It is a curious and somewhat paradoxical fact that, while Mendelssohn’s personal sympathies were on the whole rather with the conservative classicists in the matter of form than with the modern progressives, by far the greatest of his works, particularly for orchestra, are those in which he heeds the modern craving for realism and program music, as illustrated in his “Fingal’s Cave” overture, the “Scotch” symphony, and the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” music. The overture to this is one of the marvels of music; for it is amazingly original from every point of view, though written by him when he was only seventeen years old.
It is commonly assumed that Italy is the land of melody; but Theodore Thomas used to maintain, and rightly, that the prince of melodists was the Austrian, Franz Schubert. Tunes flowed from his brain as spontaneously as water flows from a gushing well. He slept with his spectacles on, so as to lose no time when he jumped out of bed to jot down the melodies that came to him like inspirations from above. While he read a poem, the music suitable for it often sprang from his brain, Minerva-like.
SCHUBERT, GREATEST OF MELODISTS
THE SCHUBERT MEMORIAL, VIENNA
It is this spontaneity of Schubert’s melodies that explains their vogue, their universal popularity. Strange to say, during his life (which, to be sure, was pathetically short) his wonderful songs were, with a few exceptions, neglected, partly because with his melodies there were associated harmonies and modulations which to us are ravishing, but which to his contemporaries were “music of the future.” The shrill dissonance of the child’s cry when he thinks the Erlking is seizing him in the death-grip was as revolutionary and as far ahead of the times as anything Wagner or Liszt ever wrote. It was Liszt, by the way, who directed the world’s attention to the marvels of Schubert’s songs by playing them in his matchless way on the piano. Seeing how they moved audiences, the singers then took them up, and more and more convinced the world that among song writers Schubert was indeed king.
SCHUBERT’S BIRTHPLACE, VIENNA
The composer was born here in 1797.
It is one of the strangest facts in musical history that the great masters who came before Schubert—while some of them (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven) wrote a considerable number of songs—reserved their best inspirations for their operas, symphonies, and sonatas. Schubert was the first who was willing to put his best into a “mere song,” and that helps to explain his appeal to all music lovers.