IV

Of Schubert’s six hundred songs, as we have said, many are of little or no musical value. Sometimes the melody seems too facile; it expresses nothing; it is like every other ordinary tune. And sometimes, especially in the longer ballads and scenas, there is a lack of any musical character; commonplace chords and scraps of indifferent melody succeed each other to fatigue. The length is sometimes enormous. ‘The Diver’ occupies nearly forty printed pages, and many others between fifteen and twenty.

It is more regrettable that some of the songs should be sad mixtures of greatness and triviality. ‘Death-Music’ is such a song. The opening bars have a deep solemnity, which is almost equal to the dignity of the theme, but seems just a little too thin or facile. Then on the words Hebe aus dem ird’schen Ringen comes a passage which is one of Schubert’s great moments, and this is repeated in finer development on the words: Alles grosses werd’ ich sehen, until one can almost feel one’s self carried into the mysteries of death. But then follow three pages of melody which are irritating, for they have much beauty and expressiveness, but seem aimless and disorganized. In ‘Viola,’ which is a matter of twenty-one pages, there are one or two of the most gracious melodies Schubert ever wrote, but the song as a whole, what with length and formlessness, is hopeless. Fülle der Liebe, again, is both beautiful and expressive, altogether a distinguished piece of work, except that its movement soon becomes so monotonous that it is unendurable.

So Schubert is often betraying the rapidity with which he worked. But he has left us at least one hundred songs which are immortal. First of all, they are worth knowing for their wonderful stock of melodies, as pure and rich as any composer in the world has ever given us. The enchantment can hardly wear off with such melodies as those of ‘Praise of Tears,’ ‘The Trout,’ Du bist die Ruh, ‘The Linden Tree,’ ‘The Inn,’ ‘To Sylvia,’ ‘Litany,’ and ‘The Serenade.’

It is by no means the melody of the drawing-room. The dainty, snobbish grace of the French bergerette is foreign to Schubert. He seems anxious to sing with everybody. It is recorded that one of his favorite pastimes was walking out with a friend on a Sunday afternoon to one of the villages in the neighborhood of Vienna, and watching the peasants dance and hearing them sing their songs. This popular sense persists in all Schubert’s music, however delicate may be his delineation of mood. He had nothing of the aristocrat in him. The son of a schoolmaster, accustomed to poverty, and accustomed to teach in an almost menial capacity in the house of Count Esterhazy, he acquired none of the tastes of the aristocrat and was content to take his pleasures as other people did. Besides, the whole tradition of German music has been remarkably close to the people. Even Mozart, the most polished of composers, wrote in ‘The Magic Flute’ music that would have delighted any peasant. So we are not surprised to find in Schubert’s lyrics a strain of folk-song, especially in the cadences and progressions which the Germans love so well. Take, for instance, the continually recurring cadence of the song Sei mir gegrüsst, or that of ‘Praise of Tears.’ It sets the spirit for the whole of the song. And it is taken from the very bone and sinew of German music. Or take the short middle section of ‘The Wanderer,’—in which the Wanderer cries out, ‘Where art thou, Where art thou, My beloved land!’—or the first of the Erl King’s songs in the ballad ‘The Erl King’; or the whole strophic tune of ‘The Fisher.’ Hum these over two or three times. Then take at random two or three German folk-songs—Ach du lieber Augustin and Immer langsam voran, or what not, and hum these. And then two or three French bergerettes. The relationship of Schubert will then be quite clear. These matters of musical analogy are subtle and slippery. They cannot be established by analysis. But they can always be proved or disproved by the sympathetic ear.

But Schubert was writing art-songs, not folk-songs. Accordingly he was obliged to give more precise meanings to his melodies than folk-songs choose to give. He must not sing only of love or sorrow, but of a certain mood of love or sorrow. This is what we mean by the refinement of melody. Not that the unrefined melody is less worthy or less beautiful, only that it is less precise. In refining his tunes Schubert’s delicate artistic sense stood him in glorious stead. The Ave Maria is first of all a beautiful German melody. But it is also a delicate, sensitive melody, which might have been sung by the essentially aristocratic Ellen. Or notice the delicacy of mood implied in Heine’s poem Ihr Bild. It is essentially a civilized mood, one which comes over a person inside of a house with the lights turned low, a mood which a folk-song would never be called upon to express. Schubert catches it in a few simple notes. He does not strain his melody in order to make it express an unusual mood. He selects his notes—that is, refines the melody—until its expression has become specific and accurate instead of broad and general.

This matter of melodic refinement (which must be divined by a sort of sixth sense) leads us to one of the essential characteristics of Schubert’s songs (and of art-songs in general)—namely, detailed expression. Here we can be more specific. Compared to later song-writers, Schubert makes very little effort to emphasize details in his texts. He is never willing in his lyrical pieces to distort or disturb the flow of the melody or the design of the whole, in order to illustrate a detail. But a slight study of his songs will show that he is never overlooking these details. And when it seems to him proper to give them precise expression, the device is always at his finger-tips. Take one of the loveliest of all his songs, Das Wirthshaus—‘The Inn’—from the cycle Winterreise. The whole song should be played through first to get the mood of weariness, of spiritual hunger and thirst, that pervades it. Then on the words die müden Wandrer—‘tired wanderers,’ comes this progression:

die müden Wandrer laden ins kühle Wirtshaus ein

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