Ilihi! !! i ! ItmlltRifflHtfrtlF I ■llili!'"! YT-FrNCK ® Cornell University Library ML 390.F49 3 1924 022 475 143 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Hcnrg W. Sage 189X pjAsa.^.^ ^ i^mm Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022475143 Other Books by Mr. Finck PRIMITIVE LOVE AND LOVE-STORIES. 8vo. $3.00. LOTOS-TIME IN JAPAN. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. $1.75. WAGNER AND HIS WORKS. The Story op His Life, wrrH Critical Comments. With Por- traits. 2 vols. Crown Svo. $4.00. SPAIN AND MOROCCO. Studies in Locm, Color. l2mo. $[.25. THE PACIFIC COAST SCENIC TOUR. From Southern California to Alaska. Illustrated. Svo. $2.50. CHOPIN, AND OTHER MUSICAL ESSAYS, ismo. $1.50. The Music Lover's Library SCHUBERT. M.IVV--'. J I ■innMM II I III I iiii—— — ^iiiMiiiiii iiiirii II [II r - T •- T The Music Lover's Library Songs and Song W r ?■ e r s Autlor of ' M^'agmer ui^.f His, U'l^rh- " ' (>!?«« Jnn^ Othtr 1< . ■•* Bnnsn tile SECOND EDITION i. iiitrles ScribiK'.r's S«tta New York :: :: :: *<^oi The Music Lover's Library Songs and Song Writers Henry T. Finck Atttbor of " JVagner and His IVorks," " Cbopin and Otber Mttsical Essays," Etc. SECOND EDITION With Portraits Charles Scribner's Sons New York :: :: :: 1901 Copyright, /pocJJ hy ' Charles Scribner's Sons Trow- Directory Printing and BooTcbinding Company New York ir'retace MANY music-lovers have doubtless asked themselves the question why it should have remained for Schubert, less than a cen- tury ago, to practically create the Lied, or lyric art-song. In the first two chapters of this volume I have endeavored to answer this question. The great composers and singers were so busy with mammoth oratorios, operas, symphonies, and sonatas, that the short song was esteemed hardly worthy of their serious attention; just as in England a story used to be thought of no consequence unless it filled several volumes. It is now conceded that a story of three pages may give as much evi- dence of literary genius as a three-volume novel, while Schubert, Franz, and others have proved the same principle in regard to music ; and at present every composer writes a dozen or two, if not a hundred or two, lyric songs. The singers, too, have become more rational. Not long ago they considered nothing short of Preface an operatic or concert aria big enough for a first-class entertainment. To-day they are quite as apt to choose a short Liedz.% an elab- orate aria. Special song - recitals also have multiplied remarkably of late, and the greatest operatic artists have turned their attention to them. Much has been written about the big sums paid to many of these singers ; but in the seasons 1898-99 and 1899-1900 some of them — notably Mmes. Lilli Lehmann, Nordica, Sembrich, and Schumann-Heink — gave song- recitals in New York from which all arias were excluded and which yielded them three or four times as much as an evening at the opera. I call especial attention to this fact as a sign of the times. The public is obviously eager to hear good songs, having at last real- ized what I have been preaching for years — that there are in the realm of song more neg- lected gems than in any other department of music. Robert Schumann, who was a reviewer as well as a composer, wrote, more than half a century ago, that new songs were printed in Germany every year in such abundance that one might " roof over the whole country with them." The process began long before him Preface and has continued ever since, till the number of Lieder has become as the blades of grass in a Western prairie. Unfortunately, most of these countless songs have no more individ- uality than those monotonous green blades; yet, by their very numbers, they absorb the world's attention, and the occasional beautiful flowers scattered among them are born to blush unseen, so far as the vast majority of the public are concerned. How is this unfortunate condition to be remedied ? Professional singers, with the ex- ception of a few of the greatest, like the four just referred to, do not usually select songs for their beauty, but for the opportunity they give theni to show oS their voices to best advan- tage. This throws on the amateurs themselves the task of finding out what are the best songs. Few of them, however, have time or opportun- ity to travel over the whole vast field them- selves, winnowing the chaff from the wheat. It is to save them this trouble that the present volume has been prepared — the first of its kind, strange to say, in any language. The most important function of musical crit- icism is, in my opinion, discovering and calling attention to good things the merits of which Preface are not sufficiently known to the public, and to arouse enthusiasm for them. Therefore, instead of writing a compendium of useless knowledge about insignificant composers and antiquated songs, that have merely a historic interest — making a dry catalogue of a thousand pages that nobody would read — I have endeav- ored to give this short volume an eminently practical character; ignoring what is anti- quated, trashy, or commonplace ; mentioning, so far as possible, whatever is good ; but dwell- ing in detail and with enthusiasm only on the best ; making the book, in short, a sort of Song-Baedeker, with bibliographic foot-notes for the benefit of students who wish to pursue the subject further. The French have a saying that the good is the enemy of the best ; and it is obvious that where there is so very much to choose from as in the vast domain of lyric song, there ought to be no attention for anything but the best. No one would take his guests to a ten-cent restaurant if he could have a Delmonico din- ner for the same price. Yet, musically speak- ing, this ridiculous thing is done a thousand times every day. The best songs of the great masters are actually cheaper than the epheme- Preface ral sheet-music products of the day. Many persons, to be sure, prefer ham and eggs and mashed potatoes to the " made-dishes " of a great chef ; but their palates can be educated. A year's familiarity with the songs com- mended in this volume would make even the half-musical ashamed of their former devotion to trash, and open up endless new vistas of de- light to them. This applies to those, too, who cannot sing or get a chance to listen to good singers, pro- vided only they have a piano. One of my chief delights is to sit at the piano and simply play songs, after reading the words. Many of the best Lieder have been transcribed for piano alone, by Liszt and others. In the case of those that have not, it is usually easy to play in the vocal part. Indeed, one great advan- tage of such songs without singers is that they require less technique, as a rule, than the same quality of pieces written for the piano. One of the easiest composers to treat in this way is Franz, whose songs thus make a superb addi- tion to a pianist's library ; but the player should never fail to read the poem, too, espe- cially if he is so lucky as to understand Ger- man ; and to-day all musicians are supposed to Preface know German just as, formerly, they were sup- posed to know Italian. The editions of Lieder by the great masters — even those printed in Germany — now usu- ally have English words, too, a further proof of the growing demand for good songs in America and England. Most foreign songs, unfortunately — and most good songs, unfortu- nately, are foreign — are marred by wretched translations. For this reason singers should never fail to get an edition that has the orig- inal text as well as a translation, and learn to sing in the original language ; partly, also, for the sake of recognizing the titles, which I have thought it best to refer to, as a rule, in the original, because translations differ. If the amateur wishes a literal version of the text of a particular song, any German cobbler, or hod- carrier will do better for him than the aver- age translator, who usually sacrifices sense, accent, and everything else to the ridiculous struggle for rhyme, which is of no use what- ever in a song. What incredible atrocities this custom may lead to we see in the case of Franz's setting of Mirza Schafiy's pretty poem, Es hat die Rose sick beklagt. In a bare prose version the original runs thus : " The rose Preface complained that the fragrance imparted to it by the spring was gone so soon. But I con- soled her with the assurance that it should per- vade my songs and there live forever." Of this a translator has made the following cari- cature : Oh, why so soon, the rose complained. Must all my loveliness be dying ? Oh ! far too soon my days are flying. Then have I to her comfort said. That by my little song I'd claimed A lasting spring to crown her head. Such vandalism ought to be a State-prison offence. In reviewing my Chopin and other Musical Essays the critic of the London Athenceum re- ferred to the author as " a typical exemplar of what may be called free thought in music." The reader will probably find a considerable amount of "free thought" in this volume, too, and it will perhaps in some cases annoy, if not anger, him. But I am convinced that there is in the musical world too much parroting of traditional opinions, and that we need to adjust our opera-glasses anew two or three times dur- ing every hundred years. The opinions ad- Preface vanced in this volume may in some cases be wrong ; but they are at any rate my own opin- ions. Not a single song have I commented on without having played it over myself; nor have I hesitated to say, for instance, that most of Beethoven's songs are poor stuff, or that of Schumann's two hundred and forty-five songs only twenty * are first class ; any more than I hesitate to say that of my four favorite song- writers two are still living, and one is an American; the four being Schubert, Franz, Grieg, and MacDowell. H. T. F. New York, October i, 1900. • Schumann's Widmung should be added to the list of his first- class songs. It was omitted accidentally from the list on page 1 15 in the first edition. Contents I Folk-Song and Art-Song Page Songs of Savages 4 Early European FoIk-Songs . . . . ; 7 Folk-Song Precedes Art-Song 8 Origin of Folk-Songs 11 The First Song-Writers 12 Troubadour Accompaniments 13 Folk-Song in the Church 14 What Led to Italian Opera i6 Jumbomania and the Lied 18 Bach and Handel 19 II German Song-lVriters before Schubert Gluck 22 Haydn 24 Moart 26 Beethoven 28 Reichardt, Zelter, and Zumsteeg 34 Spohr, Marschner, and Weber 37 III Schubert Contents IV German Song-IVriters after Schubert Page Loewe and the Art-Ballad lOS Mendelssohn 109 Schumann 112 Franz 123 Brahms 1S4 Jensen and Others . 161 Wagner, Strauss, and Others 167 V Hungarian and Slavic Soag-IVriters Liszt 175 Rubinstein 184 Tchaikovsky and Dvorak 188 Chopin and Paderewski 191 VI Scandinavian Song-lVriters Grieg 198 VII Italian and French Song-lVriters vm English and American Song-lVriters MacDowell 238 Portraits Schubert Schumann Franz Jensen Liszt Rubinstein Grieg MacDowell Frontispiece FACING PAGE . 112 . 124 . 162 . 176 . 184 . 19S . 238 Songs and Song -Writers Folk-Song and Art-Song JENNY LIND appreciated no other com- pliment so much as being called " the Swedish nightingale," and the same was true of Christine Nilsson. No one who has ever heard a nightingale singing in his grove will wonder at this. " Full, rich, and liquid, the notes fall with a strange loudness into the still night," writes Benjamin Kidd. " Sweet, sw-e-e-t, sw-e-e-t — lower and tenderer the long- drawn-out notes come, the last of the series prolonged till the air vibrates as if a wire had been struck, and the solitary singer seems al- most to choke with the overmastering inten- sity of feeling in the final effort." While musicians are bound to acknowledge and admire the sensuous beauty of tone and the emotional intensity and sincerity of bird- song, there is another point of view from which the Swedish prima donnas had less reason to feel proud of having their song com- pared to that of a bird. Strictly speaking, bird- Folk-Song and Art-Song song is not true song, but belongs in a class by itself, intermediate between vocal and instru- mental music. It is vocal in so far as the bird uses his own voice, but instrumental inas- much as no words are used. What raises man above the animals is articulate speech ; and it is the power of adding speech to song, poetry to melody, that makes human song vocal in the fullest and highest sense of the word. From this point of view it would be the rankest flat- tery to a nightingale to compare him to Jenny Lind or Christine Nilsson. SONGS OF SAVAGES The lower races of mankind do not yet make much use of this higher and unique double function of the human voice. Though they have plenty of crude music their tunes are usually songs without words, or with words that do not mean anything. Miss Alice Fletcher says, in her suggestive Study of Omaha Indian Music, that " comparatively few Indian songs are supplied with words." Wal- laschek, summing up his researches relating to the lower races in all parts of the world, declares that " the most striking feature of all the savage songs is the frequent occurrence of words with no meaning whatever " ; and that 4 Songs of Savages " in primitive times vocal music is not at all a union of poetry and music. We find, on the contrary, vocal music among tribes which, owing to the insufficient development of lan- guage, cannot possibly have any kind of poetry." In his entertaining book on the Australian savages Lumholtz relates that " they themselves sometimes do not understand the words which they sing " ; and Curr tells us how songs that are sung at the corroborees, or nocturnal dances, pass from one tribe to others who often have no idea of the meaning of the words, since every one of the wandering tribes has its own language.* Not all the songs of savages, however, have the instrumental character just referred to. Many of them are improvisations sung in the evening on the events of the day, and in these cases the words are as important as the tunes, if not more so ; though the " sentiments " are, of course, extremely trivial and selfish. Thus Ehrenreich relates f how the Botocudos of Brazil amuse themselves in the evening by singing " To-day we had a successful hunt ; we killed this or that animal ; now we have enough * Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, pp. 157-158; Curr, The Australian Race, vol. i., p. 92. t Zeitschrift fur Ethnologic, vol. xix., p. 32. 5 Folk-Song and Art-Song to eat ; meat is good to eat, brandy is good to drink," and so on. A good sample of the aboriginal Australian song is the following : The Kangaroo ran very fast, But I ran faster ; The Kangaroo was fat ; I ate him. Kangaroo ! Kangaroo ! The American Indians had war- songs, prayers for good weather and for success in various enterprises, calls to ceremonial repast, songs of thanks, mystery songs, dance and game songs, and so on. In these we have the germs of the folk-songs of mediaeval Europe. It must be remembered that our own ancestors were, two thousand years ago, barbarians like the American Indians. Tacitus relates that it wAs the custom of the northern warriors to sing the exploits of their great heroes, and that they had another kind of war-songs which they used to arouse a warlike spirit in themselves and at the same time to inspire terror in the enemy. On festive occasions, he says, "the barbarians made the valley and mountains echo their joyous song and their loud, wild noises." Early European Folk-Songs EARLY EUROPEAN FOLK-SONGS It would be interesting to know just how our barbarian ancestors sang, and what changes their music passed through before it assumed the form of the mediaeval folk-songs that have been preserved for us. But there was no phonograph in those days, nor any practical way of writing music. When Christianity be- gan to extend its influence more widely, in the seventh century, the aboriginal music of the Teutons, moreover, came into conflict with the imported Gregorian chant of the Church, and the churchmen made systematic efforts to destroy the old heathen tunes that were dear to the populace from long association with their customs and superstitions. Some centuries later, when the church composers began to re- cord music in a permanent way, the heathen folk-music was still left out in the cold ; for these composers were naturally more anxious, as Dr. Riemann has aptly remarked, to hand down to posterity the products of their own pens than the folk-songs, which were like wild flowers that have to take care of themselves. Luckily, however, they did not disdain, on occasion, to adopt these folk-songs as cantus firmi, or themes, and weave them as tenor melo- 7 Folk-Song and Art-Song dies, not only into their secular, but also their sacred compositions. This process began as early as the twelfth century, and to it we owe the preservation of not a few of the old songs — though just how old, no one can say. In some cases the popular melody was apparently kept intact ; in others, where it was introduced into a sacred composition, it had to be disguised, more or less, on account of the frivolous or ri- bald text associated with it ; and still more fre- quently the exigencies of composition induced the writers to disguise the tunes by shortening, lengthening, or otherwise changing them. However, by comparing the different versions of the same melody made by several composers, scholars have been enabled to restore some of the originals with tolerable accuracy. FOLK-SONG PRECEDES ART-SONG Historians of music have an incomprehensible habit of speaking of a special " period of folk- song," and they discourse learnedly in regard to its date — whether it was in the fourteenth or the sixteenth century. Rockstro gives the readers of his History of Music the extraordi- nary information (pp. 37-41) that secular song originated among the Troubadours and Minne- singers, passed from them to the Meistersingers, Folk-Song Precedes Art-Song and thence " brought its beneficent influence to bear upon the great mass of the people," in the form of the national or folk song ! As a mat- ter of fact folk-song has always existed in one form or another, as we have just seen ; and as regards the Troubadours (who flourished from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries) there is every reason to believe that most of their tunes were either copies of Gregorian chants or imitations of the current folk-songs. Dr. Schneider, after an elaborate discussion of this question,* comes to the conclusion that there is little originality in the Troubadour songs or in those of the German Minnesingers ; while the pedantic artisans who vaingloriously called themselves Mastersingers, not only derived most of their tunes from the church, but were sworn enemies of the naive, simple folk-music. Wagner brings out this point vividly in his comic opera Die Meister singer, wherein these masters express their contempt for the beautiful melody Wal- ter sings, when he explains — in answer to their question as to who was his teacher — that the songs of birds and other sounds of nature had taught him how to sing. Rockstro's radical error lies in the assump- *H. E. Schneider, Das deutsche Lied in geschichtlicher EnU Tuickelung. Three vols. Leipzig, 1863. Vol. i., p. 237 seq. 9 Folk-Song and Art-Song tion that music was given to the people by pro- fessionals. As a matter of fact, music "just growed" among the people. They invented songs for every phase of life, from the cradle to the grave, in the cities as well as in the country. Lovers, soldiers, students, hunters, peasants, shepherds, workingmen — all had their peculiar ditties. There were songs serious, songs com- ic or satirical ; songs relating to the home, the field, the forest, the sea; songs of nature and travel, of parting and reunion ; drinking, wed- ding, mourning songs ; with a thousand others of local, national, or historic interest. For local color the Laplander has his reindeer-songs, the Russian his songs of the steppe and the snow- field, the Southern negro his plantation-songs, the Swiss and Tyrolean mountaineer his Yodler, and so on in all parts of the world.* \ ♦ The discussion of these various national phases of music would fill a big volume. Indeed, Carl Engel has compiled a book of over a hundred pages — The Literature of National Music (Lon-; don, 1879) — containing merely the titles and brief descriptions of important collections of national music, or of treatises on the sub- ject. See also the section on national music in the Annotated Bibliography of Fine Art and Music by Russell Sturgisand H. E. Krehbiel, pp. 61-63. Some remarks on " exotic " folk-songs may be found in my article " Music in Russia, Poland, Scandinavia, and Hungary," printed in Professor Paine's Famous Composers and Their Works. Boston, 1891. Vol. ii., pp. 845-866. For fuller details see Mrs. Wodehouse's excellent article on Song in 10 Origin of Folk-Songs ORIGIN OF FOLK-SONGS It is probable that, as I have said elsewhere, " some of the finest folk-songs were first in- vented by crude peasants in moments of grief or joy. Such crudities as remained in this song were gradually removed as it went from mouth to mouth, as pebbles are polished by constant friction; and finally a melody re- mained as finished and epigrammatic as those proverbs of the people which have a similar origin, and as perfect in form as a professional genius could have made them." On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that some of the best folk-tunes may have been conceived by men of genius. Suppose a Schubert or a Wagner were born among peasants (such a thing is quite possible) in a region where there was not even a piano. Instead of writing art- songs with elaborate accompaniments, or still more elaborate operas, such a genius would have to confine himself to originating simple melodies. He might enjoy some local fame as a tune-maker, but that fame would die with Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. iii., pp. 584- 632. This article has, indeed, much more to say about folk-song than about art-song. The evolution of folk-song from a formal point of view is admirably discussed in chapter iii. of Dr. Parry's Evolution of the Art of Music. II Folk-Song and Art-Song him, and in the meantime his song would have travelled from mouth to mouth to distant vil- lages and countries, every one enjoying it but no one caring for its author's name. THE FIRST SONG-WRITERS These considerations explain why folk-songs seem national rather than individual products, and why it was that for the first thousand years of the Christian era music was nameless. There were plenty of songs, but no song-writers. Pro- fessed, deliberate inventors, who proudly at- tached their names to the poems and tunes conceived by them are not encountered before the eleventh century, when we come across the Troubadours in Southern France. The names of about four hundred and fifty Troubadours of all ranks have come down to us ; but, as just stated, their art was derived chiefly from the folk-song, notwithstanding the derivation of their name from trobar or trouver, to find or in- vent. We must also bear in mind that the creative faculty is rare always and everywhere, and that we therefore naturally expect to find more originality and merit in miscellaneous folk-songs, the productions of millions of name- less singers, than in the courtly songs of a few hundred named Troubadours. Troubadour Accompaniments TROUBADOUR ACCOMPANIMENTS Inasmuch as many of the Troubadours and Minnesingers travelled about, like common minstrels, from castle to castle, exercising their art to make a living, they may be classed among professionals. It is likely that in this capacity they helped to develop one side of their art which chiefly distinguishes the art-song from folk - song — the instrumental accompaniment. While folk-songs are commonly conceived as melodies requiring no accompaniment and usually sung without it, the mediaeval bards under consideration habitually sang to an in- strumental accompaniment. That no special importance was, however, attached to it is evi- dent from the fact that the old musical manu- scripts contain no traces of these instrumental accompaniments. We know that various in- struments were used — mediaeval varieties of the fiddle, the harp, the zither, the bagpipe, etc. — but just how they sustained the voices re- mains a matter of conjecture. In many cases, no doubt, the instrument simply played along the vocal melody, while the harplike instru- ments supplied an occasional arpeggio, possibly a few chords — though it must be remembered that the use of chords implies some knowledge 13 Folk-Song and Art-Song of harmony, and the harmonic sense was only just beginning to develop at this time. In all probability the chords p'ayed by these min- strels were as erratic as those that so many of our untrained singers perpetrate when they try to play their accompaniments on the pianoforte. FOLK-SONG IN THE CHURCH The Troubadours and Minnesingers may be regarded as the professional representatives of mediaeval secular art. Not content with capt- uring them, the folk-song also invaded the province of church music. Believing that the service could be made more impressive by again allowing the congregation — as in the early days of Christianity— to join in with song, Luther adopted a number of the most popular folk- songs and substituted them for the monotonous Gregorian chants. The populace could thus give vent to their enthusiasm in a language that they understood ; and the enemies of Luther were doubtless right in holding that the suc- cess of the Reformation was greatly promoted by thus invoking the aid of congregational folk-song. This was in the sixteenth century, but we have already seen that the church composers had begun as early as the twelfth century to 14 Folk-Song in the Church weave folk-songs into their compositions. The result was, however, more ingenious than ar- tistic ; and this brings us to an important point — the inferiority of the mediaeval art-music to the folk-song. The unknown creators of folk- songs not only invented their own verses as well as their tunes, but invented both at the same time. We have here an interesting illus- tration of the adage that " extremes meet." In all genuine folk-songs words and music are born twins, just as they are in the music dramas of Richard Wagner. In the folk-song, as Wagner himself wrote, "the word-poem and the tone- poem are one and the same thing. The peo- ple never think of singing their songs with out words. ... If in course of time and among different peoples a melody varies, the poem varies with it ; separation of the two is inconceivable to those who sing them; they seem to belong together, like husband and wife." Even when folk-music was harmonized, as in the madrigals and frottole which were so popu- lar in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the voices were managed in such a way that the words were still intelligible. But in the poly- phonic (i.e., many-voiced) art-music all respect for the words was cast aside and the melodic harmonies were woven into such complicated 15 Folk-Song and Art-Song woofs that it became impossible to follow and understand the words. With some honorable exceptions the compos- ers of polyphonic art-music were too much in- clined to treat their tasks as mathematical prob- lems or Chinese puzzles rather than as a means of artistic expression. Sometimes vocal pieces were written with as many as thirty different parts. In some of the canons the second voice had to begin at the end of the opening melody and crawl backward like a cra^yfish — hence called a crab-canon. In other cases the singers had to guess at what bar they must come in, or guess what key they must sing in ! Some- times the voices had to sing together in differ- ent time. The direction clama ne cesses (bawl without stopping) meant that the rests were to be ignored ; noctem in diem vertere, that the light notes must be read as dark ones, etc. WHAT LED TO ITALIAN OPERA It is one of the most interesting facts in the history of music, that Italian opera originated partly in a spirit of rebellion against this com- plicated polyphonic music, which had once more degraded the human voice to the level of an inarticulate instrument. The inventors of Italian opera held, with the Greek philosopher i6 What Led to Italian Opera Plato, that of the three components of music, speech was first in importance, rhythm next, and melody third. They not only tabooed the Chinese puzzles of "the church composers, but they went so far in their eagerness to do justice to the words as to manifest in their composi- tions what one of them boastingly called " a noble contempt for melody " — nobile sprezzatura del canto. To those of us who remember the operas of Rossini and Donizetti, in which the words are mere pegs for the florid tunes, this seems a strange attitude for Italians to assume. In truth it was not much more than a fad — an at- tempt to revive the glories of the Greek dra- ma, in which music was united with the spoken words. Italian opera soon threw overboard the respect for words shown by its originators, and its chief attraction became the da capo aria, the abject of which was to show off a singer's lung power and agility. The fayorites of the eight- eenth-century Italian audiences were artificial male sopranos, like Farinelli, who was frantical- ly applauded for such circus tricks as beating a trumpeter in holding on to a note, or racing with an orchestra and getting ahead of it ; or Caffarelli, who entertained his audiences by singing, in one breath, a chromatic chain of trills up and down two octaves. Caffarelli was a pu- 17 Folk-Song and Art-Song pil of the famous vocal teacher Porpora, who wrote operas consisting chiefly of monotonous successions of florid arias resembling the music that is now written for flutes and violins. To such depths had art-song degenerated on the operatic stage. Not all Italian opera-com- posers, it is true, allowed their music thus to de- generate into mere displays of instrumental vo- calism. Lulli and Rameau in France, Purcell in England were also among those who had higher ideals. But it took a courageous and deter- mined reformer like Gluck to establish the great principle of the music-drama that "the play's the thing " and the music merely a means of heightening the effect of the words, as a painter brightens a sketch by coloring it. He was the right man at the right time ; yet what he did was no more than applying to the opera what had long been the vital principle of folk-song. JUMBOMANIA AND THE LIED The folk-song, however, did not get the credit for having anticipated and suggested this great reform. On the contrary, it languished in ob- scurity and contempt. For nearly two centu- ries, from Scarlatti to Donizetti, the operatic aria flourished rankly, ruling the musical world not only in the theatre but in the cantata and l8 Bach and Handel the oratorio. It was the " big thing " in vocal music, as the sonata was for the piano-forte, the symphony for the orchestra. During all ,this time the short song was looked on as hardly worthy of the attention of serious composers. Even when a simple song was introduced in a larger work it went by the name of "ode" or " aria." The folk-song, or Lied, was tabooed in professional circles. We have here, in fact, another illustration of what I have elsewhere called Jumboism * or Jumbomania — the ten- dency to esteem art in proportion to its bulk, to measure it with a yardstick — the tendency which even in the nineteenth century prevented Chopin and Franz from being at once recog- nized as geniuses of the first rank, because they wrote no five-act operas or four-story sympho- nies, but only short pieces and songs. On this principle an elephant like Jumbo would be a finer animal than a humming bird or a bird of paradise, a sunflower more beautiful than a pansy. BACH AND HANDEL From this point of view — and from this only — can we understand why it remained for Schubert to practically create the lyric art- * Chopin and Other Musical Essays, 1889, pp. 6-8, 19 Folk-Song and Art-Song song which we now call the Lied. Nothing could more vividly illustrate the contemptuous disregard of the Lied in the eighteenth century than the fact that Bach and Handel (both born in 1685) paid no attention to it. Bach wrote thirty volumes of cantatas, passions, and other species of vocal music, but only two Lieder — according to some authorities only one.* Handel wrote thirty-nine Italian and three German operas, two Italian and nineteen Eng- lish oratorios, twenty anthems, etc., but only one song — a hunting song for bass voice.f There was of course nothing in the world to prevent Bach and Handel from writing im- mortal Lieder, had they felt inclined to do so. Bach's cantatas contain many arias that are as melodious and as expressive as a Schubert song, while his recitatives are often so flexible and eloquent, so imbued with the spirit of the words, so passionately dramatic, that they fore- shadow the latest developments of the Lied and the music-drama in Franz, Liszt, and Wagner. Handel is more florid and less dramatic than *Spitta: Johann Sebastian Bach, 1880, vol. i., pp. 759, 834, 83s, accepts the ErbauUche Gedanken eines Tabackrauchers as genuine, while rejecting the Willst du dein Herz mir schenkm ; whereas Schneider (vol. iii., p. 184) believes that both were written by Bach. tSee Grove, vol, iii., p. 621. 20 Bach and Handel Bach, yet his operas and oratorios also contain arias in abundance that vie with our best Lieder.* Unlike Bach and Handel, the great German classics who followed them — Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven — did write a number of lyric songs, some of them genuine Lieder, wherefore our attention must be bestowed on them. We shall find, however, that they, too, were unconsciously infected with Jumbomania, for they treated the Lied as a mere trifle, un- worthy of their best efforts. * The great song specialist, Robert Franz, spent half his life editing and restoring the works of Bach and Handel. He issued several collections of arias selected from their vocal works which cannot be too highly commended to the attention of singers. II German Song-Writers Before Schubert GLUCK GLUCK was already sixty-three years old when (in 1770) he wrote his first and only songs with piano-forte accompaniment. They were a musical setting of seven odes by the poet Klopstock, and they appeared in print under the elaborate title of "Klopstocks Oden und Lieder beym Clavier zu singen in Musik ge- setzt von Herrn Ritter Gluck, cum Priv. S. C. M., zu finden in Wien bey Artaria & Covtpagnie." * Before Klopstock had had a chance to hear this setting of his odes he had been told " by a great authority " (as he wrote to a friend) that Gluck was "the only poet ampng the com- posers," and that all who had heard these songs had been much pleased with them. This admiration it is impossible for us to share, * No. 2,250 of the Edition Peters comprises a reprint of this original edition, besides two arias, with an appendix containing explanatory notes by Max Friedlander. Gluck for these songs are simple to the verge of puerility. The melody moves along in con- ventional intervals without charm or original- ity, and the only harmonic touch of interest that I have noticed is in Der Jungling, after the words " Donner Sturm." It is amusing to read that one day when Gluck and his niece paid Klopstock a visit the poet wished the niece to sing for him the Willkommen du silberner Mond, but that Gluck objected on the ground that she could not yet do it, whereupon " he sang it himself with a rough voice " ; amusing, I say, because the ode is as simple as a folk- song. The niece did, however, sing for the poet "in an enchanting way " the ode, /irA ^?« ein deutsches Madchen, which has been incor- porated in a school-book for German girls, and is therefore the best known of these melodies. The best of them, however, is Die Sommer- nacht. It is interesting to note that these odes were composed just about the time that Gluck wrote his famous Alceste preface, in which he ex- plained his operatic reforms. As was to be expected, he applied to the song with piano- forte accompaniment the same reforms as to the operatic aria, eliminating all superfluous ornament, adapting the melodic accent care- fully to the word-accent, and making the 23 German Song-Writers Before Schubert melody heighten the effect of the text as color does that of a sketch in painting. In this, and in this alone, lies Gluck's title to remembrance as a song-writer. He evidently did not con- sider it worth while to bestow as much care on a simple, detached song as on an operatic aria. HAYDN Regarded simply as music, Haydn's songs are much more interesting than Gluck's; but from the point of view of the ideal Lied they are inferior, because they are absolutely instru- mental in character. Whereas Gluck sought, above all things, to make the music reflect the spirit and letter of the poem, Haydn was habitu- ally as reckless as any composer of fashionable Italian operas, in using his text merely as a peg to hang his tunes on. It cannot be said that the songs he wrote with piano-forte accompaniment* are without all claims to consideration. His Liebes Mddchen, kor' mir zu is as graceful and pretty as a folk- song, somewhat suggestive of Schubert's Heide- roslein. In the two introductory bars to Lachet nicht, Mddchen there is also, perhaps, a slight *No. 1,351 of the Edition Peters is a coUection of thirty-four Haydn Lieder. 24 Haydn foreshadowing of Schubert ; vfhileAndte Freund- sckaft is a pleasing little song in the folk style, of the religious variety. In O siisser Ton the ac- companiment has in part the genuine character of the modern German Lied, with splendid har- monies in the three bars preceding the words " In Echo's Kluft." Interesting harmonies are also to be found in Stets barg die Liebe sick, in which the music that goes with the words " Sie glich der Duldung " again foreshadow Schu- bert. In Der Umherirrende there are a few bars ("Unken wehklagen" and "Thai verdoppelt das Grausen ") of genuine characterization in music of the dismal suggestiveness of the words (" where tree-toads with their plaintive notes, and the hooting owls increase the weirdness of the lonely vale "). The best by far, and the most famous of Haydn's songs is his patriotic hymn Gott er- halte Franz den Kaiser {God save our Emperor Francis). Apart from this song and the details al- ready noted in a few others, there is little to commend in Haydn's productions in this line. Ein Kleines Haus and Antwort auf die Frage eines Mddchens are not bad as instrumen- tal pieces, but as Lieder they do not pass muster. His English Sailor's Song {Mdtrosenlied) has so little of a specific marine character that it might 25 German Song-Writers Before Schubert as well be sung to " Mary Had a Little Lamb." Modern taste requires more spice in music, and to-day even an inferior cook would understand that he must put more salt into a sailor's song. To realize vividly how fastidious we have be- come, as compared with the music-lovers of a century ago, the reader may compare Haydn's placid, shallow, and frigid First Kiss {Der erste Kuss) with the passionate ecstasy of Chopin's My Delights. MOZART Unlike Haydn, Mozart was specifically a composer for the voice. When he was only fourteen years old his opera Mitridate was pro- duced in Milan and repeated twenty times. All but two of his operas were written to Italian librettos, and it is not an idle boast of the Ger- mans that their Mozart's Don Giovanni is the best of all Italian operas. No Italian com- poser, either of the old Neapolitan school or among those of the nineteenth century — Ros- sini, Donizetti, Bellini — was a greater master than Mozart of the bel canto or beautiful song ; either in the broad, expressive cantabile or in the fioriture (vocal embroideries). All the more surprising is it that Mozart did hardly anything to help along the Lied. 26 Mozart Among his three dozen or more songs,* there are not even as many as among Haydn's that present any points of interest. In looking through my collection I found only five that I would care to hear again : the cradle song, Schlafe tnein Prinzchen, Set du mein Trost, Das Lied der Trennung, Das Veilchen, and Ich wUrd' auf meinem Pfad ; and of these ovA.y Das Veilchen {The Violet) ranks with the songs that live apart from the fame of their makers. The others in this collection would not be reprinted to-day, were it not for Mozart's name on the title-page. Some of tliem are almost incredibly weak, from every point of view ; in many of them the text is maltreated as to accentuation, and its emo- tional import is not reflected in the melody; while others are marred by pompous operatic phraseology. Tlie Violet is free from these blemishes. It is charming in melody ; simple, but expressive, in its harmonies. Here, for once, Mozart conde- scended to give us his best, inspired as he must have been by Goethe's exquisitely pathetic poem about the modest violet which, when the lovely maiden coming across the meadow does • The exact number is uncertain. Some songs are incorrectly attributed to Mozart ; while others, perhaps by him, bear the names of other writers. 27 German Song- Writers Before Schubert not — as it had hoped — stoop to pick it to adorn her bosom, yet dies happy because it is her foot that crushes out its life. The time for the musical Lied had, however, not yet come. Even Mozart gave the modest violet only a qassing thought ; for the rest, he was, like the world in general, interested chiefly in musical sunflowers. The symphony, the sonata, the opera absorbed the attention of the musical world ; to write long-drawn-out arias was the ambition of the composers, to sing them the desire of the vocalists. The Jumbomania had not yet subsided. Mozart, like Bach, Han- del, and Haydn, wrote many melodies that would have made excellent songs ; but he pre- ferred to work them up as operatic arias, or as the slow movements in his symphonies and quartets. Such gems were not to be wasted on a mere Cinderella like the Lied. BEETHOVEN In Beethoven we still find this disposition to treat the Lied as a mere bagatelle, unworthy of a composer's best thoughts and efforts. In- deed, he represents the climax of the tendency toward big things. Not only was the sonata, the symphony in four movements, his special sphere, but he took particular delight in en- S8 Beethoven largtng the several movements. His Eroica is twice as long as any symphony preceding it. From such a man we must not expect much sympathy for the short Lied ; and we are not surprised to hear that he remarked to Roch- litz : " Songs I do not like to write." Beethoven's indifference to the Lied is, how- ever, less remarkable than Mozart's, because he was not, like Mozart, a born composer for the voice ; but rather, like Haydn, an instrumental specialist. The list of his works into which the voice enters is insignificant compared with his compositions for instruments ; and although one of his most striking innovations was the introduction of vocal solos, quartets, and cho- ruses into his last symphony he did not, like Haydn, learn in his later years to treat the voice in a more vocal manner. In view of Beethoven's declaration that he did not like to compose songs, it is surprising to find nevertheless that complete collections of his Lieder contain more than sixty numbers. At least two-thirds of these are utterly un- worthy of their composer. In going over my volume, a few days ago, with pencil behind my ear, I found occasion to mark forty-five of them as " poor," " childish," " empty," " medio- cre:" namely, numbers 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21-25, 30, 32-39, 40, 41, 45-49. 29 German Song-Writers Before Schubert 50-59, 60, 62, 63 in the Breitkopf & Hartal edition. Fifteen I marked " fair " or " not bad," while only three have the word "good" at- tached to them. Judgment and taste differ, of course ; I can only speak for myself. The three I have marked "good" are the only ones I should care to have put on a program for my own entertainment. They are Adelaide, Die Ehre Goties aus der Natur, and In questa tontba. Adelaide was composed when Beethoven was only twenty-five years of age, and there are good reasons for holding that in the later years of his life he had no special liking for it. There were moments when he felt inclined to destroy — could he have done so — some of his early compositions, including Adelaide and the Septet ; but that was doubtless due largely to the im- pression that those works had an undue share of popularity as compared with better things of his that were not sufficiently known and appre- ciated at the time. He cannot have been so lacking in self-judgment as not to know that Adelaide was far superior to most of his songs ; and he must have been greatly interested in the poem when he set it to music, for he wrote to its author, Matthison, that he considered it " heavenly." Structurally Adelaide is not a model Lied, 30 Beethoven being rather a solo cantata in the old Italian sense of the word. To music-lovers, however (as distinguished from professionals), the form of a song is a matter of subordinate importance. The vast majority of them have no more thought of analyzing the form of a piece of music than they have of parsing a poem they like or of dissecting a flower they admire, after the manner of a botanist. They ask merely, " Is the melody fresh and pleasing, the rhythm stir- ring, the harmony varied and interesting?" and if these questions can be answered in the affirmative they take the song to heart, even though it be not symmetrical in form. From this point of view Adelaide is a good song. Partly, perhaps, because it is a sort of enlarged " lyric scene " rather than a Lied, he did not grudge it some of the original melodic ideas of which he was so prolific in his instrumental works, and took pains to elaborate the accom- paniment in accordance with the spirit of the text, introducing descriptive details and atmos- phere. Die Ehre Gottes aus der Natur is one of a group of religious songs of a choral-like char- acter, foreshadowing some of Franz's Lieder, while In questa tomba oscura {In this dark tomb) is known to concert-goers as a sombre setting of a sombre text— a disappointed lover's bitter 31 German Song-Writers Before Schubert cry for the rest which the grave alone can bring him. In others of his songs Beethoven was less successful than here in creating a musical at- mosphere in harmony with the mood of the poem — in Wonne der Wehmuth, for instance, or in the Liebes-Klage. For the expression of hu- mor he shows still less aptitude. In Urian's Reise um die Welt ( Urian's trip around the world) the only comic thing, to my mind, is the repe- tition, no less than fourteen times, of Bee- thoven's commonplace twelve bars of music. Again, what fun there is in The Kiss (" Ich war bei Chloen ganz allein ") is entirely in the text ; nor does_ the music of Beethoven's setting of the flea song from Goethe's Fausf (" Es war einmal ein Kbnig") reflect the spirit of the poem. Nothing, indeed, proves more conclusively the purely instrumental character of Beetho- ven's genius than his failure to be inspired by Goethe's poems, highly though he esteemed them. Herein he differed from Mozart, as we have seen. From Haydn he differed in this, among other things, that patriotism did not help him to write anything even remotely comparable to Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser. His Kriegslied der Oesterreicher {War-song of the Austrians), composed in the same year as 32 Beethoven Haydn's national anthem, is extraordinarily weak — almost childish, though he was twenty- seven when he wrote it. Even love — and he was often in love — did not teach him to write immortal songs, though the majority of his songs belong to the erotic genre. The fifteen songs which I have marked as having some merit, but not enough to enable them to rank among the gems of German song, are An die Hoffnung, Gott deine Gate, Vom Tode, Gottes Macht, Mailied, Mar mot te, Gretel's War- nung, Lamante impaziente, Lebens-Genuss, Wonne der Wehmuth, Seknsuckt, Das Gluck der Freund- schaft, Opferlied, Der Wachtelschlag, Ah die Geliebte sich trennen wollte. In several of these the excellence lies chiefly in some interesting detail of the accompaniment; and it may be said in general that Beethoven's direct contri- butions to the development of the Lied lie al- most entirely in this direction. I have been particularly interested in finding a few songs in which the accompaniment foreshadows Schu- bert. One of these is Seknsuckt, especially at the words "mocht ick kinuber, da mockt ich wohl kin." The fifth and sixth bars of Vom Tode, and more strikingly Als die Geliebte sick trennen wollte, suggest details of Schubert's The Wanderer. Beethoven's Marmotte also makes one think of Schubert's Leiermann {^Hurdy-gurdy 33 German Song- Writers Before Schubert man). The subject is somewhat similar, though Beethoven's text is a comic mixture of German and French: Ich komme schon durch manches Land Avec que la marmotte Und immer was zu essen fand Avec que la marmotte* (the last line being repeated five times) ; whereas Schubert's Leiermann moves us to tears not only because " his tray remains al- ways empty," but because of the heart-rend- ing pathos of the exquisite music, which is in- finitely superior to Beethoven's. REICHARDT, ZELTER, AND ZUMSTEEG While the great German and Austrian mas- ters from Handel, Bach, and Gluck to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven thus allowed their at- tention to be almost entirely absorbed by works of larger dimensions, there arose a class of minor composers who did not scorn the Lied, but carefully cultivated it. Unfortunately they were only men of talent, while genius was re- quired to raise the Lied to the same rank as the opera, the sonata, and the symphony. They *" I have wandered through many a land with my marmot and have always got something to eat." 34 Reichardt, Zelter, and Zumsteeg helped to create what the Germans call the volksthumliche Lied, which consciously aims at the simplicity of the folk-song while not en- tirely disdaining the acquisitions of art-music in the accompaniments. Of these composers the most important were Schulz (1747-1800), Reichardt (1752-1814), Zelter (1758-1832) and Zumsteeg (1760-1802). Schulz held that a mel- ody should fit the words as a well-made dress fits the body — as is the case in the best folk- songs — and he was lucky in being able to avail himself of the verses of some good poets, such as Burger and Voss. Reichardt also took the folk-song as his model, insisting that song-composers should return to it as the source of the Lied. He was the first who made a specialty of Goethe's lyrics, of which he set to music no fewer than one hundred and twenty-five. Goethe himself had been much influenced by the folk-poems, the charms of which had been unveiled to him by Herder's col- lections. Reichardt succeeded with his music in heightening the charm of the more gay and superficial poems of Goethe ; but for the expres- sion of the deeper emotions his art did not suffice. With all his merits, Reichardt cannot be classed among the great song-writers. His intentions and principles were excellent, but his melodic faculty was weak ; he was not an inspired cora- 35 German Song- Writers Before Schubert poser. He lacked ideas ; and no music, be it a song or a symphony, can become immortal un- less it embodies original ideas. Zelter was, like Reichardt, a personal friend of Goethe. The cordiality of their relations is attested by the number of letters exchanged between them, making a collection of six printed volumes. Goethe confessed that some of Zelter's settings of his poems had an " inde- scribable charm " for him, and he wrote to the composer: " I may say that your melodies have given birth to many a poem in my mind." Goethe's admiration, however, counts for little ; that he had no real appreciation of good music is proved by this fact alone, that he preferred the commonplace settings of his poems by Zel- ter and Reichardt, not only to Beethoven's, but even to Schubert's. It is, indeed, likely that the chief reason why Goethe liked Zelter's settings of his poems was that they were sim- ple and did not distract attention from his poems ; whereas in Schubert the poem becomes in importance secondary to the music. Zelter's merits lay in his choice of good poems and in carefully fitting together the melodic and the word accents. But he had no inspiration, lacked melodic and harmonic ideas, and, there- fore, was not able to write any songs that have more than a historic interest to posterity. 36 Spohr, Marschner, and Weber Zumsteeg won the admiration of a much better judge of music than Goethe, namely, of Schubert himself. Spaun relates in his remi^ niscences that Schubert as a boy was deeply affected by these songs and " declared he could revel in them day after day." He used Zum- steeg as a model when he wrote his first songs ; but soon went far beyond him, because he had genius and Zumsteeg only talent. Zumsteeg ranks as the earliest ballad composer of distinc- tion ; and Schubert followed him, for awhile, in this direction. SPOHR, MARSCHNER, AND WEBER The three masters grouped together in this section were born shortly before Schubert, and all but one (Weber) survived him. They oc- cupy a much higher rank in the world of music than the men considered in the preceding sec- tion; yet they, too, though they might have profited by Schubert's example, did not con- tribute anything of permanent value to the world's treasures of songs. They were opera composers who, like Mozart, reserved their best ideas for their big stage works, their Lieder be- ing little more than chips from their workshops. Ludwig Spohr (1784-1859) wrote eleven operas, one of which, Faust, held the stage till Gounod's 37 German Song-Writers Before Schubert masterwork displaced it; his Jessonda is still sung in Germany occasionally ; whereas his songs, of which about a dozen books of half-a- dozen each were issued, are not reprinted in the popular editions of our time — which shows that they have become obsolete. Heinrich Marschner (1795-1861) published about twenty sets of songs and half as many sets of male choruses ; but these, too, are obso- lete, and he is remembered chiefly as a connect- ing link between Weber and Wagner. His best opera, Hans Heiling, which still enjoys about fifty performances a year in Germany, unmis- takably influenced Wagner's Flying Dutchman. Carl Maria von Weber'(i786-i826) -wrote ten operas and ninety Lieder, ballads, and romances for one or two voices, besides a number of part- songs and cantatas. At the suggestion of Vog- ler he studied the songs of the people, and this, in the opinion of Dr. Spitta,* " enabled him to hit off the characteristic tone of the Volkslied as nobody had done before him." This may be true, but I have not been able to find among these songs one that equals the best real folk- • Spina's article on Weber in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. iv., pp. 421-423, gives the best and most detailed account of Weber's Lieder that I know of. See, also, Reismann, Gesch. d. deutschen Liedes, pp. 166 and 216, and R. Wagner, Gc' sammelte Schriften, vol. iii., pp. 320-324. 38 Spohr, Marschner, and Weber songs, or the best of the melodies in the folk style which Weber created for his operas. He is, therefore, himself to blame for the compara- tive neglect which has overtaken his Lieder. Max Maria von Weber declares, in the biogra- phy of his father (vol. i., p. 189), that these songs will be rescued from their temporary oblivion when the world tires of the overladen and mor- bid products of modern composers and returns to the simplicity and greatness of true art. But this is nonsense. Weber's songs, on the whole, are less dry and trivial than those of Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven ; not a few in- teresting details in them might be pointed out (as in the Liebesgruss aus der Feme, which recalls Euryanthe) ; but they are not songs to be placed on the same shelf with those of Schubert, Schu- mann, Franz, and other modern masters. The fact that many of them were written with guitar accompaniment is significant.* * That Weber's songs, while not as popular as formerly, have not become obsolete in Germany, is proved by the fact that the best of them are still printed in the popular editions of Peters, Litolif, and Breitkopf & Hartel. A complete edition, in two volumes, is issued by Schlesinger of Berlin. The patriotic or military songs, like the Schwertlied, set to KOrner's last poem, are on the whole the most successfttl. The Wiegenlied foreshadows Mendelssohn. 39 in Schubert HAD it not been for a lucky occurrence — the marriage of a peasant's son, a hum- ble Austrian schoolmaster named Franz Schu- bert, to a young Silesian woman named Eliza- beth Fitz, who was in domestic service in Vienna as a cook (like Beethoven's mother) — it is prob- able that the art-song would have languished for many more years — possibly to our own day — in the subordinate position in which the vari- ous composers, discussed in the preceding pages, had left it. The same result would have fol- lowed if this union had not proved remarkably prolific ; for Franz Peter Schubert was the thir- teenth of fourteen children born to his mother. The date of his birth was January 31, 1797, and he was the only one of the famous Viennese school of composers (including Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven) who was born in Vienna. His mother died when he was fifteen, and his father took another wife, by whom he had five more children, three of whom grew up ; while of the 40 Schubert fourteen by the first marriage five survived, leaving eight mouths to provide for, besides the father and mother. To the present day schoolmasters are shame- fully underpaid in most European countries, and it is needless to say that Franz Schubert's large family did not revel in wealth, his an- nual income being, in fact, only $175 ! From the cradle to the grave poverty was the companion of the greatest of all song-writers ; but though little Franz often went hungry and cold, this did not prevent his musical genius from bud- ding at an early age. Where he got that gift is as great a mystery as the origin of genius is in general. Nothing is said of his mother hav- ing been musical, and his father's accomplish- ments in this line cannot have been remarkable, inasmuch as, in playing the violoncello parts in quartets at home he sometimes made mistakes, unconsciously and repeatedly, until little Franz, who had the viola part, suggested timidly to his " Herr Vater" that "something must be wrong." As a boy of eleven Schubert sang soprano solos and played the violin in the parish choir, and four months before he reached his twelfth year he entered the Convict, or Imperial school, in which boys were trained for the Court- chapel. Here he remained five years and re- 41 Schubert ceived many of the musical impressions which helped to form his taste. The boys had formed a small orchestra, which he joined as one of the violinists. His playing attracted attention at once, and before he was fourteen years old he was occasionally called upon to take the place of the absent conductor. Apart from these hours of music, life in the Convict was not par- ticularly pleasant. The hungry boys never had enough to eat, and the room in which they had to practise was cruelly cold in winter. " You know from experience," Franz wrote to his brother in 1812, "that a fellow would like to eat a roll or an apple or two, once in a while ; all the more if, after a poor dinner, he has to wait eight and a half hours for a wretched sup- per." He then begs for an occasional penny, and signs himself "your loving, poor, hopeful, and once more poor brother Franz." Music-paper was another thing for which poor Franz would have had to go hungry, had it not been for the kind aid of a friend. Before leaving home Franz had already written songs and instrumental pieces, which, however, he destroyed as being mere experiments. In the Convict he blushingly confessed to one of the older boys, named Spaun, that he had already composed a good deal, and that he would like to write music every day if he could afford to 42 Schubert buy the paper. Spaun took pity on him and supplied him with what he needed. From that time on his demands in this direction were enormous. In the eighteen years from 1810 to 1828 he wrote at least 1,200 compositions, in all departments of music* Shortly before Schubert reached his seven- teenth year his voice changed, and he left the Convict to return to his father's house. His brother Ferdinand declared that Franz was three times summoned to enlist in the army, *The list of Schubert's compositions given by the late Sir George Grove in h^s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (vol. iii., pp. 371-381) is now superseded by the table of contents of the complete edition of Schubert's works issued by Breitkopf & Hartel. Grove's article on Schubert, which takes up sixty-two pages (double columns) of his Dictionary, remains, however, the most complete biography now in existence in any language, and will probably remain so until the appearance of the great work on which Max Friedlander is engaged, and some of the material for which has been "printed as manuscript,'' as the Germans say. The scant sources of information on which any biography of Schubert must be based are given by Grove (p. 370) and Friedlander, and need not be repeated here. To their lists should, however, be added an excellent little biography by Niggli, in the Reclam edition. I may also state that Spaun's Erinnerungen, which were ac- cessible to Grove, Kreissle, and Niggli only in manuscript, are now printed in La Mara's Classisches und Romantisckes aus der Tonwelt. An admirably written short sketch of Schubert by John Fiske is incorporated in Professor Paine's Famous Composers and Their Works; another one, in Elson's History of German Song. 43 Schubert and that it was to escape military service that he decided to become a teacher in his father's school. Others have conjectured that it was his father who urged him to become a teacher rather than a professional musician. However that may be, it is obvious that a person who, as early as the age of eleven, was referred to as " a small boy in spectacles," would not have made a good soldier ; and it certainly would have been a crime to expose such a genius to bullets. So, for three years, young Franz drilled the alphabet into the heads of boys and girls ; many of them no doubt dense enough, for he often lost his patience and did not hesitate, on occasion, to box a dunce's ears. It seems almost incredible that amid this ex- hausting drudgery, which would have used up all the energy of an ordinary individual, Schubert should have found time and incli- nation to compose a vast amount of music. In the year 1815 he wrote as many as one hundred and thirty-seven songs, besides a large number of instrumental works and several operettas. The songs included the immortal Erlking, Heidenrbslein, Sckafer's Klagelied and Rastlose Liebe. That a mind capable of creating such works of genius should have at last found the drudgery of teaching reading and writing insupportable, is not strange. In the spring of 44 Schubert 1816 we accordingly find him applying for the position of teacher in a new music school at Laibach, but he did not get it. The same re- sult attended several other attempts to secure positions, which he made in later years ; and perhaps it was just as well that he always failed. He disliked teaching of any kind, and, like most men of genius, was unsuited for any systematic, practical work. He was, in truth, a born Bohemian ; and as a Bohemian he spent the rest of his short life without any home of his own, but living with his friends and boon companions, some of whom assisted him, while he, in turn, shared with them his scant earnings. One of these friends, a university student named Franz von Schober, appeared on the scene at the most opportune time. Having heard some of Schubert's songs, he was so de- lighted that he at once took steps to make his acquaintance; and finding him overwhelmed with distasteful school-work, he generously of- fered him one of his rooms and otherwise helped him, so as to enable him to devote more of his time and energy to composition. For a few years (1819-1821) Schubert roomed with an- other friend, the poet Mayrhofer, returning later to Schober, whose chum he remained during the greater part of his life. For whatever these friends and others may have done for him, he 45 Schubert has repaid them a hundredfold by preserving for all time their names, and, in the case of Mayrhofer and others, a number of poems which would have been consigned to oblivion long ago but for the music set to them by Schubert. Some of them, indeed, would never have been written but for the stimulating influ- ence of the composer on the poet. The Bohemian life which Schubert enjoyed doubtless had its drawbacks. His friends were, like himself, mostly young bachelors who, hav- ing no home, spent their evenings in taverns. Schubert liked a good glass of wine, and he was fond of the society of these young men. Thus he was tempted to give up to conviviality many a night that consideration for his health should have induced him to spend in bed. There is no evidence, however, that he was wont to indulge to excess ; indeed, we know from one of his letters (Kreissle, p. 320) that he left a " reading club " when it degenerated into a beer-and-sausage club. The chief harm that came to him from his boon companions was that while some of them were ready to help him, others made unscrupulous use of his liber- ality when he happened to have a few florins, and this helped to keep his purse always empty. In money matters he was, like Wagner, a child ; squandering one moment, starving the next. 46 Schubert In the last year of his life, when his first and only concert had yielded him $i6o, he quite lost his head, paying five florins to hear Paganini and then going again because he wished to treat his friend, Bauernfeld. This recklessness and excessive conviviality were, however, his only faults — faults which too often go hand in hand with the artistic temperament. Besides allowing him plenty of time for com- posing, the unfettered life he led had other ad- vantages to counterbalance the drawbacks men- tioned. Musicians are apt to flock together and talk shop and scandal by the hour ; but among Schubert's boon companions there were only a few musicians, the others being officials, artists, and poets, whose varied conversation could not fail to widen the horizon of his thoughts. He was known by the nickname of " Canevas " be- cause it was his habit, whenever a stranger was introduced to the circle, of asking "Kann er was?" ("Can he do anything?"). Nor were these meetings entirely given up to carousing. Read- ing or declaiming was often in order ; and many of Schubert's new songs were sung for the first time on these occasions. And although the in- formal club was not a musical one, and Schu- bert was naturally of a retiring, timid disposi- tion, nevertheless he was the centre of it, and the meetings went by the name of " Schuber- 47 Schubert tiads." These Schubertiads were sometimes held at the residences of the members or their friends. Occasionally the ladies were invited, and there was dancing as well as singing, Schu- bert sitting at the piano and improvising those lovely valses and other dance-pieces of which many were afterward written down. One even- ing a policeman entered and commanded the dancing to stop because it was Lent — greatly to the annoyance of Schubert, who exclaimed : " They do that just to spite me, because they know how I love to improvise dance music." Up to this time Schubert had been compelled to sing his own songs, and he had only a " com- poser's voice." One of his great desires was to make the acquaintance of the famous opera singer Johann Michael Vogl. Schober, who knew him, accordingly tried to interest him in Schubert by telling him in glowing words about the beauty of his friend's compositions. Vogl answered that he had often heard of such prodi- gies, but had always been disappointed ; and that he was tired of music anyway and wished to be left alone. But Schober did not leave him alone, and finally persuaded him to go with him to his rooms. Schubert was there, and after an introduction, he sat at the piano and played while Vogl sang several of his songs. " Not bad," the tenor exclaimed dryly, after the first 48 Schubert song {Augenlied). Other songs, including Gany- med and Des Schdfer's Klage, seemed to please him more ; but he went home without saying much or promising to call again. On going out, however, he tapped the young man on the shoulder and exclaimed : " There is stuff in you, but not enough of the comedian, the char- latan; you squander your fine thoughts with- out making the most of them." But the songs haunted his memory ; he soon called again, sang more of them, and ere long found himself one of the most ardent admirers of this young genius, whose music had cured him of " that tired feeling," and awakened in him a new in- terest in art. Vogl was not free from the faults of opera singers. When he told Schubert at their first meeting that there was "not enough of the comedian, the charlatan " in him, he meant that Schubert did not sufficiently embellish his songs for the sake of tickling the ears of his hearers. He himself did not hesitate, in sing- ing these chaste songs, to hang operatic tinsel around them — with the best of intentions. Nor did he hesitate to slightly alter or to transpose the songs. But the statement made by Kreissle that Vogl influenced the style of Schubert's compositions is emphatically denied by Spaun. " No one," he wrote in some biographic memo- 49 Schubert randa made for his family in 1 864, " ever had the slightest influence on his method of compos- ing, though attempts may have been made. At the utmost he made concessions to the range of Vogl's voice, but even that seldom and unwill- ingly." In all other respects Vogl's influence on Schubert can only have been good. He was a man of general culture and wide reading, and he must have called his friend's attention to many a fine poem. In all probability, the two men had many interesting discussions on the subject of the relations of poetry and music. Perhaps the following reflection which Vogl wrote into his diary is an echo of these discus- sions : " Nothing shows so plainly the need of a good school of singing as Schubert's songs. Otherwise, what an enormous and universal effect must have been produced throughout the world, wherever the German language is understood, by these truly divine inspirations, these utterances of a musical clairvoyance. How many would have comprehended, prob- ably for the first time, the meaning of such expressions as • speech and poetry in music,' ' words in harmony,' ' ideas clothed in music,' etc., and would have learned that the finest poems of our greatest poets may be enhanced, and even transcended, when translated into musical language." The French sneer, bite comme un tenor, obvi- ously did not apply to the man who wrote this, and Schubert was lucky in having such a rare 50 Schubert bird to sing his songs. Vogl was in great de- mand in social circles, and he was thus in a po- sition, which he put to the best use, of making the public at large acquainted with these new songs. Schubert often accompanied him on the piano, and we may judge of the impression on their lucky hearers from a sentence in a letter written by him in 1825, to his brother Ferdi- nand : " The manner in which Vogl sings and I accompany, so that we seem to be one on such occasions, is to these people something new and unheard of." In another letter of the same year he writes to his parents that after he had played a movement from one of his sonatas some of the hearers assured him that under his fingers the keys sang like voices ; " which, if true, makes me very glad," he adds with character- istic modesty. From one point of view it was lucky for Schubert that he was modest, for apart from the admiration of his friends there was little in his experiences to encourage vanity. Spaun re- lates that whenever Vogl or Schonstein* sang * Baron von SchSnstein was another singer who introduced Schu- bert's songs in the higher social circles. To Hmlhe Mullerlieder and other famous songs are dedicated ; and Schubert wrote in one of his letters: " I am always delighted to hear Baron SchSnstein sing." Liszt heard him in 1838, and wrote in the Gazette Must- cale that Schubert's songs, as sung by the baron, had often moved 51 Schubert Schubert's Lieder at social gatherings they were overwhelmed with applause and thanks; " but nobody took the least notice of the modest musi- cian who had created these splendid melodies. He was so accustomed to this neglect that it did not trouble him in the least." It is, indeed, related that on one occasion, to avoid the at- tentions of the guests, he made his escape by a back stairway.* From another point of view this modesty and indifference to praise proved a disadvantage. Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier, Doch kommt man welter ohne ihr, as a German humorist has remarked. A little more pride and " push " would have been of great benefit to Schubert. Among those who took advantage of his diffidence and good nat- ure were the publishers. For years they re- fused to have anything to do with his songs, notwithstanding the enthusiasm they had him to tears. He praised SchSnstein for allowing himself to be swayed by his emotions without thinking of the public, and re- ferred to Schubert as "the most poetic musician that ever was," But this was ten years after Schubert's death. It was the same year that Schumann began to proclaim the genius of Schubert in his musical journal, the Neue Zeitschrift fiir Musik. * Sir George Grove has truly said that Schubert "was one of the very few musicians who did not behave as if he thought himself the greatest man in the world." 52 Schubert aroused in private circles; and subsequently they pinned him down to the lowest terms, even to the last year of his life. The Erlking was I composed in-i8r|r Five years later it was offered to several publishers, who refused to print it even without a royalty. Some of Schu- bert's friends thereupon advanced the necessary funds, the song was printed — the first of his compositions to get into type — and in nine months 800 copies ot it were sold, the publisher, Diabelli, receiving one-half of the proceeds. Eleven other songs were now issued in rapid succession, and proved so successful that the shrewd publisher offered 800 florins for the copyright of the twelve, and Schubert was unwise enough to accept that sum. One of these songs alone, the Wanderer, yielded to the publishers 27,000 florins in the years 1822-1861, Notwithstanding the success of this first venture, the publishers were slow in assuming further risks. Kreissle has printed a number of letters from them which must have caused Schubert many a pang of disappointment. One publisher is too busy with Kalkbrenner's works; another is afraid to risk anything on the efforts ot a "young and little-known" composer; a third offers to print some of his pieces " on com- mission ;" and all of tfiem, to the end of his life, profess to find his terms too high. He was 53 Schubert glad to accept from $15 down to $2 for the exclusive rights to a song, and sometimes much less. Sir George Grove was told by Mr. Barry (who had it from Lachner himself) that in the last year of his life Schubert sent Lachner to Hasslinger with the manuscripts of six of the immortal Winterreise songs and brought back a florin apiece for them — the florin being worth at that time twenty cents ! Attempts made by Schubert during the last three years of his life to interest foreign pub- lishers — many of whom have since earned for- tunes by the sale of these same songs — proved futile. Three weeks before his death he re- ceived a letter from Schott's Sons regretting that some of his pieces which had been sent to Paris had been found " too difficult for such trifles." These " trifles " were the immortal and epoch-making Impromptus, the progenitors of the short pieces which are characteristic of the romantic school. It would be unfair, however, to put too much blame on the pubhshers. They were but human, like their companions. If, as Kreissle remarks, the request, " do not make your compositions too difficult to play or to understand," runs like red thread through all the letters from publish- ers, there were reasons for this. Schubert, like all great geniuses, was in advance of his time. 54 Schubert If the Vienaese who heard Vogl or Schonstein sing and Schubert play had no difficulty in un- derstanding his music, it was otherwise with the public at large, which was not thus favored. Even in Vienna the critics blundered in cen- suring Schubert for those very modulations and other original features which we now admire most.* From a practical point of view Vogl was right when he said that Schubert was " not enough of a charlatan and a comedian." He wrote to please himself, not the public, and he had to suffer, in consequence, like other geniuses before and after him. He would sometimes say jokingly that the state ought to support him, in order that he might 'devote himself to com- position, free from all care. Richard Wagner often said the same thing about himself seri- ously; and when we consider what big sums European governments expend on the training of mediocrities in music schools, as well as on the performance of operas (by composers who are usually allowed to starve), this demand seems the most rational thing in the world. But how could the government know that * One specimen must suffice. The critic of the Allgemeine Musik Zeitung (March 21, 1821) wrote regarding the Geister- chor that it was " recognized by the public as a farrago of mu- sical modulations and deviations from the rules; without sense, order, or meaning. " 55 Schubert Schubert was a genius when the professional musicians were so obtuse and indifferent? Three years before Schubert's death, when the list of his compositions was near one thousand, Schober wrote : " So the Miillerlieder, too, have failed to make a sensation ! These curs have no feelings or judgment of their ovira, but follow blindly where others lead. What you need is a few critics, with big drums, to proclaim your name incessantly. I have known insignificant persons who were thrust into fame by this method ; why should it not be employed in the case of one like you, who deserve it in the highest degree ?" Notwithstanding his aversion to teaching, which might have paid for his bread and butter (while diminishing the freshness of his compo- sitions), Schubert accepted an invitation in 1818 to go with the family of Count Johann Carl Esterhazy to his country estate at Z61esz, in Hungary, to teach his wife and two daughters. He received forty cents per lesson, had plenty of time to compose, and his sojourn in the coun- try — which was repeated in 1824 — was of benefit to his art as well as to his health ; it made him acquainted with Hungarian folk-music, traces of which occur in some of his works from this time on. As no man's life — particularly no musician's life — seems complete without at least one love- aSair, imaginative historians, biographers, and 56 Schubert newspaper writers have built up an elaborate romance, in which Schubert is represented as having been deeply in love with Caroline, the younger daughter of Count Esterhazy, and heart-broken because he could not marry her. The basis for this romance is the assertion made by Kreissle (who gives no authority for it) that the Countess once jokingly reproached Schubert for not having dedicated anything to her, whereupon he replied : " Why should I ? Is not everything I write dedicated to you ? " But a gallant teacher might easily say such a thing to a pretty pupil without being frantic- ally in love with her. The facts that Schubert was a penniless music-teacher, and that the Esterhazys, in their silly " aristocratic " pride, did not invite him to their table, but made him eat with the servants* (like Mozart in Salz- burg), could not, of course, have prevented him from falling in love with his pupil. But dur- ing the first sojourn at the Esterhazy castle Caroline was only twelve years old, and dur- ing the second, when she was eighteen, there is evidence that, though he may have admired her, he cannot have been violently in love with * See Friedlander's Beitrdge zu einer Schubert Biographic and Deutsche Rundschau, vol. 23, No. 5, for detailed evidence on all these points. 57 Schubert her. In letters of this period he bewails his exile from Vienna and regrets that he allowed himself a second time to be beguiled to the Hungarian castle, where, he adds, "there is not a single person with whom 1 can exchange a sensible word." Such is not the attitude and language of a lover. There is also a poem by Schubert's friend Bauernfeld, which declares that, though the composer was in love with the countess, he soon transferred his affection to another : Verliebt war Schubert ; der Schiilerin Gait's, einer der jungen Comptessen, Doch gab er sich einer — ganz Andern hin, Urn — die Andere zu vergessen. If further proof were needed, it would be found in a confession made by Schubert one day to Hiittenbrenner, who asked him if he had ever been in love. Schubert replied that he had loved one girl dearly, and for three years had hoped to marry her, but had been obliged to give her up because he was unable to secure a remunerative position. This girl was not pretty ; her face was covered with smallpox marks, and she was not a countess, but the daughter of a schoolmaster. We know from several passages in Schubert's letters that he had an eye for beauty in women ; but apart 58 Schubert from this story of the schoolmaster's daughter there is no evidence that he ever was really in love ; certainly there is no particle of evidence for the current belief, to which Rowbotham has given the most extravagant expression, that " the image of Caroline Esterhazy was ever present in his mind to cheer him in his lonely life and to offer him, if not the comfort of hope, at least the consolation of delightful woe." No ; the tragedy of Schubert's life does not lie in unrequited passion ; it lies in his early death and the thought that it might have been so easily prevented. All that was needed to keep him alive was a little money to enable him to take another vacation. He was a great lover of nature, but, apart from his two summers with the Esterhazys, there were only three occasions in his life when he was able to make a trip — to Salzburg and the Tyrolean Mountains ; perhaps even these not being at his own expense. The letters written on these excursions — when he played and Vogl sang to the delight of their hosts — abound in enthusiastic references to the fine scenery, and give frequent evidence of the bracing effects of the country air on his body and mind. If he could have spent another summer in these regions his life might have been spared. Several extant letters by him 59 Schubert and others prove that he had planned another trip and that nothing but lack of funds pre- vented hira from leaving Vienna during the unhealthy months. He needed an outing more than ever, for he had been suffering for some time from persistent headaches and giddiness. Unable to leave the city, he changed his resi- dence, by the doctor's advice, to a new house occupied by his brother Ferdinand, in a suburb whence he would be able to get away more easily from the city on his afternoon walks. Probably the water supplied to this house was bad, for Schubert at once got worse. In Octo- ber he went to Eisenstadt for three days and was much better. Returning to the city the unfavorable symptoms returned, the doctors diagnosed typhoid fever, and he died a few days later — November 19, 1828 — a victim of poverty and lack of appreciation. His last hours were agonizing to his brother. Franz fancied, in the delirium of his fever, that he had been put in a corner under the earth, and he asked piteously : " Don't I deserve a place above ground?" Ferdinand assured him he was in his own room, but Franz declared : " No, that is not so ; Beethoven is not here." A few hours later he clutched at the wall and ex- claimed : " Here, here is my end." They were his last words. And thus passed away a genius 60 Schubert of whom Grove has said truly and pathetically : " There never has been one like him and there never will be another." His worldly possessions at the time of his death were oflScially valued at about twelve dollars. They included piles of musical manu- scripts worth more than their weight in gold ; but no one knew it, till Schumann came across them ten years later and gave some of them to the astonished world. Money, money alone, was needed to prolong the life of Schubert, the most spontaneous and divinely inspired of all musicians. An extra drop of bitterness is added to our sorrow over his untimely death by the thought that there was a man in Vienna who might have saved him had he known him sooner. There can be no doubt that if Beethoven had lived another year the authority of his name and the active interest he would certainly have manifested in Schubert would have brought the young song- writer the fame and the consideration which would have enabled him to support himself. But it was one of the links in the long chain of Schubert's misfortunes that, although Beetho- ven lived in the same city thirty years, he did not, until a few months before his death, dis- cover Schubert's genius. When he was already too ill to continue com- 6i Schubert posing, Schindler brought him about sixty of Schubert's songs by way of diversion and with the object of making him acquainted with the young man's work. Beethoven was amazed and deUghted with these songs. For several days he had them constantly in hand and ex- claimed repeatedly : " Truly, Schubert has the divine spark." He now was eager to see also the operas and piano-forte works, but his illness prevented him, and he could only express re- grets at not having known Schubert sooner. It is probable that his enthusiastic praise stimu- lated Schubert, who worshipped him, to those supreme efforts which enabled him to write his greatest works after this time ; but it was too late to derive much worldly benefit from Beet- hoven's recommendation, for he followed him into the grave eighteen months later. Beetho- ven was, as we have seen, in his mind in the de- lirium of his fever, not long before the end, and it was his fervent wish that he might be buried near that master, which wish was carried out through the self-denial of his brother Ferdinand, who secured a place for him only three graves removed from Beethoven's. In view of Schubert's great admiration for Beethoven it is remarkable that his genius was so little dominated by that master and that he manifested such striking originality in all de- 62 Schubert partments of music. The method of workman- ship of these two composers, also, was utterly dissimilar. Beethoven began, as a rule, with the germ of a musical thought, often crude and even commonplace, which he jotted down on music-paper, subsequently altering it — in some cases a dozen times or oftener — till at last it assumed the finished form we admire ; whereas Schubert, as a rule, improvised his composi- tions, without any preliminary sketches. When composing, he often seemed like one in a trance. Vogl, in a page of his diary already referred to, as well as in a letter to Stadler, refers to Schu- bert's compositions as works produced in a state resembling clairvoyance or somnambu- lism ; and other friends, like Schonstein and Schober, who had occasion to observe him in moments of creativeness, received the same im- pression. As Spaun writes : " Those who were intimately acquainted with him knew how deeply he was affected by his creations and how he gave birth to them in pain. No one who ever saw him on a forenoon while he was composing, with glowing face and sparkling eyes, his very speech changed, resembling a som- nambulist, will ever forget the impression. How, indeed, could he have written these songs without being stirred in his inmost soul ! In the afternoon, to be sure, he was dif- ferent ; but he was tender and deep in his feelings, only he did not like to expose them, but preferred to keep them locked up within.'' 63 Schubert Sir George Grove, who has shown a keener and deeper appreciation of Schubert's genius than any other Englishman, has well remarked : " In hearing Schubert's compositions it is often as if one were brought more immediately and closely into contact with music itself than is the case in the works of others ; as if in his pieces the stream from the great heavenly reservoir were dashing over us, or flowing through us, more directly, with less admixture of any medium or channel, than it does in those of any other writer. ... No sketches, no delay, no anx- ious period of preparation, no revision appear to have been necessary. He had but to read the poem, to surrender him- self to the torrenf , and to put down what was given him to say, as it rushed through his mind. " Instances will be given presently of the startling suddenness with which the music suitable to a poem often sprang up in his mind full-fledged, like love at first sight. He com- posed as a bird sings in spring, or as a well gushes from a mountain side, simply because he could not help it. Spaun relates that Schu- bert, when he slept in his room, often kept his spectacles on his nose all night and as soon as he woke up, without waiting to dress, sat down and wrote the loveliest songs. Nothing could stop the flow of his inspiration. It is related by Randhartinger that one day he dashed down the highly dramatic song The Dwarf, at a pub- lisher's request, without having seen the poem 64 Schubert before and without finding it necessary to in- terrupt, while he was writing it, a conversation he was engaged in. Even illness did not anni- hilate his creative activity. Some of the Muller- lieder were composed in a hospital. He wrote simply for the pleasure of writing, and the fact that he had to wait seven years before any of his songs were printed did not in the least check his creativeness. When Hiller once asked him whether he wrote much, he replied : " I compose every morning ; and when one piece is done I begin another;" and Lachner relates that after he had sung or played a new composition he would often put it away and never think of it again. Not less astounding than his spontaneity was his fertility, especially in his earlier years. In 1815, at the age of eighteen, he wrote one hundred and forty-four songs, which fill up two volumes of the ten in the Breitkopf & Hartel complete edition! The number for the following year was one hun- dred and ten. Six of the fine V/interreise songs were written in one morning, and he is known to have set to music as many as eight poems in one day. Of his opera Fierrabras he composed three hundred manuscript pages in a week, a thousand pages in four months, with a num. ber of songs and piano-forte pieces thrown in. 65 Schubert One reason why Schubert's friends compared him to a somnambulist was that he did not al- ways remember in his normal condition what he had written while in the state of " clairvoy- ance." On one occasion he took some new songs for inspection to Vogl. Happening to be busy the tenor laid them aside. Examining them subsequently, he came across one which he liked particularly, but, as it was in an incon- venient key, he had it transposed. A fortnight later when Schubert made another call, Vogl placed this copy before him and sang it. The composer played the piano part, and at the end exclaimed : " Look here ! That's not a bad song! Whose is it?" While Schubert was undoubtedly the most spontaneous of all musicians, the notion that he practically shook his compositions from his sleeves and never paid any further attention to them, can no longer be upheld. The painstak- ing researches of Friedlander and Mandyc- zewski have shown that he resorted to revision and filing much more frequently than has been supposed. In the ten volumes of Breitkopf & Hartel's complete edition there are six hundred and three songs, and among them no fewer than fifty-two which appear in two versions. Two others were taken up three times, and three— including The Trout 66 Schubert and The Erlking—iowr times. Most of the sec- ond and third versions are of songs written before his twentieth year. But in some cases he rewrote songs many years after their first composition ; Nur wer die Sehnsucht Kennt {Mignoii), for instance, of which the first version is dated 1815, the last 1827. In the later ver- sions, and when the songs were sent to the printer, he also carefully revised the expres- sion marks.* * In Max Friedlander's " Supplement " to the Peters edition of Schubert's songs {7 vols. , including 443 songs), and in Euse- bius Mandyczewski's "Revisions-bericht " accompanying the Breitkopf & Hartel edition (10 vols, , 603 songs) the changes made by Schubert in the different versions are carefully noted, and we get from these volumes an insight into the workshop of bis genius, as we do into Beethoven's from the "sketches " published by Nottebohm. But the critical labors of these editors do not end there. They have done an inestimable service to the world by re- storing the original text of many of the songs. Poor Schubert was pursued by his misfortunes, even after his death. The chaste simplicity of his melodies and the originality of his harmonies were not appreciated by his contemporaries as they are now. Even during his lifetime his friend, Vogl, as we have seen, used to " adorn " his songs with operatic embellishments, following the custom of the time, and convinced that he was doing him a good service. After Schubert's death some publishers had the unhappy thought of printing the songs with these stupid embellishments ; and thus, for half a century or more, the grossest mistakes re- mained in the various printed editions of even the most famous of the songs. Nor were the publishers content with the superadded operatic frills and furbelows. They marred many of the songs by 67 Schubert Composers differ greatly in regard to the ma- turing of their genius. At an age (thirty-one) corresponding to that at which Schubert died, Beethoven had conceived only the first two of his symphonies; which might almost have been written by Mozart, so little is there in them of the true Beethoven. Wagner, at the corre- sponding age, had written only the least Wag- manufactured introductory bars, sometimes amazingly trivial and inane. Nay, they did not hesitate, with a view of rendering the songs more palatable to the public, to erase some of Schubert's finest nuances in melody or accompaniment ; or to change his bold, original harmonies to conventional chords. Misprints, carefully reproduced, added to the confusion. Many of the songs, furthermore, were, to their detriment, transposed to other keys. It is true that Schubert was less particular in this matter than his successor, Robert Franz ; being willing to allow a tem- porary traiisposition in order to accommodate a singer. Yet he had his reasons for writing a song in this or that key, and when- ever a publisher begged him to choose an easier one, with fewer flats or sharps, he used to reply (as Spaun informs us) that he could not write otherwise, and that those who could not play his piano parts as he had written them, might as well leave them alone. For detailed information on all these points see No. 43 of Breitkopf & Hartel's Mittheilmtgen, and an article by Friedlander on " Falschungen in Schubert's Liedern," in Chrysander's Vier- teljahrsschrift fUr Musikwissenschaft, 1893, pp. i66-i8g. Those who can read French, but not German, will find much perti- nent information, together with a chronological list of Schubert's 603 songs (German and French titles), in Les Lieder de Franz Schubert, by Henri de Curzon, Paris, 1899, pp. 112. 68 Schubert nerian of his works, up to Rienzi and the Flying Dutchman. But Schubert wrote original and immortal compositions as a mere boy of seven- teen and eighteen, including Margaret at the Spinning Wheel, the Rose on the Heath, the Wan- derer^ s Night Song, and the Er Iking. He began to write, as we have seen, several years sooner. His first efforts were destroyed, the earliest sur- viving song being dated March 30, 181 1. It is entitled Hagar's Lament, and as Schubert was only fourteen when he wrote it, we are not sur- prised to find it a close imitation of the song on the same theme written by the Stuttgart com- poser Zumsteeg, whom (as we have already said) he admired greatly. Like many of the earlier songs (and not a few of the later ones), it is very long — fifteen printed pages — while fre- quent changes of tempo and rhythm, in which he follows Zumsteeg, break it up into a dozen movements. Soon, however, he learned to use his own wings, and his flights grew bolder and bolder. A few sketches have been preserved which show that at this early period — the " ex- perimental years" — he used to jot down the "melody, with the mere outlines of the piano part, and then rewrite and elaborate the whole. There are two ways of setting a poem to music. One consists in adapting to the first stanza or strophe of the poem a melody and ac- 69 Schubert companiment which are repeated unchanged in all the other stanzas, though there may be a dozen or more of them. This is called a strophic song — the typical folk-song. In tfie other kind, which the Germans call a durcli- componirtes Lied, the music is " composed through"; that is, while usually repeating the same music in the main, the composer makes more or less important changes in the melody or accompaniment, accordingly as the mood of the poem changes in the several stanzas. Among the early songs of Schubert we find good examples of both these kinds, but as the through-composed song is the more artistic, he favors that from the beginning. The first of his really great songs is of this kind. It is the well-known Margaret at the Spinning Wheel (dated October, 1814, and the thirty-first of the preserved songs). Here we already find Schu- bert's spontaneous flow of melody, with some of his harmonic peculiarities ; while the whirl- ing, monotonous figure of the accompaniment picturesquely suggests the motion of the wheel, dramatically interrupted by a few pensive chords at the words " And oh, his kiss ! "—one of those strokes of genius with which Schubert was destined to show — like Wagner after him —how greatly the effect even of the best poem can be enhanced by sympathetic music. 70 Schubert Among the one hundred and forty-four songs of the year 1815 there are (besides other gems that I cannot stop to describe — like Rastlose Liebe* Ossian songs, etc.,) two world-famed and perfect specimens of both the stroph- ic and the through-composed kind— the ex- quisite Rose on the Heather, simple as a folk- song yet with the fragrance of individual genius, and the Erlking. The excellence of these songs is the more remarkable when con- trasted with other songs of this year. They were written amid the drudgery of school teaching, and it is not surprising that most of them are mediocre, or worse. And yet, when I play them over and begin to wonder how a first-rate genius could have penned such stuff, nearly always I come across a few bars which change my question to " How could a mere boy have had such a happy thought?" The strangest thing about Schubert's genius is that even in his later years we often find the com- monplace and the sublime side by side. But it must not be forgotten that the least interest- ing of his songs are still superior to most of the productions of his predecessors, be their names Reichardt and Zelter or Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, * Bauemfeld relates regarding this song that when it was com- posed the paroxysm of inspiration was so fierce that Schubert spoke of it years afterward. 71 Schubert and Beethoven. He set the high-water mark so high that he himself could not always reach it. The Erlking is probably the best known of all the Schubert songs, having long been a fa- vorite not only of vocalists but of pianists too, in the masterly arrangement of Liszt* which always evokes unbounded enthusiasm. Luckily we know a good deal about this song. It was composed toward the close of the year 1815, and Spaun has told us how it happened : " One afternoon I went with Mayrhofer to Schubert, who was living at that time with his father in the Himmelpfort- grunde. We found Schubert all aglow reading the Erlking * Liszt showed his devotion to ' ' the most poetic musician that ever was " by acts as well as in words. He transcribed no fewer than a hundred of the Schubert songs for the piano ; and by play- ing them at his own concerts and enabling musicians who could not sing to play them at home, he did a great deal toward making them popular. In the second volume of her biography of Liszt (Englished by Miss Cowdery), Lina Ramann has an interesting chapter on this subject, in which she justly points out that Liszt really established a new branch of art when he made these song- transfers. The necessary alterations are mostly in the piano part and they are so much in touch with the original that the com- poser rarely suffers, while the transcription is in some cases even more beautiful than the original — in Auf dem Wasser zu Singen, for instance, the one song of Schubert's which seems to me better adapted for a piano piece than a Lied. Liszt's arrangements were received "with shouts of delight." He, like Schubert himself, knew how to make the piano " sing under his fingers." 72 Schubert aloud from a book. He walked up and down the room sev- eral times, book in hand, then suddenly sat down and, as fast as his pen could travel, put the splendid ballad on paper. As he had no piano, we hurried over to the Convict, and there the Erlking was sung the same evening and received with enthusiasm. The old court-organist Ruziczka then played it over himself, without the voice, in all parts carefully and ap- preciatively, and was deeply impressed by the composition. When some of those present objected to a dissonance that occurs repeatedly, Ruziczka struck those chords and explained how inevitable they seemed in view of the text, and how fine, and how happily they were resolved." The reference is, of course, to the discords which are heard when the child, held in the arms of its father as he " rides through night and wind," expresses its fears of the Erlking, the forest-haunting goblin. " Inevitable," indeed, these dashing dissonances seem in this place, but they were a new thing in music, and it took the genius of Schubert to discover their inevi- tableness. To appreciate the innovation we have but to compare Schubert's Erlking with the earlier setting of Reichardt, in which one and the same commonplace melody is used for the speeches of father and son, as well as for the narrative. Schubert's whole atmosphere, on the contrary, is dramatic : the coaxing Erl- king, the terrified child, the soothing father, have each a language of their own, different from the narrative. And how realistically the 73 Schubert piano impersonates the horse with those inces- sant galloping triplets ! But the climax lies in the dissonances first referred to. Wagner him- self in his mature years could not have built up a more ingenious dramatic climax than the eigh- teen-year-old Schubert did in this ballad of Goethe's. Note that the dissonance — C and D with E flat — first occurs {forte) when the child asks the father if he does not see the Erlking. The second time, when the child asks the father if he sees not the Erlking's daughters in their gloomy haunts, it is an interval higher — D, E, F; and finally, when the child cries, " My father, my father, he seizes me now ! " we have a still higher and more shrill dissonance — E flat, F, G flat — sung and played fortissimo. The effect is thrilling.* •While these subtleties were the product of instantaneous inspi- ration, other fine details were the result of reflection and revision. Thus the alluring, soothing love-song of the Erlking, " Ich Hebe dich, mich reizt deine schone Gestalt" was originally marked^ in the manuscript, but Schubert subsequently changed it with a red pencil to pp, which is infinitely more appropriate and impressive. On the other hand, it is not true, as some have surmised, that the triplets in the piano part are an afterthought. The fact that one of the manuscripts of the Erlking (at the Berlin Royal Library) has in place of 74 Schubert Although the Erlking is No. 178 in the list of Schubert's songs and was written in 181 5, it was not published till 1821, seven years before his death. Though he had already written four hundred songs at that date, the publishers would have nothing to do with any of them, refusing the Erlking on the ground that they " could not expect it to succeed, because the composer was unknown and the piano-forte part too difficult." It was then, as we have seen, brought out by subscription as opus i. It had already been popular for some years in private circles, and the publication soon increased its vogue. From that time to the present all sorts of arrange- ments have been made of it. His own brother Ferdinand adapted it for solo voices, mixed chorus and orchestra, and Berlioz subsequently made an orchesti-al version. Hiittenbrenner gave rise to this notion ; but the evidence collected by Friedlander ("Die Erste Form des ErlkSnigs " in OirysandeT^s ViertflJaArs. schrift, 1887, pp. 122-128; see, also, Albert B. Bach's The Art Ballad, p. 107, for further evidence) leaves no doubt that the quavers represent a later version, not intended, however, by any means as an improvement on the more hurried and realistic trip, lets, but as a convenience. A son of the tenor Barth informed Friedlander that Schubert himself once accompanied this song for his father in quavers, and when asked why he did not use the trip- lets, replied, "I leave those to others, for me they are too diffi- cult." It must be remembered that the pianos of that time did not have the perfect mechanism of ours. 75 Schubert went so far as to write an Erlking Waltz, which seems to have annoyed Schubert; though he himself used to amuse his friends by singing it through a comb in the most tragi-comic way. At other times he distributed the parts of the father, son, and Erlking ; singing one himself while Vogl and some one else took the others.* Among the gems of the year following the £r//&?«^(i8i6)are the third version of Schiller's The Maidens Lament — a gem of the romantic mood — and the world-famed Wanderer, one strophic, the other through-composed ; both of them Schubert in every bar and far superior to any song composed before him. Like the Erl- king, the Wanderer was written at one sitting, the reading of the poem having at once sug- gested the music. The passage beginning with the words, " Die Sonne dunkt mich hier so kalt" was adopted by Schubert in 1820 as the theme of the adagio in his C major fantasia for piano-forte. * Besides Schubert's setting of the Erlking there are at least forty others ; but the only one worthy of being named on the same day is Loewe's, which will be considered presently. An amusing story is told by Friedlander of a worthy musician (church-com- poser and Kapellmeister) named Franz Schubert, who appears to have been mistaken by some one for the composer of Schubert's Erlking; whereupon he wrote a letter to Hartel protesting indig- nantly against being insulted by having this bungling piece {Mach- foerk) attributed to his pen ! 76 Schubert In some respects more wonderful even than any of the songs so far named is Death and the Maiden, of the following year (1817). No other Lied has thrilled me so often as this one; I know none which conjures up a sombre mood with such simple means. After the poor girl has begged the " skeleton man " to pass her by because she is so young, how full of gloomy foreboding are the two bars leading over to the second speaker — Death! And while he asks her in soothing tones not to dread him, since he has come not to punish, but to let her sleep gently in his arms, his monotonous, cavernous tones and the strange modulations tell us his real intentions. Did ever music in a major mood thus produce the effect of a weird minor? Schubert knew the charm of this song as well as any one. He knew, too, that it contained within its few bars the germs of melodies and harmonies capable of delightful expansion ; and this task he fortunately undertook some years later, when he made this song the theme of the variations constituting the second move- ment of his D minor quartet — the most inspired set of variations in the whole range of music* * In my opinion Schubert is not only the greatest of all song- writers, but also superior to all other masters in chamber-music — in melodic fertility, harmonic originality, sensuous beauty of col- oring, and appeal to the emotions. Epoch-making, also, are his 77 Schubert I may add that one of Schubert's own brothers committed the crime of cutting up the manu- script into about a dozen pieces, which were distributed among autograph fiends. Three of these fragments have been recovered, and on one of them was the date of the song, it having been one of Schubert's good habits to write down the day on which he completed a compo- sition. To the same year as Death and the Maiden belongs another of the most popular songs, The Trout, of which there are four versions. The first manuscript has a large blotch of ink over its first bars, and a few explanatory lines in short pieces for piano-forte ; the most idiomatic compositions for that instrument written^before Chopin, and the forerunners of the various short pieces which characterize the romantic school. In these things, as in his modulations, Schubert is the father of the romantic school. His general rank in music is a much higher one than that usually assigned to him by historians. Rubinstein proclaimed him one of the three greatest of all masters. But I have no space to discuss this matter here. See my article on "Schubert's Rank as a Composer," in the Philadelphia £;«(/^, May, igoo. In that article I also disposed of the ridiculous charge that Schubert was not a master of polyphony. In the whole range of musical biography there is not a more ludicrous and at the same time pathetic incident than the resolution of poor Schubert, only a few weeks before his death, to take lessons in counterpoint of Sechter. The " friends" who urged him to do this may perhaps be forgiven, since they had no way of hearing his instrumental works ; but for modern writers to parrot their opinion is unpar- 78 Schubert Schubert's handwriting at the bottom of the page : " Just as I was about to hurriedly throw on the sand, being somewhat sleepy, I seized the inkstand and calmly emptied it. What a calamity ! " On the next page he wrote : " Dearest friend ! I am delighted to hear that you like my songs. As a proof of my sincere friendship I here send you another one, which I have just now written at Anselm Hutten- brenner's, at midnight." This song, also, was used afterwards as a theme for variations, in the quintet, opus 1 14. A composer's best songs are not always the most popular of them. In comparison with donable. There are imitative passages in the chamber music and symphonies, and in many of the songs too (think, e.g., of his Wehien und Lachen, An die Thiiren will ick schleichen, the melodious bass in Aufentkalt, etc.) which show that Schubert's genius taught him more about counterpoint, so far as it has any musical value, than a thousand Sechters could have taught him. As Dr. Dvorak remarked in an article which I helped him to write for the Century Magazine (July, 1894), "though Schubert's polyphony be different from Bach's or Beethoven's, it is none the less admirable. '' If Schubert had added Bach's polyphony to his own qualities he would have been like Robert Franz. But is Franz a greater song-writer than Schubert because he is usually polyphonic ? Dr. Riemann has some excellent remarks on contra- puntal accompaniments in Schubert and others in his Katechismus der Gesangscomposition (pp. 81, 87, 88, 91), a book which must be warmly commended to all who wish to write songs or study their anatomical structure. 79 Schubert many other Lieder, The Trout has enjoyed more vogue than it deserves, and the same is true of some other songs. Mr. Elson had good rea- sons for writing in 1888 that Schubert's songs were not even then "appreciated to their full extent in America, where the musical bonbon, the Serenade, is too often held to be the gi-eat- est of the songs of this composer." To be sure this serenade (^^ Leise fliekenmeine Lieder") which belongs to the last year of the composer's life (1828), is much better than ninety-nine per cent, of the songs in vogue, but it is not one of Schubert's best. The other serenade Hark, Hark the Lark (1826) is a more favorable speci- men of his muse, and in Liszt's arrangement it has also becoitie a favorite of concert pianists ; Paderewski plays it inimitably. The origin of this song illustrates the spon- taneity of Schubert's genius. One afternoon when he was sitting with some friends in a sub- urban tavern, he saw a book lying on a table. Turning over its leaves slowly, he suddenly halted and exclaimed : " A lovely melody has just come into my head ; if I only had some music paper!" One of his friends promptly ruled lines on the back of a bill of fare, and Schubert, undisturbed by the tavern noises, forthwith jotted down the immortal song. To the year 1825 belongs the popular Ave 80 Schubert Maria, concerning which Schubert wrote in a letter : " People were greatly astonished at the devotion which I have thrown into the Hymn to the Blessed Virgin, and it seems to have seized and impressed everybody. I think that the reason of this is that I never force myself into devotion or compose hymns or prayers unless I am really overpowered by the feeling; that alone is real, true devotion." The Mignon poems in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister appear to have been special favorites of Schubert; but here again the one best known is by no means the best. Nur wer die Sehn- sucht Kennt, which is included among the " Fa- vorite Songs," is no doubt a beautiful song, yet there is much less of inspiration and of the true Schubert in it than in the two settings of So lasst mich scheifien bis ich werde. The first of these, dated 1821 (No. 395), is so ex- quisitely musical and melancholy that it cannot have been dissatisfaction with it that induced Schubert to give the poem another setting (No. 490) entirely different, in 1826. Robert Franz included this second one in his collection of Schubert songs, but not the earlier one ; at which I am surprised, for they are both ravish- ingly beautiful; pervaded by a euphony of melody and harmony such as no one had at command before Schubert. And what an un- Si Schubert precedented feat — to give two immortal set- tings to one song ! Nay, he even commenced another one, which unfortunately remained a fragment*. The other Mignon songs — Kennst du das Land and Heiss tnich nicht reden — are far inferior to these, though the last-named is not at all bad. Many more of the songs deserve separate mention, but the limitations of space compel me to content myself with a few remarks re- garding the famous song-cycles. The Pretty Maid of the Mill is a series of songs based on a group of twenty-five poems of that name by * See Mandyczewski's Revisionsbericht, pp. 85-86. The songs referred to may be found in vol. vi., p. 31, and vol. ii., p. 132 of the Peters edition (which, nnfortunately, is not arranged chron- ologically), and in vol. vi., p. 191, and vol. viii., p. 172 of the chronological Gesammtausgabe of Breitkopf & Hartel. In this edition there are no fewer than five versions of Nur vier die Sehnsucht Kennt. Every lover of German song ought to possess one of these two editions. The best way to do is to go over all the songs a few times, marking those which seem best, and thus sepa- rating the wheat from the chaff. To amateurs who have not suffi- cient faith in their own judgment, I cannot commend too highly the Auswahl or selection of sixty-one Schubert songs made by Robert Franz and published by Breitkopf & Hartel. Franz chose particularly those songs in which both the poem and the mnsic are of a high order of merit ; omitting those in which the music too far exceeds in value the verses. But this does not prevent his col- lection from including the best songs ; for, as a rule, Schubert's musical inspiration was proportionate to the merits of his poems. 82 Schubert Wilhelra Muller (the father of Professor Max MuUer). The poems (five of which Schubert omits) tell the story of a miller's pretty daugh- ter who is loved by a young apprentice of her father's trade, and who apparently loves him too ; but her fickle mind is changed by the ap- pearance of a gay young huntsman. The first ten songs present the various phases of the young miller's courtship. In the eleventh — Mine — he is at last able to proclaim that the be- loved maid is his. But with the fourteenth the hunter appears, exultation is displaced by jeal- ousy and wounded pride ; and, convinced that she is lost to him forever, the young miller drowns himself in the brook, which in the last song sings his lullaby. Schubert was not the first to write a song- cycle. Beethoven wrote one before him, a set- ting of Jeitteles's " Liederkreis," An die feme Geliebte — six songs of no great musical merit, but having each its own music, with a reminis- cence of the first in the last, and connected by instrumental interludes. Schubert's Miiller- lieder 2i^t, not thus connected. The bond of union here lies poetically in the story and mu- sically in the picturesque piano part, whirh constantly keeps before our eyes the brook along which the whole tragedy is enacted. "Rivulets dance their wayward round, and 83 Schubert beauty born of murmuring sound " is every- where. The brook plays almost as prominent a part throughout the cycle as the galloping horse does in the Erlking, an amazing variety of rhythmic devices being used to make us ever aware of its presence. "The brook and the mill-wheel," writes Mr. Elson, " have mingled their tones through the set, very much in the same manner as a Leitmotiv runs through a Wagnerian opera ; and it is astonishing to note in how many different emotions Schubert has pictured the sequestered stream." The whole series of the Mullerlieder was com- posed in one week, in 1823. The story of how they happened to be written is characteristic of Schubert's method of creating songs. When Randhartinger, who had been one of Schubert's schoolfellows, resided in Herrengasse, Vienna, Schubert often called to take a walk with him. One afternoon he failed to find his friend in, but found on the table a volume containing the Mullerlieder. After reading a few of them he put the book in his pocket and went straight home to compose. When Randhartinger re- turned he missed the poems, which he himself had intended to set to music, and on the follow- ing morning he was surprised to find his book on Schubert's table. "Do not be angry," pleaded Schubert ; " the poems inspired me so 84 Schubert that I had to compose music to them, and I scarcely slept two hours last night, and now you see the result. I have already seven poems set to music. I hope you will like my songs ; will you try them ? " Randhartinger sang them, and forthwith gave up all idea of writing music of his own for these poems.* The Miillerlieder, though they did not attract much attention when they first appeared, are now sung more frequently at concerts, and altogether have enjoyed a wider popularity than any of the other Schubert cycles. Here again popularity and merit are not synonymous. Robert Franz admitted eleven of the twenty Maid of the Mill songs into his select edition ; and among those there are at least five (Wohin? Morgengruss, Des Mailer's Blumen, Trockeue Blumen, Die Hebe Far be) which are a joy forever ; yet none of them quite reaches the level of half a dozen of the Winter Journey songs, which represent Schubert at his very best. The Winter Journey is based on another cycle of poems by the same Wilhelm MuUer. The twen- ty-four poems do not, however, tell a continuous story, as the Schone Mullerin does ; and Schu- bert accordingly took the liberty of changing the order in which they succeed one another. *A. B. Bach, The Art Ballad, p. 105. Kreissle, p. 315. 85 Schubert Nor did he compose them all at the same time. They appeared in two groups of twelve each, the first group being begun in February, 1827. Half a dozen of them, Lachner tells us, were written in one morning, and, as before stated, Schubert received only twenty cents a piece for them. The best numbers in this first group are Gute Nacht (in which the transition from minor to major at the words " Will dich im Traum " is of ineffable beauty), Gefror'ne Thrdnen, Erstar- rung, Der Lindenbaum, Wasserfluth, Irrlicht, and Friihlingstraum. It is in the second group of the Winter Jour- ney songs, however, that Schubert, as I have in- timated, reaches the high-water mark of his genius. Die Post, Der greise Kopf, Im Dorfe, Der sturmische Morgen, and especially the last five — Der Wegweiser, Das Wirthshaus, Muth, Die Ne- bensonnen, Der Leiermann, would alone have made him the greatest of all song-writers. They are ineffably sad, like all that is best in art.* * I shall never forget the day when I first heard these songs, as a youth of fifteen or sixteen years of age. We were living in the Oregon wilderness and one day my brother Edward received the Winter Journey songs and sang the last twelve of them in the evening. I was lying under a tree in front of the house, playing with my dog, when those sad strains came to my ears. We had had good music in our house ever since my childhood, but noth- ing had ever affected me so deeply as these new melodies and modulations. I buried my face in Bruno's fur and sobbed like a 86 Schubert Schubert once wrote in his diary that " Grief sharpens the intellect and strengthens the soul, whereas joy seldom does anything for the one and makes the other weak or frivolous." And again : " My musical compositions are the prod- uct of my intellect and my sorrows ; those which were born of sorrow alone, appear to give the world the most satisfaction." Though natural- ly of a cheerful disposition he had his days of depression, on one of which he wrote that he wished every night when he went to sleep that he might never awake again. The interesting question arises whether the melancholy songs of the Winter Journey are a record of personal grief, expressing " the winter of his discontent," or whether the sad music is simply a reflex of the sad words. His personal friends and biog- child. To this day I cannot play them over without having tears come to my eyes. Indeed, if tears are the deepest and most sin- cere tribute to art, I must place Schubert above all other compos- ers, for be has made me weep oftener than any other. His music evidently had the same effect on his contemporaries. Spaun re- lates that at Linz one day when Vogl sang and Schubert played, the performance ^^ to be stopped because, after some sad songs, all the women and girls present were shedding tears and the men could scarcely hold back theirs. When Hiller was a boy he heard Vogl and Schubert in Vienna. He relates in his KiinstlerUben that it was the deepest musical impression he had ever received, and that tears coursed down the cheeks even of the veteran Hum- mel. I have already cited Liszt's confession that the Schubert songs often moved him to tears. 87 Schubert raphers have expressed contradictory opinions on the subject. Spaun relates : " For some time Schubert had been in a melancholy mood and appeared to be depressed. To my question what was going on he replied, ' You will soon find out. ' One day he said to me : ' Come to Schober's to-day, I'll sing you a cycle of weird songs. I am anxious to know what you will say. They have affected me more deeply than any of my other songs.' When the time came he sang to us the whole of the Winter Journey. We were quite dumfounded by the gloomy mood of these songs, and Schober finally remarked that he liked only one of them — the Lindenbaum. Schubert replied : ' I like these songs better than any of the others, and you will come to like them too.' He was right, for soon we became enthusiastic over these melancholy songs, which Vogl sang incomparably." Mayrhoferand Kreissle also connect the mood of these songs with personal disappointments ; whereas Schober thinks that Schubert in this case, as always, simply mirrored in his music the mood of the poems. Probably the mourn- fulness of these songs resulted from both these factors combined ; but what is of even greater interest is the question, " Why were these songs so preeminently inspired ? " The answer is, I think, to be found in the fact that Schubert composed them immediately after a delightful trip in the country lasting nearly two months ; during which he was happy among friends and 88 Schubert admirers and laid in a good supply of energy and creative power. He enjoyed himself so much on this trip that he dreaded the idea of returning to Vienna,* and it is probable that a tinge of longing for the delights of the country is mingled with the melancholy of the last songs of the Winter Journey. At the same time the gloom that pervades Miiller's poems would quite suffice to account for the sadness of Schubert's music, which is always a real Doppelganger of the poem he has in hand. The first of the second set — Die Post — depicts the anguish of soul resulting from the failure of the coach to bring a letter from the city where the beloved dwells. This song is in major, and rather animated in tempo ; yet, as Sir George Grove has remarked, " even in the extraordinary and picturesque energy of Die Post there is a deep vein of sadness." The next number, Der greise Kopf, is the youth's lament that the grave still seems so far off. In Die Krahe the youth fancies that a raven has followed him from the town in the ex- pectation of dining on his body. Im Dorfe tells us of the end of all his hopes. Der Stiir- mische Morgen — the stormy morning — is simply * See his letter to Frau Dr. Pachler printed by Kreissle, pp. 402, 403. 89 Schubert the reflection outdoors of the winter in his soul. Sadder and sadder become the poems, more woe-begone the music. Der Wegweiser shows us the guiding post which points to the undiscov- ered country from whose bourne no traveller returns. It is heart-rending music, and one of its sublime touches is the unchanging G of the melody during the five bars in which the youth's eyes stare fixedly at the sign-post. If possible a still greater miracle of genius and sadness is the next song — Das Wirthshaus. This " tavern " is a cemetery which seems to invite the weary wanderer ; but every room is taken and there is no rest for him. Here again Schubert has writ- ten in a major key a song more pathetic than any other composer's minor keys. There is no song I love more than this. Muth is an attempt to shake off the snow and take courage. It is a brisk song, but it is in a minor key ; a vain effort, disconsolate, like all the others. Another doleful Lied in a major key is the next. Die Nebensonnen, a song, like the others, seemingly, as inevitable as the air we breathe, yet absolute- ly original in every bar. What the three suns are is not clear from the poem. Max Miiller wrote to Dr. Friedlander: " I share your belief that the sun and the two eyes of the beloved are meant. As these two suns shine no more, 90 Schubert he wants the third, the real sun of life, to go down too." The disconsolate climax of the cycle is reached in its last song, Der Leiermann. In a prose translation : " Yon, behind the village stands the hurdy-gurdy player ; with stiffened fingers he turns his crank. Barefoot on the ice he walks, and never a copper is in his tray. No one wants to hear him, no one looks at him ; the dogs growl, yet he heeds them not, but in- cessantly turns his crank. Shall I go with you, strange old man? Will you accompany my songs with your instrument?" The hurdy-gurdy is an instrument with a drone-bass of two tones a fifth apart. This drone- bass Schubert imitates by repeating the notes A E incessantly throughout the sixty-one bars of the song, producing an ineffably melancholy and realistic effect, which is heightened by the equally characteristic melody. Though the music is thus simply a mirror of the text, one cannot help reading into it a bit of autobiog- raphy — for did not Schubert, also, sing on in- cessantly ; and did not his tray, too, remain for- ever empty? If anything could intensify the pathos of these songs it would be the thought that Schu- bert's last pen-strokes were made while revis- ing the proof-sheets of them, a few days before 91 Schubert his death ; and that this work must have cast an additional gloom on his illness and may have hastened the end ; for brain-work is very inju- rious to typhoid-fever patients. While these Winter Journey songs were the last that Schubert saw in print, they were by no means the last he had composed. The Leiermann was written about a year before his death, and is numbered 540. After it he wrote twenty -seven more Lieder, the last of the four- teen included in the Swan-song group being number 567. Some of the thirteen songs inter- vening between the Winter Journey of 1827 and the Swan song of 1828 do not reach a very high level, but in the Swan-song group we not only have Schubert again at his very best, but we find him (like Wagner after Lohengrin) making once more a new departure and creating still another epoch in the evolution of the Lied; opening up a mine in which, afterward, Schu- mann and others delved and enriched them- selves. The name Schwanengesang was given' to Schubert's last fourteen songs by Hasslinger, their publisher ; and owing to the appropriate- ness of the title it has been retained. All but the last of them (the Taubenpost, dated October, 1828) were written in August, 1828, a month forever notable in the annals of the Lied, for 92 Schubert seven * of these songs are among the very best of Schubert's productions, and another one, the Serenade, is the most popular of all his songs. The first seven of these fourteen we owe in a way to Beethoven. That is, the Rellstab poems to which they are set were found among Beethoven's papers and Schindler allowed them to be taken away by Schubert, who, two days later, brought back the music to Liebesbotschaft, the Krieger's Ahnung, and Aufenthalt. The last named is one of those compositions which caused Rubinstein to exclaim rapturously: "Once more and a thousand times more. Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert are the three highest •pinnacles of music." It is a song which, like many others of the Schwanengesang and Winter- reise groups, one can sing daily for years and never tire of it, and which must send the cold shivers down the back of any one who hears it the first time — provided it is well sung and well played. There is in it as superb an energy as in the Erlking, and every one is delighted with the animated and melodious bass, which imitates the voice here and there with a canonic art that old Sechter (who was to give Schubert lessons in counterpoint shortly after this song was * Aufenthalt, In der Feme, Der Atlas, Ihr Bild, Die Stadt, Am Meer, Der Doppelganger. 93 Schubert penned ! !) could not have attained after a hun- dred years ot pedagogics. The high G, eighteen bars before the end, is as grand a climax as can be found in vocal music ; and the most delight- ful interlude I know of is the eight bars follow- ing the words " bleibet mein Schmerz."* In this song, as in many others, Schubert soars far above his poet. There were moments when his inspiration was so elemental and irre- sistible that any poem he happened to have in hand got the benefit of it. It is nevertheless true that a fine poem did much to command that inspiration. This is why so many of the Goethe songs, beginning with Margaret at the Spin- ning Wheel and the Erlking, are among his best. And this is why each of the six Heine songs in the Schwanengesang \ is a gem. They are original in every bar in spite of the five hundred and sixty songs preceding them, and yet every bar has the initials F. S. stamped on it. Emotionally these songs are as wonderful as they are from a purely mu- sical point of view. How different is the * The A sharp in the sixth of these bars is one of those strokes of genius which make the study of Schubert's songs a source of ever-increasing delight. Only in the white heat of genius could such a note as that A sharp have been written, t Der Atlas, Ihr Bild, Das Fisckermadchen, Die Stadt, Am Meer, Der Doppelganger. 94 Schubert gloomy, tragic, heaving agony of I)er Atlas, bearing on his shoulders the sorrows of a world, from the tender pathos of the lover who, in Ihr Bild, gazes at his beloved's picture, as in a dream, and cannot believe that he has lost her. In Die Stadt {The City) the poet is being rowed away in a boat, and the rays of the setting sun give him a final glimpse of the city where his beloved dwells. In this song, as Mr. Elson has remarked, " the steady plash of the oar of the boatswain and the gray stillness of the waters at eventide are pictured with graphic power by a constantly recurring broken chord." Am Meer gives us another splendid portrayal of the sea. " Listen to the few chords that introduce and close Am Meer" writes Mr. Philip Hale. " They at once suggest a mood. They speak of the sea at nightfall, and yet how simple the main accompaniment! How simple the structure of the song itself ! " * With the exception of the Taubenpost, the last two of the songs are Am Meer and Der Doppel- ganger — an interesting circumstance, because they typify the two Schuberts. Am Meer is all • Sir George Grove devotes an interesting paragraph (p. 367, vol. iii., of his Dictionary of Music and Musicians) to the various attempts made by Schubert to imitate sounds of nature in his songs— fluttering leaves, leaps of a trout, bells, a post-horn, the song of the nightingale, etc. 95 Schubert melody, in the piano part as well as in the voice. One enjoys it more if one knows what the poem is to which it is wedded, and one admires the appropriateness of the music to the words. Yet it is so complete as a piece of music that one might play it forever as a mere piano piece — a song without words — and be quite satisfied. Not so with the Doppelganger. That grewsome poem Schubert composed in such a way that it needs the underlying poem as a complement as imperatively as Wagner's later operas do. The music enters into the minutest details of the poem, not only verse by verse, but word by word ; so that we have here an anticipation not only of Schumann, but even of Liszt. To se- cure this exact correspondence with the poem, Schubert discards the flowing melody, of which he was the supreme master, and uses for the voice a sort of declamation or recitative, not un- like Wagner's (who at that time was a boy of fifteen). The singer's task here is, first of all, to represent and interpret the poet, while to the pianist are intrusted chords as weird, as thrill- ing, as modern, as those which accompany the music of Erda and Klingsor in Wagner's Sieg- fried and Parsifal. Heine's poem brings before our eyes a man who goes at night to gaze at the house where his beloved used to dwell. In front of the house, to his dismay, he beholds a q6 Schubert pale man gazing at her window, wringing his hands in agony ; and the moonlight shows him that this other man is his own self — his double {Doppelgdnger). Schubert's music, bar by bar, would fit no other poem than Heine's grew- some tale, and from this point of view — as well as for the dramatic expressiveness of its chords — this is the greatest of Schubert's songs. Had he written no other, he would still be the greatest of all song-writers. It is the most thrilling, the most dramatic of all lyrics, and in penning it Schubert helped to originate the music of the future. Almost as much as in Weber's Euryanthe might the germs of the "Art-work of the Future" be found in the Doppelgdnger. In view of all these things one feels like cry- ing out aloud in agony at the thought that Schubert should have died just when a new world of beauty was opening before him. If he could have lived but one more year, to set to music one more half-dozen or dozen of Heine's poems! — which were just beginning to appear at this time. Some have expressed in- dignation at the epitaph which was put on Schubert's grave : " Music has here entombed a rich treasure, but still fairer hopes;" yet this was literally true— more so than those who wrote it could have realized. I am convinced 97" Schubert that if Schubert had lived another thirty years he would have anticipated all that is new in the harmonies of Wagner, Liszt, Chopin, and Grieg. As a creator he would have towered as high above all other musicians as Shakespeare does above all other poets. I am often haunted and tortured by the words he spoke on his deathbed to Bauernfeld : " Entirely new harmonies and rhythms are in my head." But they were buried in his grave unborn.* The belief is still quite prevalent in America and England that there is less melody in Ger- man music than in Italian. Schubert alone would utterly refute this notion. Of all melo- dists the world has seen he was the most spon- taneous, fertile, and inexhaustible. Rossini is the prince of Italian melodists, and in 1828 no one would have dreamed of ranking Schubert as high as him. But what has become of Ros- sini's melodies? With the exception of the Bar- *If we take the last of all his songs, Die Taubenpost (Carrier- pigeon) and play the second half of the twelfth bar, with pedal, we may possibly conjecture what line of development these new harmonies would have taken. Has the reader ever asked himself whom he would choose to be if a fairy permitted him to exchange his own brain for that of any person of the past? I have often asked myself that question, and have invariably answered " Franz Schubert." A man who with his genius began where he left off could do greater things than any genius, in any art, has ever ac- complished 98 Schubert ber of Seville and a few tunes from his other works, age has staled and withered them ; where- as, Schubert's melodies are as fresh and as mod- ern as on the day they were born. Rossini's tunes had the ornamental stamp of fashion, and fashion is transient ; whereas Schubert's melo- dies have the lasting quality of chaste folk- songs, with the added charms of the highest harmonic art. Schubert liked Rossini's music; but his instinct taught him a higher, nobler style, which fashion cannot affect. At one time, as a youth, he came under the influence of Salieri, who tried to make an Italian of him, advising him not to waste his efforts on the German poets but to compose Italian stanzas. He did compose a dozen or more songs to Italian words,* but here he was like a fish out of water. Mozart, as everybody knows, was at home among the Italians ; and his vocal music, even in the German Magic Flute, remains essentially Italian. But Schubert' was German to the core, and it is marvellous that he should have sur- passed the Italians — who hitherto had had al- most a monopoly of vocal music — not only in regard to the artistic union of verse and melo- dy, but in the charm, flow, and variety of mel- ody. Salieri's advice to Schubert that he should * Printed in vol. x. of the Breitkopf & Hartel edition. 99 Schubert " husband his resources of melody " was about as useful as a warning to an artesian well not to waste its water. Schubert's harmonies and modulations are no less original, spontaneous, and varied than his melodies. Robert Franz called him a great har- monic emancipator, and Dr. Riemann has well said that " the entire Schumann and the entire Liszt are in their harmonies an outgrowth of Schubert." As harmonic innovators Bach, Chopin, and Wagner are, in my opinion, the only peers of Schubert. He does not, however, like those masters, modulate habitually with the aid of chromatic progressions, but simply drops from one key into another in the most uncere- monious, unprecedented, astonishing, and de- lightful way. To him all keys are sisters or cousins. Now modulation — unexpectedly pass- ing from one key to another — is preeminently the emotional element in music, and Schubert's mastery of this element of expression explains the power of his songs, above all others, to evoke tears. Modulation, too, is the specifical- ly modern element in music, and this is another reason why Schubert's songs seem of to-day and not of nearly a century ago. His modulation, furthermore, brings together not only keys but modes. With other composers, as a rule, a song is either in major or in minor ; but with Schubert Schubert these two modes are twins that inter- twine in nearly every song. And usually there is a poetic as well as a musical reason for the change from one mode or mood to another, showing how closely Schubert followed the spirit of his • poems. As Sir George Grove has aptly said: "With Schubert the minor mode seems to be synonymous with trouble,' and the major with relief ; and the mere men- tion of the sun or a smile or any other emblem of gladness, is sure to make him modulate." All these harmonic and modulatory features make it absurd to speak of the piano part of Schubert's songs as " accompaniments," or to play them as such. They are as important as the orchestra is in Wagner's operas. If anything could be more marvellous than Schubert's melodic and harmonic spontaneity, originality, and variety, it would be the singu- lar appropriateness — one might almost say, in- evitableness — of his music to the poem in every case. Here his rare rhythmic faculty comes into full play in devising suggestive figures or modes of movement. And the miracle of it is that the musical idea appropriate to a poem came to him without trouble or reflection, near- ly always like a flash of lightning. One day a lady asked him to set to music a certain poem which she gave him. He went to a window, Schubert read it over a few times, and exclaimed : " I have it ; it is already completed and will be quite good." In the preceding pages I have related similar instances, all of them showing how differently his brain worked from that of most other composers, who usually needed days, weeks, or months to incubate their ideas. This spontaneity of conception and rapidity of execution gave rise to the impression that he jotted down songs as we write letters, without ever revising them. This impression, which was shared even by Kreissle and Grove, was corrected, as 1 have before intimated, by Dr. Friedlander, who showed that Schubert habit- ually copied his songs and nearly always intro- duced some changes and improvements in the vocal as well as the piano part and the expres- sion marks. This he continued to do even in the songs of the last years of his life, including the Winterreise and Schwanengesang cycles. Far from being careless, Schubert was extremely critical. In a letter to his brother (cited by Kreissle, p. 329) he consoles himself over the fate of some of his songs with the confession : " only a few of them seemed to me good." There is plenty of other evidence to show that he knew better than any one else which of his songs were mediocre. Could he have been consulted by Mandyczewski, he would have Schubert doubtless advised him to omit many of the songs in the ten-volume edition. Nor is it true that he was uncritical in regard to the choice of his poems, as has been assumed hitherto. No doubt many of the poems he set to music were unworthy of such an honor. But these were poems he chose in order to please friends, or because there happened to be no other bottles at hand to put his new wine in. Mandyczewski has truly said that " if we take the works of all the poets he utilized it would be impossible to make better selections for musical purposes than those he made." He further revealed his critical fastidiousness by the way in which he omitted from a cycle a poem, or from a poem a stanza, that seemed to him unsuitable for musical alliance. Kreissle relates an incident (p. 2n) showing how stub- born he was in regard to such details as the placing of accents.* Each new poet — Schlegel, Mailer, Platen, Riickert, Rellstab, Heine — was seized upon eagerly, and for each Schubert found a characteristic musical atmosphere. That he set only six of Heine's poems is due to * He had a dispute with Umlauff, who thought that in the Wanderer the accent should be "O Land, wo bist dui" whereas Schubert insisted, most properly, in making it "wo bist du7" 103 Schubert the fact that these poems did not begin to ap- pear till shortly before his death.* * Eighty-nine different poets and writers of verse were drawn upon by Schubert. Goethe leads with 72 poems, followed by Mayrhofer with 47, Schiller 46, Wilhelm Miiller 44, etc. Goethe, •whom Schubert did more to glorify than all his biographers and commentators put together, did nothing to encourage or help the struggling young* composer. When the poet was seventy years old Schubert sent him copies of several of his songs, together with a letter, but Goethe paid no attention to them, thus confirming his own diagnosis when he wrote (in 1796): " I am no judge of music." The great dramatic singer Frau Schroeder-Devrient (whom Wagner admired so much) succeeded, however, in arous- ing him, at the age of 82, with her singing of the Erlking, The aged poet kissed her on the cheek and exclaimed: "Thank you a thousand times for this grand artistic achievement. I heard this song once before, when I did not like it at all ; but when sung in your way, it becomes a true picture." 104 IV German Song- Writers After Schubert LOEWE AND THE ART-BALLAD WE have seen that Schubert was born three years before the end of the eighteenth century, the thirteenth child of a poor school- master ; that his first published work was the Erlking; that he became famous preeminently as a song-writer, and failed with his operas. By a singular coincidence it happened that on November 30, 1796, just two months before Schubert's birth, there appeared in this world, as the twelfth son of a poor schoolmaster, an- other boy whose first published work included a setting of the Erlking, who became famous chiefly as a song-writer, and failed with his operas. This boy was Johann Carl Gottfried Loewe. He, too, was a most prolific composer, but he had seventy-two years to live and work while Schubert had only thirty-one. The list of his works includes 6 operas, 17 oratorios, about 400 ballads and other songs, besides a large 105 German Song-Writers After Schubert number of works for chorus, orchestra, organ, and piano. Loewe had the advantage over Schubert of enjoying a regular position as organist and con- ductor, and of being able to sing his own songs on concert tours, which took him as far as Eng- land. At some of his concerts he appeared in a fourfold capacity — as ballad-singer, pianist, orchestral conductor, and composer. His voice, a tenor, had an unusual compass, and was quite at home in the baritone region. He played his own accompaniments, and his enun- ciation of the words was remarkably distinct. Nor was he the only one who sang his songs well. Senfft von Pilsach, Krolop, Friedrichs, and, above all, Henschel and Gura, brought them forward and helped to secure for them considerable popularity. Then came a time of reaction, so that Dr. Gehring wrote, in 1880, that " his music, like Reichardt's, has gone by forever." More recently, however, strenuous efforts have been made to revive an interest in his works.* *In England Albert B. Bach wrote a book, The Art Ballad : Loewe and Schubert, of which several editions were printed in a few years. In 1898 the " Harmonic " of Berlin brought out a book by Heinrich Bulthaupt, which tells the story of Loewe's life and describes his principal works. These books, with an autobio- graphic sketch, constitute the literature on the subject; and to 106 Loewe and the Art-Ballad While Schubert did not write many ballads, and those mostly in his early years, Loewe made a specialty of this species of song ; and of all his compositions these alone have survived. The word ballad, unfortunately, has been used to designate a number of entirely different things. Its original meaning was " dance-song " (from the Italian ballatd). In England, where so-called " ballad concerts " are in our time devoted to all kinds of popular songs indiscriminately, ballad meant a dance-tune as late as the seven- teenth century. To-day we have not only vocal ballads but ballads for piano, violin, or orches- tra, in which there is no trace of dance-music. The poets have added to the confusion by an inconsistent use of the word ballad.* In this volume we are concerned with the meaning of ballad in the realm of song only ; and here a glance at a typical ballad, like the Erlking, tells us more than pages of esthetic discussion. them I must refer those who, after singing over the ballads con- tained in the ' ' albums " or selections issued by various publishers, feel enough interest to pursue the matter. Enthusiasts will, of course, procure the complete edition of his songs by Breitkopf & Hartel, in seventeen volumes. Elson's History of German Song (pp. 210-214) contains an excellent analysis of Loewe's method of composing. * See Bulthaupt's remarks on this subject, in the first chapter of his book on Loewe. 107 German Song-Writers After Schubert That song has a dramatic element in so far as the Erlking, the father, and the child, are heard to speak in melodies of their own ; yet it is not really dramatic, but epic, because we hear them only through the medium of the narrator. In other words, a ballad is a song based on a nar- rative (epic) which may introduce various dra- matic, as well as lyrical elements, and which usually has a background of romantic scenery. The German poets originally got the subjects for their ballads from the British poets. In the south the place of the ballad is taken by the more lyrical " romance " ; the French romance being usually a sentimental love-song. Though Loewe failed as an opera-composer, his ballads show that he had a genuine dramatic vein, which is revealed in the often striking harmonies of his piano parts, as well as in the effective treatment of the voice. What he lacked was the divine gift of imperishable melody — that wealth of ideas which has made Schubert immortal. He had melodies enough in his storehouse to furnish forth, perhaps, forty songs ; but not four hundred. In his case, as in so many others, less would have been more. There is something almost amateurish in the way in which he introduces a theme or two and keeps on repeating them, with slight changes in rhythm and harmony, throughout an intermi- io8 Mendelssohn nable ballad. In many cases several themes fol- low one another like a mosaic without any at- tempt at elaboration or organic union. Yet with all these defects, there are among these songs a considerable number that deserve to be better known ; such ballads as Henry the Fowler, Harald, Edelfalk, Der Fischer, The Clock, Der Noeck, The Moorish Prince, Oluf, Odin's Ride over the Sea, and, above all, Edward and the Erlking* MENDELSSOHN Never was a name more appropriately chosen than that of Felix Mendelssohn. Felix means lucky or happy ; and certainly Mendelssohn was the luckiest, and had every reason to be the happiest, of all composers. Not only was he, as the son of wealthy parents, able to travel and do whatever he pleased, but throughout * It is unfortunate for Loewe that some of his champions, like Albert Bach and Bulthaupt, should have tried to prove not only that his Eriking is a splendid composition — which it surely is — but that it is even superior to Schubert's. It is possible to main- tain that the Erlking's song is more seductive and uncanny in Loewe — though I think the hushed pianissimo accompaniment makes Schubert's more so ; but how any one can contend that the galloping of the horse is more realistic, the outcry of the child more agonized in Loewe than in Schubert, quite passes my comprehen- sion. But why these odious comparisons ? Both the Erlkingt axe masterpieces. 109 German Song-Writers After. Schubert his life (1809-1847) he enjoyed a popularity far exceeding that of his superiors. In this very prosperity, however, lay the greatest danger to his genius. His music, like his life, is all sun- shine ; and eternal sunshine is apt to prove mo- notonous. There are no clouds, no frowning cliffs, no dark abysses, in his songs. They are smooth, elegant, symmetrical, gentlemanly, polished ; but never deep, sad, pathetic, or tragic. Schubert found that his friends liked his sad songs best; but Mendelssohn had no oc- casion for sad songs. Look through the whole list of them — more than six dozen — and you will not find one the sentiment of which is much more than skin-deep. They are, in truth (like the songs of Hay^n, Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber), the poorest of all his productions, far inferior to his instrumental works — notably his immortal overtures. Yet so popular was he in his day, so eagerly did the shallow public ac- cept everything that came from his pen, that these shallow songs enjoyed for decades a much greater vogue than the infinitely more inspired songs of Schubert, Schumann, and Franz. The inevitable reaction has perhaps carried the pendulum too far as regards Mendelssohn's music in general ; but not too far as regards his songs, most of vhich stand hopelessly con- demned by their own mediocrity. Only six or Mendelssohn seven of them deserve their former vogue — On the Wings of Song, the Winterlied and Sonn- tagslied, the Volkslied (" Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rath "), Gruss, O Jugend, O Schone Rosenzeit, and the Venetianisches Gondellied. ■. These are fresh, individual, tuneful, and charming. In the oth- ers one finds here and there a pretty melodic curve, or a piquant harmonic progression ; but for the most part they are aggravatingly trivial and insipid ; reminding one by their painful dearth of ideas of the productions of those other song-writers of the Berlin school, Reichardt and Zelter.. Some of Mendelssohn's songs are instrumental in character, and there is usually too much conscious striving for symmetry and popularity — too much small talk. The earlier songs are the best. In his later ones,* as Rob- ert Franz has pointed out, " there is no naivet6, nothing but smooth, polished, elegant workman- ship — no passion, but only the semblance of it." He is, as Mr. Elson remarks, " never grand or soul-stirring " ; he makes symmetry an end rather than a means ; and " his song-subjects seem to have been chosen in such a manner that the music should generally be more important than the words." Mr. Elson and Sir George * The Peters edition ot Mendelssohn's songs has an appended TextrevisioH by Max Friedlander, with the dates of the songs. Ill German Song-Writers After Schubert Grove contend that Mendelssohn did good by preparing the public taste to appreciate the deeper song-writers of Germany, There may be something in this. At the same time his ex- cessive popularity (in England this was posi- tively grotesque) for a long time kept greater names off the concert programmes — as Brahms does to-day. SCHUMANN Schumann's music, like Mendelssohn's, is autobiographic. While Mendelssohn's songs are all sunshine, one does not have to sing many of Schumann's to realize that his life was often darkened by mists and storm-clouds. He was neither wealthy nor was his genius appre- ciated at its true value ; and he fought many battles with obtuse critics and shallow Philis- tines, not so much in his own behalf as for the sake of other men of genius who were unduly neglected. In this volume we are concerned with only one of the serious episodes in his life — his courtship. To most men the period of courtship is the heyday of life ; but the course of Schumann's love did not run smooth. In 1836, at the age of twenty-six, he found himself enamoured of Clara, the daughter of his piano teacher, the eminent Friedrich Wieck. The SCHUMANN. Schumann father did not favor the suit, because he did not believe that a romantic dreamer like Schu- mann, who had up to that time devoted himself to art for art's sake, without much regard for pecuniary profits, would be able to support a wife in comfort. Schumann thereupon tried to improve his worldly affairs by transfer- ring his musical paper, the Neue Zeitschrift, to Vienna ; but the venture proved a failure and he returned to Leipsic. The uncertainty whether he would be able to call Clara his own lasted four years. Wieck remained obdurate, although by 1840 Schumann's income amounted to about a thousand thalers a year. The case was at last, in accordance with the German custom, brought before the courts, which, after much vexatious delay, decided in favor of the young couple, and they were married on Sep- tember 12, 1840. It was during this period of alternating hopes and doubts * that Schumann wrote his best music for piano, as well as for the voice. Up to the year 1840 he had composed only for the piano; and the letters to Clara of the years 1838 * His letters keep us informed regarding his heart affairs. On November 1$, 1836, for instance, he writes to his sister-in-law Theresa: " Clara loves me as fondly as ever; but I have resigned her forever. '' And again, a year later : ' ' The old man is not yet willing to give up Clara, to whom he clings most closely." 113 German Song- Writers After Schubert and 1839 contain abundant indications that she was in his mind all the time : " I have buried myself in the dream-world of the piano and can play and talk about nothing- else but you," he wrote. On February 19, 1840, we find him in a new field : " I am now writing nothing but songs, great and small," he says to a friend. " I can hardly tell you how delightful it is to write for the voice, as compared with instrumental composition ; and what a tumult and stir I feel within me when I sit down to it. I have brought forth quite new things in this line." Three days later he writes to Clara : " Since yesterday morning I have written twenty-seven pages of music (something new), of which I can tell you nothing more than that I lAughed and wept for joy in composing them." It was the famous song-cycle Die Myrthen {Myrtle Wreatk) opus 25, which he dedicated to his " beloved bride." In sending her his " first printed songs " {Lieder- kreis, opus 24), the following month, he wrote t " When I composed them my soul was within yours. Without such a bride, indeed, no one could write such music — which I intend as a special compliment." And again, on May 15, he writes to his bride : " Once more I have composed so much that it seems almost un- canny. Alas ! I cannot help it ; I could sing myself to death, like a nightingale. Twelve 114 Schumann Eichendorff songs I have written ; but these I have already forgotten and have commenced something new." This was his state of mind throughout the year when he married, and the result was more than a hundred songs, including the best he ever wrote. They were published as groups, or cycles ; among which must be named (i) the Liederkreis, opus 24, his first printed songs, nine in all, two of which — Ick wandelte unter den Bdumen and Mit Myrthen und Rosen — are gems ; (2) Myrthen, twenty-six songs, the best being Die Lotosblume, Lass mich ihm am Busen hangen, Du bistwie eine Blume, and Der Nussbaum ; (3) the Eichendorff Liederkreis, to which belong the su- perb Waldesgesprdch and the Fruhlingsnacht ; (4) the Kerner cycle, opus 35, twelve songs, of which the best are Wanderlust, Frage, Stille Thranen ;* (5) the Frauenliebe-und-Leben — Woman's Love and Life — (with the superb Er, der Herrlichste von Allen, And Seit ich ihn gesehen); {6) Dickterliebe — Poet's Love — (which includes the best of all his songs — Ick grolle nicht, besides the admirable Im wunderscfwnen Monat Mai, Ein Jungling liebt ein Mddchen and Ich hab' im Traum geweinet) ; (7) the Liebesfriihling {Springtime of Love) cycle, the * Robert Franz thought that opus 3; included Schumann's best songs. He liked them better than the Frauenliebe-und-Leben cycle. i»5 German Song-Writers After Schubert best two numbers of which ( Warmn willst du And're fragen f &nA Liebst du um Schonheitf) as well as Er ist gekommen, were written by Clara, who therewith placed herself at the head of all song-writers of her sex. The suspicion that Schumann may have assisted her, is silenced by the fact that the first-named song — the best of the three — does not suggest his style so much as Mendelssohn's. Liebst du um Schonheit is more Schumannish, and the opening bar, which re- curs again and again, is a stroke of genius that haunts the memory delightfully. Clara Schumann's edition of her husband's songs, published by Breitkopf & Hartel, com- prises (with her own three) two hundred and forty-eight numbers. It is in four volumes and the songs are printed in the order of their ap- pearance. A critical study of them makes it only too obvious that Felix Draeseke was right when he said that Schumann began genius and ended talent. The seventeen songs I have referred to all belong to the year 1840, and so do the only others besides them that seem to me to have the gift of eternal youth — Sonntags am Rhein,An den Sonnenschein, and the famous ballad The two Grenadiers. Among the one hundred and nineteen songs of the third and fourth vol- umes there is only one — Er isfs — that rises above mediocrity. To understand this we 116 Schumann must know that after 1840, with a few unim- portant, exceptions, he did not write any more songs till nine years liter; a time when the cere- bral disease to which he succumbed in 1856 had already weakened his creative power and re- duced his genius to talent. This terrible afflic- tion enables us to comprehend the lack of ideas in these later songs and their triviality, which otherwise would seem inexplicable in a man so critical as Schumann was. It lessens our won- der at the fact that one who adored Schubert as he did, should have been willing to place before the world such utterly commonplace new set- tings of the Mignon songs, which his idol had clothed with eternal music; and it makes us forgive even the chalk-and- water insipidity of his Lieder-Album for children, opus 79. Hans von Biilow was right when he declared that the ipsissimus Schumann was the early Schumann, up to opus 50. Schumann seemed to have a presentiment of his fate when he de- clared, after the great song-harvest of 1840, that he was satisfied with what he had done and could not promise that he would produce any- thing further in that line. It has been assumed for a long time that Schumann, coming after Schubert, and benefit- ing by his example, must necessarily represent a higher phase in the development of the Lied. 117 German Song-Writers After Schubert He is supposed, in particular, to have assumed a more critical attitude toward the poems he set to music and to have increased the sig- nificance and importance of the piano part. We have seen, however, that Schubert's al- leged uncritical attitude toward poets and po- etry is largely a figment of the imagination; and, on the other hand, the eminent historian Ambros has pointed out that Schumann is by no means impeccable, but was guilty of some gross lapses of taste.* One great advantage Schumann had. Surviving Schubert by twen- ty-eight years, he had a whole new generation of poets to draw upon ; above all, Heine, w^ho became the favorite of lyric composers from the moment of his appearance shortly before Schu- bert's death,f because of his terse form and in- tense emotionalism. Schumann made a special- ty of him ; but so, no doubt, would Schubert have done, had he lived longer; and I must say that, much as I admire the emotional realism of * See W. A. Ambros, Robert Franz, 1872, p. 13 ; or his Bunte Blatter. f Challier's bibliography of songs, which was published in i885, includes more than 3,000 settings of Heine poems. Goethe comes next with 1,700. The other lyric poets lag far behind. Of Heine's individual poems Dtc bist wie eine Blume had had (at that date) 160 settings by different composers; 2cAhab'im Traum geweitut and Leise zieht durck niein GemUtA, each 83 ; Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsatn, 76 ; Ick weiss nicht was soil es bedeuten, 37. 118 Schumann Schumann's settings of some of Heine's songs, I wonder at his failure to be inspired by others he attempted (which could not have happened to Schubert) ; and none of them — not even Ich grolle nicht, one of the most superb songs ever written — seems to me quite so inspired as four of Schubert's six Heine songs : Der Atlas, Ihr Bild, Am Meer, and Der Doppelgdnger. There is a spontaneity and an inevitableness about these that Schumann never quite attains, even at his best. More incorrect still than the notion that Schu- mann " displays a more finely cultivated poetic taste than Schubert," is the assertion made by Dr. Philip Spitta, in his otherwise excellent analysis of the characteristics of Schumann's songs,* that " with Schubert and Mendelssohn we may very properly speak of the piano-forte part as an ' accompaniment,' however rich and independent it occasionally appears. But with Schumann the word is no longer appropriate, the piano-forte asserts its dignity and equality with the voice ; to perform his songs satisfactorily the player must enter fully into the singer's part and the singer into the player's, and they must constantly supplement and fulfil each other." • Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. iii., pp. 411, 412. 119 German Song-Writers After Schubert As a matter of fact, all this applies to Schubert quite as much as to Schumann. Already in his earliest period we find songs like Margaret at the Spinning Wheel and the Erlking in which the piano-forte part is quite as important as the voice ; and to call the piano-forte parts of the Schwanengesang and Winterreise songs " accom- paniments," is an absurdity. Reissmann comes nearer the truth when he says that in Schumann the piano part " gains a predominance over the voice which it has not in Schubert's works." There are few Schubert songs to which we could apply what he says of many of Schumann's : that the vocal part is " the mere skeleton into which the piano ac- companiment first breathes the breath of life." Robert Franz once said to Waldmann that some of Schumann's songs, like Waldesgesprach and Dein Bildniss wunderbar, are " piano pieces pure and simple, with a superadded vocal part." A German critic has gone so far as to say that Schumann's songs are " piano-forte studies with accidental vocal accompaniments." This is an obvious exaggeration ; yet Schumann himself regretted that his musical ideas were usually " piano-thoughts " ; and this was due, no doubt, to the fact that for ten years, until he began to write songs, he had composed solely for the piano. Schumann Perhaps we can hit the nail on the head by saying, that whereas in Schubert the vocal and piano parts are of equal importance, in Schu- mann the piano often predominates. It must be remembered, however, that Schumann's vo- cal style, like Schubert's, is variable. In some cases we have the tuneful simplicity of a folk- song ; in others we have melodies " projected in bold and soaring lines " ; in many Schumann applies the declamatory principle of which Schubert gave so perfect an example in the Doppelgdnger. This declamatory style enables a composer to follow the poet word by word and the hearer to understand the poem dis- tinctly ; and it is therefore in the sphere of lyric song what Wagner's " speech-song " is in the music-drama. Though we have seen that only twenty of Schumann's two hundred and forty-five songs are of the highest order of merit, these twenty are so superlatively good that they will always insure him a place in the front rank of song-writers. Specialists and stu- dents will, of course, find interesting details of vocal treatment, harmony, and rhythm in many of his other songs. Schumann was fond of syncopations and anticipations, which give his rhythms and harmonies a unique interest. His pictorial or descriptive power does not German Song-Writers After Schubert equal Schubert's : he never could have penned the Erlking. On the other hand, he had a hu- morous vein, which Schubert lacked, and which ranges from " students' joviality " to " Heine's bitterest irony," as Dr. Spitta remarks, with slight exaggeration. He was particularly suc- cessful in reproducing in music that " mixture of humor and tragedy '' which is characteristic of Heine. Several of his songs give musical expression to " that mirth of Heine's which seems always on the verge of tears," as Mr. Fuller Maitland remarks.* In his use of " germs of ideas to give the impression of a vague, dreamy, veiled sentiment," he is also unique. That he had the mystic veneration of the German romanticists for all the phases of nature is made manifest in many of his songs. All the best traits of his genius are united in Ich grolle nicht. I am aware that some have affected to sneer at this song because it is so popular. But popularity in the case of a com- poser like Schumann, who never stoops to con- quer, is a sign of merit, not of demerit. Indeed, Schumann has been more lucky than some other song-writers in winning the widest popularity for his best effusions. * Page 67 of his Schumann, which remains the best short treaf tise on that master in any language. Franz FRANZ Robert Franz (i 8 15-1892) is another com- poser who, like Schumann, was inspired by love to write immortal songs. It came about in this way. He reached his fourteenth year before anything had happened to indicate that he might be destined for a musical career ; except that in school an irresistible instinct had led him — instead of singing in unison with the other children — to add an alto part to the choral mel- odies ; an accomplishment for which, however, the stupid teacher actually and repeatedly pun- ished him ! In his fourteenth year he came across an old-fashioned piano, or spinet, in the house of a relative; and this, as he relates in an autobiographic sketch, decided his fate. His mother succeeded in persuading his father to buy the instrument and to get a cheap teacher for him. There was little to be learned, how- ever, from the teachers of Halle, and Franz's mind was moreover too individual to benefit much from formal instruction. His main sources of musical information and culture were the organ performances in church ; and after he had acquired some skill on that inst;-ument we find him running from church to church to take the organist's place in playing a choral stanza 123 German Song-Writers After Schubert or two. The works of the great masters kin- dled in him an enthusiasm that led him to try his own hand at composition ; but, as he was ignorant of the theory of harmony and counter- point, the results were such that, as he after- ward remarked, if a young man came to him with such productions he would advise him to choose anything but music for a profession. His father, though adverse to the idea of his adopting the career of a musician, consented to give him a chance, and sent him for two years to Dessau to study with Friedrich Schneider. He returned with more immature compositions in his trunk, while his efforts to secure a re- munerative position had failed. His friends and relatives had no sympathy with one who seemed bent on throwing himself away on what they looked down on as a "breadless" art; so he had to seek consolation in the study of his favorite composers. These were Bach, Handel, and Schubert, whose works he pored over with feverish enthusiasm. Comparison of their finished productions with his own juvenile efforts disgusted him so thoroughly with the latter that he threw them into the fire ; and for a period of six years he had not the courage to write anything more. Despair had taken pos- session of him and his musical career seemed ended. 124 FRANZ. Franz This was the situation early in the year 1843. A powerful impulse was needed to restore his self-confidence, to reawaken his creative energy. It came in the form of romantic love, which has ever been the chief source of the fine arts. He fell in love with Luise G., the daughter of a well-to-do physician. She was his pupil, and it seemed at first as if music had united their hearts. But the time came when he found that she was not to be his. It was under the in- fluence of these experiences, hope followed by what seemed an irreparable loss, that the songs embodied in his opus i , and dedicated to this girl were written. When he composed them he had no thought of publication. They were merely the effusions of a full heart. But his friends urged him to get them printed, and the result is charmingly related by him in a letter to his friend Weicke, dated July 18, 1843: ' ' Within the last six months I have become a composer ; how it happened, I do not know. So much is certain : nearly every day has brought forth a new song. You can imagine what a blessing that may prove. Now my neigh> bors put it into my head that these songs were good. I was disinclined to believe this and therefore sent a number of them for inspection to Schumann. He not only made me still more puffed up by his approval, but he gave them, without my knowledge or desire, to a publisher, and they have been printed. Just think of it : ' Lieder by Robert Franz,' etc. Every corner-stone must laugh loud in its en- 125 German Song-Writers After Schubert thusiasm ! Were I to tell you all the flattering and gratifying experiences I have had in reference to my productions, it would smack much of vanity. One thing, however, I can- not suppress in my joy : Mendelssohn has written me a long letter and told me things which surely are seldom said to any one. He is full of joy and amiability ... I send you a copy of my songs, and expect a detailed, sound critique ; tell me the truth bluntly, it will do no harm, and I shall be more grateful than if you write me flatteries honoris causa." Mendelssohn had written to him " May you give us many, many more works like this, as beautiful in conception, as refined in style, and as original and euphonious ; " while Schu- mann wrote for his Neue Zeitschrift a review of the twelve songs first issued, wherein he once more revealed jiis keen instinct for discovering genius. He pointed out that these songs mir- rored the new spirit in poetry, and illustrated the progress which the Lied had made since the days of Beethoven : " Genuine singers, en- dowed with poetic taste, are required for their interpretation," he wrote ; " they are most en- joyable when sung in solitude and in the twi- light." " Were I," he concludes, " to dwell on all the exquisite details, I should never come to an end ; true music-lovers will discover them for themselves." Unfortunately, a musician cannot live by praise alone. Pecuniary profit there was none from these songs. Indeed, Franz once declared 126 Franz that he had practically made a present to the world of half of his Lieder. To support himself, he had to play the organ at a local church and give music-lessons at the university, where he was also appointed musical director later on (1859). I" this way he might have earned his bread and butter to the end of his life had it not been for a physical infirmity which grew upon him and finally incapacitated him for all work. Physiologists tell us that the children of aged parents are peculiarly liable to all sorts of de- generate nervous conditions, such as epilepsy, insanity, blindness, and deafness. Now, Robert Franz's father had committed the indiscretion of marrying after he had passed his sixtieth year ; and Robert's fate corroborated the phys- iologists. Before he was thirty years old his nervous system and his hearing had become somewhat impaired. In 1848 he married Marie Hinrichs, and not long after his marriage a serious accident occurred. He was at the Halle railway station, waiting for the train to Leipsic, when suddenly the shrill whistle of a locomotive sounded close by. It seemed to pierce his ears, as he afterwards related, and for a time he could hear nothing but a confused buzzing. A few days later his hearing returned, but the highest tones were gone and never came back ; and from that time on one tone 127 German Song-Writers After Schubert after another, down the scale, vanished forever. In 1864 his ears were painfully affected if he only wrote music. In 1867 he was obliged to give up his positions as organist and conductor ; he was suffering at that time from such fright- ful hallucinations, especially at night, that his friends feared he would become insane. The year 1876 found him totally deaf, and three years later his right arm became paralyzed from the shoulder to the thumb. When I visited him in July, 1891, all but the first two fingers of both his hands were para- lyzed. He could shake my hand, but not press it. He expressed his regret that he was abso- lutely deaf and that I would have to write on a slate whatever I wished to say. " America again! " he exclaimed, after reading what I had written. " Most of my friends seem to be Americans. I do not say this as a mere polite phrase, but because it is actually true. I assure you that of every six letters I receive, five are from America or England. . . Other na- tions are proud of their authors and composers — look at France, England, and Italy — but the Germans ignore theirs till they are dead, and then they erect statues to their memories."* * A full account of the very interesting talk I had with him appeared in the Century Magazine for June, 1893, under the head of "An Hour with Robert Franz." 128 Franz It cannot be denied that a full knowledge of the shabby treatment accorded by contempora- ries to Bach, Mozart, and Schubert had not yet taught the Germans to give up their idiotic maxim that the only true genius is a dead genius. It was only the men of genius, like Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Wagner, that were able to appreciate Franz's genius. " Some of the Berlin critics," he said to me, " have a theory that I do not compose my own songs, but hire a somnambulist, who dictates them to me, and that I then hypnotize him again to correct the manuscript — the cruelest cut of all !" The Brahms clique looked down on him as a " dilettante !" But it was not the direct at- tacks so much as the policy of Todschweigen — persistent ignoring — that hurt his feelings and kept his tray (like that of poor Schubert and his Leiermann) forever empty. Luckily, in 1 867, when he was obliged to give up his work, he received a pension of $150 a year for his editing of the works of Bach. Incredible as it may seem, this pension was taken away from him ten years later, when he was totally deaf. He would have had to spend the rest of his life in a poorhouse had not, in the meantime, generous friends and admirers taken steps to keep the wolf from the door. The Leipsic publisher, Constantin Sander— 129 German Song-Writers After Schubert who knew that Franz had been obh'ged to change his residence repeatedly to more humble quar- ters, but whose efforts to help him by trying to create a greater demand for his songs had been unavailing — conceived the plan of getting up a subscription in behalf of the deaf, paralyzed composer. The prime mover in the affair was Baron Senfft von Pilsach, the director of a life- insurance company in Berlin, and well known as an amateur concert and opera singer. He enlisted the aid, first of all, of Liszt, and subse- quently of Joachim, Niemann, Gura, Vogl, and other eminent artists. Concerts were given in various cities, and the most gratifying pecun- iary success attended them. Members of the nobility and others added their contributions, and between November, 1872, and May, 1873, the sum of thirty thousand thalers (nearly $25,000) was raised ; sufficient to enable the composer to spend the rest of his days in com- fort. America contributed a good part of the gift,* which was made available to Franz on his fifty-eighth birthday. * America, indeed, may be said to have shown the way, for as early as 1867 a concert was given in Boston which yielded $2,000 for the benefit of Franz. Boston — to its eternal honor be it said — was one of the first cities in the world that had a realizing sense of his genius, thanks to the missionary labors of Otto Dresel, S. B. Schlesinger, B. J. Lang, G. Osgood, and others. John S. Dwight 130 Franz Baron Senfft von Pilsach had the best of rea- sons for trying first of all to secure the aid of Liszt, not only because of the prestige of his name, but because he had previously exerted himself in Franz's behalf, with that noble gener- made excellent translations of some of the poems which Franz had set to music, and Oliver Ditson brought out an edition in two vol- umes, admirably selected^ and embodying some of these transla- tions — a selection concerning which Franz himself wrote in 1879: "I am convinced that this volume will succeed in revealing my tendencies to art-loving Bostonians and others " — the value of which is further enhanced by foot-notes quoting the characteriza- tions of individual songs made by Liszt, Ambros, and others. Otto Dresel (1826-1890), the high priest of the Franz cult in Boston, was a life-long friend of Franz, though he left Germany in 1848. Mr. W. F. Apthorp has drawn an admirable picture of the relations of these two men, and of their characteristics, in his Musicians and Music-Lovers, under the head of " Two Modern Classicists." "Neither of the two," he says, " gave anything to the world without its passing through the ordeal of the other's criticism." And they were both extremely critical. Dresel wrote a large number of songs, but kept them in his portfolio for constant revision ; and not till shortly before his death could he make up his mind to publish a few of them. In 1892 Breitkopf & Hartel reprinted these, with some others, making a collection of twenty songs, with German and English text. Four of these are admirable, and will delight every lover of Franz. All of them betray that master's influence in every bar. O Listen, my Darling, is rather too obviously inspired by Franz's exquisite Wonne der Wehmuth, but it is a fine song all the same. Maud is as effective for singers as it is interesting musically, while Moonlight and the pathetic The Flowers all are Faded are songs that Franz himself might have been proud of. 131 German Song-Writers After Schubert osity which distinguished him from most other musicians. It grieved his soul that such won- derful songs as Franz's should be so completely- ignored, and he therefore made up his mind to help him with his pen as he had helped Wagner and others.* He repeatedly requested Franz to send him some biographic data for an essay, and Franz at last consented, forwarding him, in 1855, a sketch which takes up eleven pages of the first volume of the letters to Liszt by eminent contemporaries.! Liszt made the best possible use of this sketch in an essay which gives a masterful analysis of Franz's genius ^ and overflows with enthusiasm. Franz was deeply moved by it, and in thanking Liszt for his services as interpreter and missionary, he expressed the belief that even the Berlin and Cologne critics would now sound their trum- pets in his praise. But while Liszt's essay and other pamphlets by Ambros, Schuster, and Saran, which appeared about the time the fund was being collected, no doubt won many new *See my Wagner and hii Works, vol. i., p. 391, vol. ii., p. 16. \ Brief e hervorragender Zeitgenossen an Liszt. Breitkopf & Hartel, iSgj. The two volumes include twenty-six letters from Franz. X It appeared first in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, then in a pamphlet, and was finally embodied in vol. iv of Liszt's Gesammelte Schriften. 132 Franz admirers for these songs, the professionals and the public at large had no more idea when Franz died on October 24, 1892, that the world had lost the greatest song-writer since Schu- bert, than Schubert's contemporaries had that he would be recognized as the greatest song- writer of all time. Mr. Apthorp speaks of " the exceedingly few obituary notices on Franz that appeared in German newspapers shortly after his death ;" and I was amazed and dis- gusted by the same phenomenon. Some honors had indeed come to Franz in the last years of his long life (as in the case of Schopenhauer, whose tirades against obtuse contemporaries and the policy of maintaining a conspiracy of silence he greatly relished) ; but it remains for the twentieth century to do full justice to his genius. When Dr. Hueffer wrote his volume on The Music of the Future he quite properly devoted a chapter in it to Franz. Yet, in spite of the neglect he suffered, and his physical infirmities, Franz exclaimed one day that he had been a happy man nevertheless ; for he enjoyed his creative work and the edit- ing of the works of Bach and Handel, and he enjoyed the love of his family. He was deeply attached to his wife ; and when I vis- ited him, a few months after her death, the tears rolled down his cheeks as he talked of 133 German Song-Writers After Schubert her and showed me the songs she had writ- ten*. It was at the time of his marriage to Marie Hinrichs that Franz had obtained the sanction of the law for the name which he had borne ever since his childhood. His father's family- name was Christoph Knauth, but as he had a brother who was engaged in the same business, and their letters consequently were often mixed up and created trouble, his acquaintances dubbed him " Christoph Franz," and he ac- cepted the name. This explanation, which the composer himself gave in a letter to Otto Less- mann, disposes of the legend that " Robert Franz " was a pseudonym which vanity had led him to adopt by way of indicating that he was the heir of Robert Schumann and Franz Schu- bert. This intimation used to arouse his ire, though, on the other hand, he frankly acknowl- edged the great obligations he was under to those composers. With the same frankness he maintained that if he had profited by their ex- ample, he had also taken pains to avoid their faults. And he was right. Among his two hundred and seventy-nine songs there are fewer mediocre ones than among those of either * They appeared in print under her maiden name, Marie Hinrichs. 134 Franz Schubert or Schumann. He not only threw his early efforts into the fire, but throughout his life he followed the Horatian maxim of keeping his productions in the desk for years, taking them out now and then and giving them the benefit of his ripening judgment. With merci- less severity he eliminated everything that seemed to him likely to prove ephemeral, and kept on retouching the manuscript as long as a single bar was capable of improvement in the vocal or piano part. The result of this proc- ess was, as he himself wrote to Osterwald in 1885, that in many cases the final product bore but little resemblance to the song in its first shape.* In another letter he wrote that a critical consideration of his artistic develop- ment was rendered impossible by his method of revising : " My opus i I consider no better and no worse than my opus 52. Among all the collections there are only three (op. 23, 27, 33) which were published soon after they had been written. In all the others, old and new songs are mixed up." When Franz's last song collections (op. 51 and 52) appeared in print some fancied that they discovered Wagnerian traits in one or two * He liked to see a clean manuscript, and therefore rewrote a whole Lied whenever he made a few changes in it. Some of the songs were thus copied two, three, and even four times. 135 German Song-Writers After Schubert of them • * but Franz showed that these were really among his first songs, written in the early forties and kept in the desk several decades ; so that any resemblance must have been a coin- cidence. In 1850 Franz heard Lohengrin, and was so much impressed with it f that he dedi- cated his opus 20 to its composer. It is strange that Franz should have ever cared for Wagner's music, for he hated the drama, with or without music, went to the theatre only 'once in all his life, and confessed that Mozart's operatic music unfolded its full significance to him only in the concert hall. In after years he did express his dislike of the later music-dramas of Wagner ; though, as he had never heard them (the year of his total deafness coincides with that of the first Nibelung performances at Bayreuth), this dislike was little more than a protest against the great ado made over opera, while lyric song was so shamefully neglected. Wagner, on his part, always was a great ad- mirer of the Franz songs; and when Franz visited him at Zurich, in 1857, he showed him * See Waldmann's Robert Franz, Gesprdche aus Zehn Jahren, 1894, which contains the records of many interesting conversa- tions with Franz during a period of ten years. f See my Wagner and His Works, vol. i., pp. 259-263; and further details concerning Franz and Wagner in the German edition of the same work, vol. i., pp. 245-248. J36 Franz his musical library, which contained, besides the works of Bach and Beethoven, nothing but Franz's songs. " He sang and played a couple of my songs for me," Franz relates, ''Die Wid- mung and Ja, du bist elend — the latter being his favorite song. And how he did sing, declaim- ing them with the greatest pathos, quite dra- matically. ' You must write operas,' he then said to me ; but any one who has penetrated deeply into my songs knows that the dramatic element in them is naught, nor is it intended to be found in them." Wagner and Franz represent the extremes in modern music, Wagner being the greatest dramatic composer of the century, Franz the greatest lyric composer since Schubert. There are many other differences between them. Wagner was the most modern of the moderns ; whereas Franz gravitated toward the times of Bach, the mediaeval choral, and folk-song. Wagner's harmonies are chromatic, his form new and irregular ; while Franz's harmonies are diatonic, his form traditional and symmetrical. And yet the extremes meet. There are points of contact between the two masters which may be considered even more important than their differences. They are best summed up in the following extract from one of Franz's letters to Liszt (dated September 29, 1855), which 137 German Song-Writers After Schubert might have been quite as well written by Wagner : "The poet furnishes the key to the appreciation of my works ; my music is unintelligible without a close appreciation of the sister-art : it merely illustrates the words, does not pre- tend to be much by itself. ... As a rule, my song is of the declamatory order, and becomes cantilena [flowing mel- ody] only where the feeling is most concentrated. The word is steeped in the tone, or forms, as it were, the skeleton which the sound clothes as its flesh. Therefore, it is easy to sing my songs, if the vocalist saturates himself with the poem and thus endeavors to reproduce the musical content." Many of Franz's songs are, like parts of Wagner's operas, beautiful if played on the piano alone, simply weaving in the vocal part. Liszt has translated a number of Franz's best songs into the most polished pianistic idiom.* But however delightful these songs may be as simple piano pieces, to get their full beauty the vocal part must be added. Without the voice they charm, with the voice they move to tears. Read one of the poems alone, play the music alone, and then perform them both together; and you will realize that poetry and music com- bined are a greater emotional power than either of them alone. Bearing this in mind, we can * See the Breitkopf & Hartel edition of Liszt's song transcrip. tions. 138 Franz understand the importance of the fact that modern lyric song has achieved "a fusion of poetry and music which can hardly be carried to a higher pitch of intimacy," as Franz puts it in a letter to Mr. Apthorp. And thus we see that, different as were their method's and aims, Wagner and Franz achieved the same results in their respective spheres. Franz could not, like Wagner, write his own poems; but he did the next best thing in select- ing such verses as were best suited for a mar- riage with music — poems which suggest more than they express. Judging by the number of times he reverted to them, his favorite poets were Heine and Osterwald, followed by Burns, Lenau, Eichendorff, Mirza-Schaffy, etc.* While Schubert liked picturesque poems, verging on dramatic action, Franz looked for the concise expression of moods. As Liszt has said, he was, above all things, a " psychic colorist." His favorite subjects were love and nature in their diverse moods ; and he loved above all things poems which give expression to mixed moods of joy and sadness, or else to that melancholy * Details regarding Franz's relations to poets and poetry may be found in Prochazka's admirable biography of the master (Leip- sic: Reclam), to which I am indebted for many of the facts em- bodied in this chapter ; in Waldmann's book, and in the essays of Liszt and Atubros. 139 German Song- Writers After Schubert resignation which his own experiences had taught him. It is characteristic of him that among the poems of Heine he avoids those in which the sentimental mood is disturbed by an ironic final verse. In Burns he avoids the poems that verge on coarse realism. " My musical expres- sion," he wrote to Liszt, " partakes of the nature of the sensitive plant, and avoids, as far as pos- sible, all rude material contact." This sensitive- ness is a feminine trait in his art, and there is also a feminine tenderness in his songs such as we find rarely in other composers, excepting Schubert and Chopin. There is in his songs, in the words of Mr. Apthorp, " that native rev- erence for purity and beauty that we find in the English love-poems of Elizabeth's day. No lover can be too passionate to sing them, no maid too pure to hear them." Franz told Waldmann that Mendelssohn, who was pleased with his first songs, gave him up after the appearance of opus 4, which showed that he did not intend to follow in his footsteps. To Dresel Mendelssohn once said that there was no melody in Franz's songs. He meant, of course, no instrumental tune ; for, as Wagner has pointed out, it was customary in those days to consider as melodies only such vocal tunes as could also be " fiddled and blown and ham- 140 Franz mered on the piano." As the first object of vocal music is to make the poem intelligible to the hearer, it is to Franz's credit that he avoided such " melody " in favor of a more declamatory style. Louis Ehlert has aptly pointed out that Brahms's songs " are not always planned for a human voice with piano- forte accompaniment ; for frequently the latter might be reg^laced by an orchestra or quartet, and the former by a 'cello or oboe. This is sometimes true of Schumann, rarely of Schu- bert, never of Franz ; and therefore, in this respect (but not in the matter of absolute in- ventiveness) I hold Franz to be the greatest of all song- writers." This is the true vocal point of view. At the same time, there is plenty of flowing melody in Franz's songs, and there have been singers, like Lilli Lehmann, who have taught us that the declamatory song of Franz and Wagner can be sung as smoothly and insinuatingly as the Italian bel canto. To Waldmann Franz said one day : " If any one understood the del canto of the Italians it was Handel ; him I studied and took for my model. Therefore, my Lieder are genuine vocal music. Old Garcia expressly declared that of all German songs mine are the best suited to the voice." * • Emanuel Garcia, one of the most eminent teachers of the Ital- ian method in the nineteenth century. Jenny Lind was one of his 141 German Song-Writers After Schubert If there wefe no flowing' vocal melody at all in the Franz songs — which is very far from be- pupils. Why have the great singers been so much slower in mastering the Franz style than the pianists were in mastering Chopin and Schumann ? Indolence appears to be one reason. As Liszt remarks sarcastically, it would be too much to ask the lead- ing singers to enlarge their repertory by learning new songs. Concert singers, says Ambros, hunt through the volumes of his songs seeking for some that end with loud, high notes which, like the old Roman vos plaudite, are an appeal for applause. But Franz avoids such claptrap devices ; he is much more apt to have a .song end with a quiet postlude for the piano; and that annoys the singers. In a letter to Mr. Apthorp, Franz refers to the " bound- less vanity of professional singers," and declares that "these gentry never care for the thing itself, but only for their own per- sonal success." In most cases this is only too true. The concert singers have yet to learn the lesson which has been taught to their colleagues of the operatic stage, who used to scorn Wagner's music because they found in it no loud final notes, no embellish- ments, no monopoly for the voice, which they fancied were essen- tial to the securing of applause. They have lived to learn that the public reserves its warmest applause for the Wagner singers ; and they will live to learn that those who attend song-recitals are more pleased with songs that are in themselves beautiful, like the best of Schubert's, Franz's, or Grieg's, than with those which merely serve to show off the singer's voice. During seventeen years of professional service as a critic I have hammered away at this sub- ject. One eminent singer, whom I had censured for always singing Brahms and never Franz, begged leave to come to my residence and have me point out some of my favorites. I did so ; he sang them and was much applauded. Then he went back to Brahms. Another famous singer, Plunkett Greene, once conde- scended to put a Franz song on his programme. It received more applause than anything else he sang, and had to be repeated. 142 Franz ing the case — they would still be among the most melodious of all Lieder, because the piano part is all melody. It is nearly always poly- phonic, that is, it is melodious in every part — in the bass and the middle parts as well as in the treble. Such melodic miniature-work can be found only in the scores of Bach and Wagner; and it is largely owing to it that, as Schumann wrote, we never cease discovering exquisite de- tails in these songs. One might say that Franz was a polyphonic Schubert — what Schubert might have been had he known the works of Bach and studied them with the same devotion as Franz did. Franz spent many of the best years of his life writing what are called " addi- tional accompaniments " to Bach and Handel scores;* and thus his mind became thoroughly But he never sang any more Franz, at least in New York ! Lilli Lehmann has set a good example by her Franz recitals in Ger- many, which were as great a success financially as artistically. If I have not had much success in persuading singers, I am glad to say, on the other hand, that I have received many letters from amateurs who have thanked me for calling their attention to such treasures as these songs — and this recalls what Franz once said to Dr. Vifaldmann : " What do I care if a song of mine happens to be applauded in a concert-hall ! I could show you hundreds of letters thanking me for the peace, consolation, and gratification my songs had given the writers." * A full list is given in Prochazka's little book on Franz, pp. 149-1S3. It cannot be too highly commended to the attention of the directors of choral societies. For a clear account of his object in 143 German Song-Writers After Schubert saturated with their styles, so that there is hardly one of his songs which does not show what company he has kept. How thoroughly Bach had become second nature to him is shown vividly, e.g., in Lenau's Der schwere Abend, the piano part of which, as Ambros has wittily remarked, looks, for all the world, as if Bach had sat down and composed a Franz song by way of expressing his gratitude for all that Franz was to do for him. It may be said that the soil out of which Bach's best music grew was the stately Ger- man church choral; and this, too, exerted a great influence on Franz's art. The first en- during musical expression made on his mind was at the age of three, when he heard Luther's choral A Fortress Strong is our Lord blown on trombones from the top of a church tower, as was the delightful custom in those days on festive occasions or at funerals. Chorals were also regularly sung at his home in the evening, and he heard them and played them in church, until they became part of the very tissue of his mind. To this wholesome tonic influence we owe many of the finest harmonies in his piano parts, and such superbly emotional songs as " filling out the gaps left by the old composers in their scores " see Apthorp's Musicians and Music Lovers, pp. 227-249. Cf. Frochazka,88, 103 144 Franz Widmung, Leise zieht durch mein Gemuth and Bitte. As a matter of course Franz does not re- tain the monotonous movement of the church choral, but gives it the rhythmic variety which it had originally before the hymn-writers sim- plified it. Beside the polyphony and the chorals there was still another mediaeval trait which Franz assimilated and incorporated in his style — the church modes. As the reader is aware, modern music is based on only two modes — major and minor. Like the Greeks, the early mediaeval composers had no harmony, but they had a greater variety of modes than we have, that is, scales differing in regard to the position of the semitones. These — the church modes — were found difficult to manage when music became harmonic, and were therefore displaced by our major and minor modes. But there are still traces of them in Bach, and Franz's study of his chorals and other works * had its effect on his own work — quite unconsciously, for, as he told Waldmann, he was not aware of it till a friend said to him one day, " Why, this song is written in a Greek scale." " If you will look through * Every student of music should own a collection of Bach's chorals and play them daily as the best of all means of educating the harmonic sense. They are in the Feters, Breitkopf and o'her editions. 145 German Song-Writers After Schubert my Lieder" Franz added, "you will find a num. ber of them, perhaps twenty, especially among the old folk-songs, that are written in these scales." He himself, he says, was not aware that the Lotosblume of opus i is partly in major and minor, partly in a church mode, till Schaffer called his attention to it. Others are Zu Stras- burg atif der Schanz (Doric), Konntst du mein Aeuglein sehn and Es klingt in der Luft uralter Sang (both Phrygian). But the quaintest of these Lieder with an ecclesiastic atmosphere is Es ragt der alte Eborus, one of the most delight- ful of all his songs, which I have played a hun- dred times and shall never tire of ; though I fear it will always remain caviare to the general.* Notwithstanding these mediaeval features in Franz's music, he is anything but reactionary. The church modes have been used by such ultra-modern masters as Liszt and Grieg ; and as for chorals and the polyphonic interweaving of melodies, where can you find these mediaeval traits more effectively used than in the " music of the future " — notably Wagner's Die Meister- singerf The simple truth is that there were in Bach important factors of musical evolution which the monophonic school — Haydn, Mozart, * It may be found in vol. ii., p. 44, of the Franz Album, Kist- ner edition. See, on these songs, Prochazka, p. 40 ; Saran, p. 26. 146 Franz Beethoven — had neglected, and which re- mained to be developed in the last half of the nineteenth century, after the discovery had been made that old Bach was really a romanti- cist. The peculiarity of Franz lies in this that, while he absorbed this old romanticism more completely than any one else, he was in other respects one of the most modern of moderns. Songs like Im Mai, Der Schnee ist zergangen, Rastlose Liebe and Meerfahrt show how carefully he had studied the pianistic idiom of Chopin — a point which previous writers have not suffi- ciently emphasized. * Chopin taught him the use of " scattered " or broken chords, the tones of which can only be united with the aid of the pedal, the result being ravishing new harmonies and tone-colors. Schubert would have been intensely interested in these new harmonies. The euphony of his piano parts is much en- hanced by the use of the modern tone-sustain- ing pedal ; but in Franz's songs the pedal is as absolute a necessity as in Chopin's music. Yet what Chopin taught him was merely the way of doing it. He did not copy his music, for his own imagination was inexhaustible in the discovery of new ways of distributing chords. * His touch is said to have been similar to Chopin's (Prochazka, p. 70). He had not much execution, but, like Schubert, could make the keys sing. 147 German Song-Writers After Schubert To musicians this constitutes one of the su- preme charms of his art. There is another harmonic feature which would have interested and thrilled even Schu- ybert — his modulations. Franz knew very well that " as a rule modulation determines the emo- tional development much more than the melody does," for these are his own words, written in a letter to Liszt. Some of his most original mod- ulations occur toward the end of Das ist ein Brausen und Heulen. Of the many other in- stances that might be referred to, let me call attention to one only. Can anybody sing or play Ich hab' in deinem Auge* without having all his nerves tingle with delight when he comes to the harmonies accompanying the words und wie die Rosen zerstieben, Ihr Abglanz ewig neu — especially at ewig (eternal), where the music seems to come through a sudden opening in heaven ? Like Wagner, furthermore, Franz always had an emotional reason for his modulations and did not seek them for mere effect — as so many pres- ent-day song-writers do, merely to make their accompaniments piquant. The same is true of the other factors of his art. As Liszt has point- ed out, " the choice of the key, of the measure, * Printed id vqI. ii., p. 66, of the Ditson edition. 148 Franz of the rhythm, the figure of accompaniment, the conduct of the voices on the monophonic or polyphonic side, never appear accidental or ar- bitrary," but grow out of the structure and the mood of the poem. Hence it was that he ob- jected so violently to transpositions of his songs into other keys. " When I am dead," he wrote to the publisher Sander, " I cannot do anything to prevent this ; but as long as I live I shall fight against it ; " and Prochazka says that when some publishers nevertheless issued edi- tions of transposed Lieder, Franz protested vig- orously, repudiating all responsibility and even the authorship of the songs in that form. The reader will understand this attitude if he will transpose some of the songs — especially those in five or six flats or sharps — into other keys. It seems like altering the colors of a painting. " Transposing," he explained to Waldmann, " cannot do any harm in the case of songs in which the vocal part is everything, the accom- paniment mere harmonic padding ; but that is not the case with my songs. They are writ- ten for low soprano and should be sung as written." * * Franz was, of course, right, yet half a loaf is better than no bread, and amateur contraltos will find these songs enchanting even when transposed, though they may have lost some of their peculiar emotional atmosphere and beauty of tonal coloring. 149 German Song- Writers After Schubert While Franz was preeminently modem in his use of modulations, as well as in his idiomatic piano style and his declamatory treatment of the vocal part, there are some other modern aspects of music in which he diverged from his contemporaries. Though he lived in an age of dramatic music, the dramatic style had no al- lurements for him. He not only declared that the opera is " a lie," but in his own field he had no use for such a thing as a dramatic ballad. His songs, as we should expect under such cir- cum stances, are usually short and strophic, few of them being through-composed in the dra- matic manner. In other words, instead of writ- ing new music for each stanza of a poem, he prefers to repeat the same music, introducing, however, slight changes in melody or harmony where an emotional modulation in the poem calls for them, and these changes are often of striking beauty. Like Chopin, he is particu- larly fond of introducing dainty nuances in the final bars of a piece, and many of his post- ' ludes are of ravishing effect, too. To Schu- bert, Chopin, Schumann, and Franz belongs the honor of having abolished the monoto- nous, stereotyped manner of ending composi- tions which the German " classical " school had imported from Italy. Tone-painting is another modern trait with 150 Franz which Franz had little sympathy. Compare, for instance, the opening bars of his splendid song. Das ist ein Brausen und Heulen, with Liszt's transcription of the same for piano, and note how much more realistic the suggestion of autumn wind and rain is in Liszt's version than in the original. In Ach wenn ich nur ein Immchen war^ {Ok, were I but a little bee) the accompaniment has an almost buzzing charac- ter, and there are a few other instances of re- alism ; * but, as a rule, Franz does not try to suggest visible things, but to paint moods, as Beethoven said he did in the " Pastoral Sym- phony." In one respect Franz labored under a delu- sion which some of his admirers seem to share. One of his favorite ideas was that whereas Schubert is always Schubert, his own songs — especially those which resemble simple folk- songs and are set to Russian, Bohemian, Nor- wegian, or Scotch poems — sound like the songs of those countries. He was mistaken. It is possible to discover in some of Schubert's songs traces of the Hungarian music which he heard during his two sojourns with the Esterhazys ; * Regarding his VorUber der Mai, he said toWaldmann; "You will see that in the accompaniment there is always a note a third above the melody. It is as if the melody went along under a leaden roof in accordance with the mood." 151 German Song-Writers After Schubert but Franz is always Franz, and always German. I cannot find any traces of local or national color in these quasi-folk-songs of his ; though some of them are otherwise charming. His settings of the poems of Burns not only do not suggest Scotch music, but they are by no means among his best productions. Success in reproducing local and national color is one of the peculiarities of modern music, and Franz's failure in this direction marks a third trait in which he difiered from his contempo- raries. While Franz thus has his shortcomings as well as his merits, there is a point of view from which he ranks above all other song-writers. The proportion of good songs to poor ones is much larger in his case than in that of any other composer. Many of Schubert's songs (partly owing to the fact that such a large number of them were written before he was out of his teens) are of interest only to special students of the development of his genius; while among Schumann's two hundred and forty-five songs we found only twenty that can be called first- class. Franz wrote only thirty-four more songs than Schumann, two hundred and seventy-nine in all ; but among those there are ten times as many good ones as in Schumann's, list. I once took vol. i. of the Ditson edition of Franz and 152 Franz prefixed a star to all the songs in it that em- body ideas which will make them live. Count- ing them, I found that I had marked forty-eight out of the fifty-five songs in the book; and nine of them seemed to me so superlatively good that I marked them, Baedeker style, with two stars.* This volume, to be sure, contains selections ; but the proportion of great songs is not much smaller if we take them in regular order. If Schumann was compelled to write regard- ing the first twelve songs of Franz, that were he to dwell on all the exquisite details he would never come to an end, it is obviously impossi- ble in the limited space at my command to even hint at the beauties of the complete list of his two hundred and seventy-nine Lieder. On many of them I feel tempted to bestow su- perlatives of praise ; but, after all, is it not infinitely better to sing the songs than to write or read about them ? The wisest thing I can do is to advise every one to get the Ditson, Peters, and Breitkopf & H artel editions, go over the whole collections, mark the best songs and sing them over and over again. Those who have never done this will marvel at the * These nine are Ein Friedhof, Widmung, Im Walde, FUr Musik, Das tst ein Brausen und Heulen, Im Mai, Bitte, Ich hab in dienem Auge, Derjunge Tag erwacht. 153 German Song- Writers After Schubert treasures buried amid these pages,* as well as at the obtuseness of Franz's contemporaries who had no use for these treasures, and wanted him to write bigger things — as if art were to be measured with a yardstick. He wrote few songs during the last twenty years of his life. Why should he have written more, since so little interest was shown in the large number he had already produced ? BRAHMS Hamburg gave birth to two of the most pop- ular composers of the nineteenth century — Felix Mendelssohn (1809), ^"^ Johannes Brahms (1833). Brahms,. too, might have borne the name of Felix, for he also was specially favored by fortune. He was only twenty years old when Schumann once more took up his rusty critical pen and astonished the world by an- * Some of the songs are not yet issued in the albums. The two Kistner albums do not include opus 52, issued by the same pub- lishers in sheet-music form, in which I have marked Wolle Keiner mich fragen with two stars. A few others of my two-star songs are : Entsckluss, Ich will meine Seele tauchen (with a wondrous tenor melody in the piano part), Es ragt der alte Eborus, of opus 43 (Kistner, vol. ii.),' Wonne der Wehmuth, Es hat die Rose sich beklagt, Die Sehlanke Wasserlilie, WandV ich in dem Wald des Abends {Ji'iiaaa, vol. ii.); Mddchen mit dem rothen Miind- ehen (Peters, vol. i.). 154 Brahms nouncing the advent of a genius of the first order, born, Minerva-like, in full armor and destined to lead music into new paths. The letters written by Schumann about this time * (when his growing mental infirmity had com- pelled him to give up his position as musical director at Dusseldorf) leave no doubt that his enthusiasm for young Brahms and his works was sincere, and not inspired by jealous eager- ness to find a new rival to Wagner, as some have suspected. Nevertheless, Wagner was responsible, indirectly, for much of the noto- riety won by Brahms. Notwithstanding the hyperbolic indorsement of Schumann, Brahms did not come into vogue at once, and it was not till it occurred to his admirers to pit him against Wagner that he began to loom up as a big man. The leader of this movement was the influential and witty Viennese critic. Dr. Hans- lick, Wagner's most rabid opponent, who put Brahms on his banner and for decades bestowed on him the most "preposterous overpraise."t In England another violent enemy of Wagner and intimate friend of Brahms, Joachim, cham- pioned Brahms's cause and helped him to a temporary vogue, which made it appear as if he * See H. Reimann's biography of Brahms, p. 8. Berlin, 1900. f See an admirable note on the genesis of the Brahms cult, in J. F. Ronciman's Old Scores and New Readings, pp. 241-247. 155 German Song-Writers After Schubert had taken the place of Felix Mendelssohn. Thus it came about that all those who hated Wagner — a large number in those days — , flocked about the new banner. Brahms him- self, being endowed with a keen sense of hu- mor, knew that many of his pretended admirers did not understand his music at all, and he once fooled one of these hypocrites by making him roll his eyes in ecstasy over a vulgar Gungl march which he played for him as his own composition. What with these and his many sincere admirers, Brahms had a large follow- ing ; and when he died in 1897 he left two hundred thousand florins ($80,000), the profits on the sale of his compositions. It was a very clever bit of strategy thus to pit Brahms against Wagner, for it gave him a prominence which otherwise he would never have had. From any other point of view it was palpably absurd to oppose these two men to each other; for there was absolutely no occa- sion for rivalry between them. They worked in entirely different fields, Wagner bestowing all his attention on opera, while Brahms de- tested opera almost as much as Franz did, and wrote symphonies, songs, and chamber-music. The men properly to oppose to Brahms were Franz and Rubinstein. In chamber-music Brahms holds his own against any modern 156 Brahms rival , but his symphonies, while cleverly con- structed, have not one tithe of the ideas to be found in Rubinstein's Dramatic and Ocean sym- phonies, and the same lack of ideas we note in his songs, as compared with Franz's. Yet Brahms's symphonies and songs are to-day on all concert programmes, while Franz and Ru- binstein are neglected. But it will not remain so. There was a time when Hegel was so pop- ular that the Berlin students used to crawl through the windows to make sure of getting a seat in his lecture-room ; while Schopenhauer — who had more ideas than all other German phi- losophers put together — was ignored. To-day Schopenhauer's works are scattered broadcast in hundreds of thousands of volumes, while Hegel has become a mere name and it is diffi- cult to get copies of his works. Read Brahms for Hegel, Franz for Schopenhauer, and you will have a glimpse of the music of the future. Ideas alone confer immortality on works of art ; and genius might be defined as the faculty for originating ideas. Form is only the dress for ideas. Brahms was a great dress-maker — a musical Worth. No one ever knew better than he how to cut and shape musical gar- ments and to trim them with elegant varia- tions. But his faculty for originating ideas was weak and, therefore, he is not an immortal. 157 German Song-Writers After Schubert The art of dress-making can be taught and acquired, but ideas come from heaven. There is no formal defect in the songs of Reichardt, Zelter, Zumsteeg that could have prevented them from living always. They have perished because so few ideas were embodied in them ; and for the same reason Brahms's songs will perish, when the finish of their dress no longer attracts attention. I do not deny that there are many interesting details in these songs — quaint rhythmic combinations, often original, and fine harmonies which, however, can usually be traced back to Bach, Schubert, Chopin, Schu- mann, and sometimes to Wagner. But his mel- odic faculty is lamentably weak. Tchaikovsky doubtless went too far when he wrote * that Brahms was altogether incapable of melodic in- vention. I could point out some new melo- dies in his works, several of them of ravishing beauty, but there are not enough of these to atone for the melodic barrenness and triviality of the others. No doubt there is in his songs plenty of broad, flowing melody calculated to please the singers as well as the audiences; nor do I deny that Brahms's melody is, as Professor Niecks puts it, " distinguished by purity, sim- plicity, naturalness, and grace." What I main- * Musikahsche Erinnenmgen, p. 34 158 Brahms tain is that it is not new, not original. To come across a new Schubert or a Franz song is like seeing a new kind of a flower, whereas Brahms's melodies are only new tints or slight variations of flowers you have seen a hundred times be- fore. In other words, his melodies — and usual- ly his harmonies too — are like the musical small- talk of Mendelssohn, provokingly trite and com- monplace. I am often amazed that he should have been willing to pen and print such mean- ingless twaddle. But he did not write in vain, for there is a surprisingly large number of per- sons who cannot tell the difference between mu- sical small-talk and music which embodies new ideas. Many even prefer the small-talk. They do not care if a melody is original, so it be sing- able and loud enough, and not too much buried in the piano part. Such persons may derive much pleasure from Brahms; while, on the other hand, musical experts cannot fail to admire his technical virtuosity, which puts him on a level with the great masters. Brahms wrote one hundred and ninety-six songs for one voice, with piano-forte, to verses by fifty-nine different poets. He was careful in the choice of his poems, but unable to infuse their moods into his music. Emotional charac- terization is a thing rarely to be found in his songs. He seems to have but one mood for I5Q German Song-Writers After Schubert love, for nature, for jo3% for sorrow ; and usual- ly the feeling is but skin-deep. His admirers often place him above Schumann ; but, as Pro- fessor Niecks asks pertinently, " Do we find in his music Schumann's glow of feeling, fragrance of poetry; in short, his magic of romance?" I cannot agree with Dr. Reimann that Brahms's best works are his songs. To me they seem his least successful efforts. He was an instrumen- talist by nature, not a born writer for voice. His vocal part is often conceived instrumental- ly ; and like the old " classical " writers, to whom he hearkens back so much, he adapts the verses to his music rather than vice versa, as is done by the true song-writer, who, as Franz said, " makes the music grow out of the text." In one thing only does Brahms surpass Franz : in " liberating the melody," to quote Dr. Reimann, "from the monopoly of the tra- ditional four-bar formation of periods." The most popular of the Brahms songs are not always the best. Singers favor them be- cause they show off their voices to advantage. Perhaps the one most frequently sung is the Vergebliches Stdndchen, which appears to me as commonplace in its music as it is indelicate in itiii verses. The Sapphische Ode and Feldeinsatii' keit are not much better musically ; nor can I understand the admiration which many profess 1 60 Jensen and Others for the Magellonen cyclus. Liebestreu is a good song and Wie bist du meine Konigin is better still ; but the best by far of all his songs, in my opin- ion, is the Minnelied, * Concert singers neglect it, because its chief beauty is in the piano part. But it is an adorable song, which I love almost as much as my Schubert and Franz favorites. I have often been told by Brahmsites that I should live to like all his music after hearing it oftener. But the more I hear it the less I like it, with the exception of a few things, like this Miiu nelied, which I loved at first hearing. JENSEN AND OTHERS Unlike Brahms and Mendelssohn, Adolf Jen- sen (1837-1879) enjoyed less than his just share of popularity and prosperity. His short life was a perpetual struggle against poverty and ill health ; and it is pathetic to read of his great disappointment at not being able to hear the first performance of Wagner's Meistersinger in * Printed in vol. iii. of the Ausgewdhlte Lieder ; Berlin : Sim- rock. German, English, and French words. The German pub- lishers of Brahms have not yet issued any comprehensive albums, but only groups of five to fifteen. An album of twenty-seven se- lected Brahms songs, with excellent English translations of the text, is published by Novello, Ewer & Co. This includes only the earlier works, op. 3-19. 161 German Song- Writers After Schubert Munich, simply because the opera was post- poned and he had not the means to remain longer.* His enthusiasm for Wagner belongs, however, to a later period in his life. His first thirty-five songs were written under the in- fluence of Schumann — whom he adored and corresponded with — and of whom they are often reminiscent. During a sojourn of two years (1858-59) in Copenhagen he was intimate with Gade, and thus came more or less under Men- delssohnian influences; while Schubert had been one of his first favorites. Though he wrote many pieces for the piano-forte, some of them of great charm and worth, he was, like Schubert and Franz, led to the Lied by a special instinct; and the songs he wrote — about one hundred and sixty in number — constitute the bulk of his work. Together with other modern song-writers, he has been accused of making his piano parts too difficult and too prominent in relation to the voice ; but this is an error. He was a born composer for the voice; and, like Schubert, he could not help making even his piano pieces songs without words. I agree with Mr. Elson in thinking that " Jensen's songs will take higher rank than has hitherto been accorded * See my Wagner and Mis Works, vol. ii., 137. 162 JENSEN. Jensen and Others them," Dr. Riemann goes so far as to say that, " with far more justice than Robert Franz, Jensen must be pronounced the heir of Schu- mann as regards the Lied ; though he cannot be accused of being an imitator. ' Jensen's activity as a song-writer may be divided into two periods, roughly representing the years before and after Wagner had taken possession of his soul. One of his songs, which everybody knows, is Lehn deine Wang' an meine Wang' (Oh ! press thy cheek against my cheek). This has been charged with over-sentimental- ity; but I cannot see anything maudlin i