An artist has made a picture of this.
SCHUBERT WRITING "THE SERENADE."
Once Schubert was seen by his boyhood friends busily writing a new song. So quick did he write that the ink was hardly dry on one sheet before the next one was done. He was writing the music to a beautiful fairy poem by the great German poet Goethe. The poem is called The Erl-King, and tells how the fairy Erl-King chases a father who is rushing on horseback with his dying child in his arms. Finally, just as the father reaches his courtyard the child dies. It is a beautiful song sung by the greatest singers.
Goethe, the great poet, is not known to have met Schubert. He paid little attention to his music.
Here is his picture.
JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE.
Sometime you will learn about Joseph Haydn, who died in Vienna when little Franz was twelve years old. Papa Haydn, as he was called, was music master in a famous family called the Esterhazys.
Let us put a picture of Joseph Haydn here just to remember that he was an old man of seventy-seven when little Franz was a boy of twelve.