Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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326 SCHUBERT
the astonishing force, beauty, romance, and
personality inherent in the contents of the
niuaio. These early works will always be more
than interesting ;
and no lover of Sclmbert but
must regard them with the strong affection and
fascination which his followers feel for every
bar he wrote. But the judgment of the world
at large will probably always remain what it
now is.
He was, as Liszt so finely said, ' le musicien
le plus poete que jamais '
i—the most poetical
musician that ever was ; and the main characteristics
of his music will always be its vivid personality,
fulness, and poetry. In the case of
other great composers, the mechanical skill and
ingenuity, the very ease and absence of elloit
with which many of their effects are produced,
or their pieces constructed, is a great element in
the pleasure produced by their music. Not so
with Schubert. In listening to him one is never
betrayed into exclaiming How '
clever ! 'but very
often 'How poetical, how beautiful, howintensely
Schubert ! ' The impression produced by his great
works is that the means are nothing and the
effect everything. Not that he had no technical
skill. Counterpoint he was deficient in, but the
power of writing whatever he wanted he had
absolutely at his fingers' end. No one had ever
written more, and the notation of his ideas must
have been done without an effort. In the words
of Macfarren,^ 'the committing his works to
paper was a process that accompanied their composition
like the writing of an ordinary letter
that is indited at the very paper.' In fact we
know, if we had not the manuscripts to prove it,
that he wrote with thegreatest ease and rapidity,
and could keep up a conversation, not only while
writingdown but while inventing his bestworks
that he never hesitated ; very rarely revised—it
would often have been better if he had ; and
never seems to have aimed at makinginnovations
or doing things for effect. For instance, in the
number and arrangement of the movements, his
symphonies and sonatas never depart from tlie
regular Haydn pattern. Th ey rarely show iEsthetic
artifices, such as quoting the theme of one movement
in another movement, ^ or running them
into each other ; changing their order, or introducing
extra ones ; mixing various times simultaneously—or
similar mechanical means of
producing unity or making novel effects, which
often surprise and please us in Beethoven,
Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Spohr. Nor did
he ever indicate a programme, or prefix a motto
to any of his works. His matter is so abundant
and so full of variety and interest that he never
seems to think of enhancing it by any devices.
He did nothing to extend the formal limits of
Symphony or Sonata, but he endowed them with
1 Ltezt's worst enemloe will pardon him much for this Bcntence.
2 Philharmonic programme. May 22, 1871.
3 Instances may be quoted from the Rondo brillant, op. TO, where
part of the introduction is repeated in the Rondo, and from the pf.
trio in B Hat, op, 100, where the principal theme of the Blow movement
is repeated in the Finale.
a magic, a romance, a sweet naturalness, which
no one has yet approached. And as in the
general structure so in the single movements.
A simple canon, as in the Eb Trio, the Andante
of the B minor or the Scherzo of the major
Symphonies ; an occasional round, as in the
Masses and Part-songs ;—such is pretty nearly
all the science that he affords. His vocal fugues
are notoriously weak, and the symphonies rarely
show those piquant/Mjraios which are so delightful
in Beethoven and Mendelssohn. On the
other hand, in all that is necessary to express
his thoughts and feelings, and to convey them
to the hearer, he is inferior to none. Such passages
as the return to the subject in the Andante
of the B minor Symphony, or in the ballet air in
6 of Rosamunde ' ; '
as the famous horn passage
in the Andante of the C major Symphony (No.
10)—which Sohuniann happily compares to a,
being from the other world gliding about the
orchestra—or the equally beautiful violoncello
solo farther on in the same movement, are unsurpassed
in orchestral music for felicity and
beauty, and have an emotional effect which no
learning could give. There is a place in the
working-out of the Rosamunde Entr'acte in B
minor (change into Gj) inwhich the combination
of modulation and scoring produces a weird and
overpowering feeling quite exceptional, and the
change to the major near the end of the same
great work will always astonish. One of the most
prominent beauties in these orchestral works is
the exquisite and entirely fresh manner in which
the wind instmments are combined. Even in
his earliest Symphonies he begins that method
of dialogue by interchange of phrases, which rises
at last to the well-known and lovely passages in
the Overture to ' Rosamunde ' (2nd subject), the
Trios of the Bb Entr'acte, and the Air de Ballet
in the same music, and in the Andantes of the
eighth and tenth Symphonies. No one has
ever combined wind instruments as these are
combined. To quote Schumann once more—th^y
talk and intertalk like human beings. It is no
artful concealment of art. The artist vanishes
altogether, and the loving, simple, human friend
remains. It were well to be dumb in articulate
speech with such a power of utterance at command
! If anything were wanting to convince
us of the absolute inspiration of such music as
this it would be the fact that Schubert never
can have heard either of the two Symphonies
which we have just been citing.—But to return
to the orchestra. The trombones were favourite
instruments with Schubert in his later life. In
the fugal movements of his two last Masses he
makes them accompany the voices in unison,
with a persistence which is sometimes almost
unbearable for its monotony. In portions of the
C major Symphony also (No. 10) some may
possibly find them too much used.* But in
< There ia a tl-adition that he doubted this himself, and referred
the score to Lachner for his opinion.