Fig. 67.
FRANZ SCHUBERT.
His place in the history of music, aside from the general fact of his possessing genius of the first order, is that of the creator of the artistic song. While his pianoforte sonatas are extremely beautiful and very difficult, and anticipate many modern effects; his string quartettes, and other chamber music, worthy to be ranked with those of any other master; and his symphonies exquisitely beautiful in their ideas, orchestral coloring and the entire atmosphere which they carry—his habitual attitude was that of the writer of songs. Some of these are of remarkable length and range. One of them extends to sixty-six pages of manuscript. Another occupies forty-five pages of close print. A work of this kind is a cantata, and not merely a song. Many of the others are six or eight pages long, and in all the music freely and spontaneously follows the poem, with a delicate correspondence between the poetic idea and the melody, with its harmony and treatment, such as we look for in vain in any other writer, unless it be Schumann, who, however, did not possess Schubert's instinct of the vocally suitable. For with all the range which these songs cover, their vocal quality is as noticeable as that of Italian cantilenas.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE STORY OF THE PIANOFORTE.
