is that of the creator of the artistic song. While his pianoforte sonatas are extremely beautiful and very difficult, and antic.i.p.ate many modern effects; his string quartettes, and other chamber music, worthy to be ranked with those of any other master; and his symphonies exquisitely beautiful in their ideas, orchestral coloring and the entire atmosphere which they carry--his habitual att.i.tude was that of the writer of songs. Some of these are of remarkable length and range. One of them extends to sixty-six pages of ma.n.u.script. Another occupies forty-five pages of close print. A work of this kind is a cantata, and not merely a song.
Many of the others are six or eight pages long, and in all the music freely and spontaneously follows the poem, with a delicate correspondence between the poetic idea and the melody, with its harmony and treatment, such as we look for in vain in any other writer, unless it be Schumann, who, however, did not possess Schubert"s instinct of the vocally suitable. For with all the range which these songs cover, their vocal quality is as noticeable as that of Italian cantilenas.
[Ill.u.s.tration]