II
FRANZ SCHUBERT
FRANZ SCHUBERT
From an original water color by W. A. Rieder
II
FRANZ SCHUBERT
As the earliest full-fledged representative of the romantic school of composers which succeeded Beethoven, Schubert occupies a peculiar position in the history of music. His work forms the link between the classical music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven and the romantic music of Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Chopin, having certain qualities in common with each. Traditions, training, and environment allied him with the older order; but instinct led him into new paths. Scattered plentifully through the thousands of pages covered by his racing pen, many of which might be the work of some humdrum eighteenth-century kapellmeister, are features of surprising novelty, pointing unmistakably to the future rather than to the past—gleams of the true gold in a vast heap of sand. Nine-tenths of the time he is content to imitate, with amiable, unthinking garrulity, the quartets and sonatas he grew up with; the other tenth he breaks forth incontinently, an inspired pioneer. This mingling of the matter-of-course and the unexpected, of the sand and the gold, makes his music a curious study.