The last impromptu is conspicuous for a gay brilliance, perhaps a better brilliance than Weber revealed, but a less effective one. It suggests Liszt. Passages remind one of the Gnomenreigen. There can be no mistaking the Hungarian quality of the melodies, the mad, rhapsodical, Gypsy style.
The first impromptu contains more of the quality of the extraordinary Schubert; is perhaps too long, but is full of fine inspiration and romantic fancy. The opening theme is in ballade style, with a rather incongruous touch of conventionality here and there. The second theme is purely lyrical, though the persistent eighth-note rhythm in which it is presented gives it a spirit of restlessness. It is thrice repeated, and the figure-work in the high registers which adorns the third statement of it is effective and beautiful. The theme itself is silenced unexpectedly and the figure-work leads down again into the deep registers, where it flows in a hushed arpeggio figure. Over this a third theme is suggested, which, with its answer woven in the accompaniment, constitutes a distinct second section of the piece, releases a different mood. It is for the most part soft, yet it is strangely impassioned. It leads back again to the first theme and the whole is repeated, with a change only of key. At the end, the first theme once more adds a touch of the ballade. The two measures before the final chords have all the strange power of suggestion which one associates with Schubert, leaving one with the impression that the music has rather passed on than ended, as if the song, like that of the ‘Solitary Reaper,’ could have no ending.
There is no contemporary music with which one may compare these impromptus. They are not sentimental idylls like the nocturnes of Field, nor show pieces like the shorter works of Weber. They have nothing in common with the music of the contemporary virtuosi, nor with that of any virtuosi. They are extraordinarily rich in genuine musical worth, and, like all of Schubert’s music, in form or out of form, inspired. Even more remarkable are the six short pieces called ‘Musical Moments.’ Three of these are but two pages long; only one more than four. Each is wholly different from the others in mood. In all of them the pianissimo prevails. Schubert is whispering, not speaking. They are essentially pianoforte music, too. Though there is nothing elaborate in the style of them, not the slightest trace of a striving for new effects, yet it may be questioned if any German pianoforte music shows greater understanding of what one might call the secret and intimate qualities of the instrument.
There is practically no thickness of scoring. Only the trio sections of the first and last are open to even suspicion in this regard. There is no commonplaceness or makeshift in the accompaniments. The monotonous tum-tum of the third is necessary in the expression of the mood of dance and song which the piece embodies, of wild dancing and intensely emotional song, more than half sad. The workmanship of all is delicate, whether it be deliberate or instinctive. There is in all a great appreciation of effects of contrast, of loud and soft, which are the very first of the peculiarities of the instrument; an appreciation of the sonority, rich but not noisy, which the pedal allows; of the charm of soft and distinct passage notes, of vigorous, percussive rhythm. All is perhaps in miniature; but the six pieces are the essence of German pianoforte music, both in quality and style; the very root and stock of the short pieces of Schumann and Brahms by which they are distinguished.
As to the nature of the separate pieces, little need be said. They are pure music, perfect art. In the sound of them are their completeness and their justification. The first may suggest dreams. The figure out of which it is made is of the woodland. It suggests the horns of elf-land faintly blowing. It is now near, now far. As the notes of the bugle will blend in echoes till the air is full of a soft chord, so does this phrase weave a harmony out of its own echo that, like the sounds of a harp blown by the wind, is more of spirit than of flesh. Even in the trio something of this echo persists.
The remaining five keep us closer to earth, are of more substantial and more human stuff. Yet note in the second, in the second statement of the first theme after the first episode, how a persistent E-flat suggests again the ghostly visitor to which the music itself seems to listen. The third is, as has been suggested, a dance, soft yet half barbaric. Is the melody sad or gay? It is blended of both, like the folk-songs of the Slavs and the Celts, the character of which it breathes. One is tempted to ask if there ever was softer music than Schubert’s. The music enters its coda here thrice piano, and twice on its way to the end it grows still softer.
The fourth suggests a prelude of Bach, except for the trio, which again has the character of a folk-song and again is softer than soft. The fifth is a study in grotesque. Even here there are fine effects, such as the echo of the first phrases; but the general impression is of almost savage accents and harsh dissonances. The last has a touch of Beethoven, though the melodies are of the kind that Schubert alone has ever heard, and the harmonies here and there rise, as it were, like shifting, colored mist across the line of the music.
It cannot be said that the melodies and harmonies of either the Impromptus or the ‘Musical Moments’ are more inspired than those of the sonatas. Indeed, there are passages in the latter of more profound and more intense emotion than finds expression in the shorter pieces. But most of the sonatas are in ruins. Their beauties are fragmentary and isolated; whereas nearly all the Impromptus and all the ‘Musical Moments’ have a beauty and firmness of line and design as well as of content. For this reason they stand as the best of his pianoforte works; and of their kind they are unexcelled in music. They are genuinely beautiful music; they are perfectly suited to the piano, drawing upon its various qualities without showing them off; they are finished in detail, balanced and well-knit in structure. A new epoch in the art begins with them.
It should be mentioned that Schubert’s waltzes and other dances bear very clearly the stamp of his great genius. They are not elaborate. Much of their beauty is in their naïve simplicity. They gain nothing by being dressed up in the gaudy raiment which Liszt chose to hang upon many of them. They should be known and played as Schubert wrote them, not as profound or as brilliant music, but as spontaneous melodies in undisguised dance rhythms. They are, in fact, dance music, full of the spirit of merry-making, not in the least elegant or sophisticated. To our knowledge there is no other music of equal merit and charm composed in this spirit expressly for the piano. Schubert is unique among the great composers in having treated dance forms and rhythms thus strictly as dances.