Schubert and His Work

by Herbert F. Peyser

Schubert and Vogl at the piano.
From a drawing by M. v. Schwind

Schubert
AND HIS WORK

By HERBERT F. PEYSER

NEW YORK
Grosset & Dunlap
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1946, 1950
The Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York
Printed in the United States of America

Foreword

A sense of helplessness and futility overcomes the writer who, in the limits of a volume as unpretending as the present one, endeavors to give the casual radio listener a slight idea of Schubert’s inundating fecundity and inspiration. Like Bach, like Haydn, like Mozart, Schubert’s capacity for creative labor staggers the imagination and, like them, he conferred upon an unworthy—or, rather, an indifferent—generation treasures beyond price and almost beyond counting. Outwardly, his life was far less spectacular than Beethoven’s or Mozart’s. His works are the mirror of what it must have been spiritually. Volumes would not exhaust the wonder of his myriad creations. If this tiny book serves to heighten even a little the reader’s interest in such songs, symphonies, piano or chamber works of Schubert as come to his attention over the air it will have achieved the most that can be asked of it.

H. F. P.