Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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330 SCHUBERT
changes so grand, so sudden, and yet so easy,
and so thoroughly in keeping with the subject,
that it is impossible to hear them unmoved.
But modulation, though an all- pervading
means of expression in Schubert's hands, is
only one out of many. Scarcely inferior to the
wealth of his modulation is the wealth of his
melodies. The beauty of these is not more
astonishing than their variety and their fitness
to the words. Such tunes as those of 'Ave
Maria,' orthe Serenade in the 'Schwanengesang,'
or 'Ungeduld,' or the 'Griinen Lautenband,' or
'AnnaLyle,' orthe'Dithyrambe,'or 'Geheimes,'
or ' Sylvia, ' or the Lindenbaum, ' ' or Du ' bist die
Ruh,' or the 'Barcarolle, 'are not more lovely and
more appropriate to the text than they are
entirely different from one another. One quality
only, spontaneity, they have in common. With
Beethoven, spontaneity was the result of labour,
and the more he polished the more natural were
his tunes. But Schubert read the poem, and
the appropriate tune, married to immortal verse
(a marriage, in his case, truly made in heaven),
rushed into his mind, and to the end of his pen.
It must be confessed that he did not always
think of the compass of his voices. In his
latest songs, as in his earliest (see p. 281), we
find him taking the singer from the low Bb to
F, and even higher.
The tune, however, in a Schubert song' is by
no means an exclusive feature. The accompaniments
are as varied and as different as the voiceparts,
and as important for the general effect.
They are often extremely elaborate, and the publishers'
letters contain many complaints of their
difficulty.! They are often most extraordinarily
suitable to the words, as in the 'Erl King,' or
the beautiful Dass ' sie hier gewesen,' the
'
Gruppe aus dem Tartarus,' the ' Waldesnacht
(and many others) ; where it is almost impossible
to imagine any atmosphere more exactly suitable
to make the words grow in one's mind, than is
supplied by the accompaniment. Their unerring
certaintyisastonishing. Often, asin 'Heliopolis,'
or 'Auflosung,'he seizes at once on a characteristic
impetuous figure, which is then carried oil without
intermission to the end.* In Anna ' Lyle,'
how exactly does the sweet monotony of the
repeated figure fall in with the dreamy sadness
of Scott's touching little lament ! Another very
charming example of the same thing, though in
a different direction, is found in Der Einsame,'
'
a fireside piece, where the frequently-recurring
group of four semiquavers imparts an indescribable
air of domesticity to the picture.^ In the
'
Winterabend '—the picture of a calm moonlit
evening—the accompaniment, aided by a somewhat
similar little figure, conveys inimitably
the very breath of the scene. Such atmospheric
1 Op. B7, containing three aongs by no means diiHcult, was published
with a notice on the title-page that care had been talcen (wo
trust with Schubert's consent) to omit everything that was too hard.
2 A similar mood is evolEed in the Andante of the Grand Duo
(op. 140).
effects as these are very characteristic of Schubert.
The voice-part and the accompaniment sometimes
form so perfect a whole, that it is impossible
to disentangle the two ; as in ' Sylvia,'
where the persistent dotted quaver in the bass,
and the rare but delicious ritornel of two notes
in the treble of the piano-part (bars 7, 14, etc.),
are essential to the grace and sweetness of the
portrait, and help to place the lovely English
figure before us. This is the case also in Anna
'
Lyle ' just mentioned, where the ritornel in the
piano-part (bar 20, etc.) is inexpressibly soothing
and tender in its effect, and sounds like the echo
of the girl's sorrow. The beautiful Serenade in the
'Schwanengesang,' again, combines an incessant
rhythmical accompanimentwith ritomels (longer
than those in the last case), both uniting with the
lovely melody in a song of surpassingbeauty. In
the 'Liebesbotschaft,' the rhythm is not so
strongly marked, but the ritornels are longer and
more frequent, and form a charming feature in
that exquisite love-poem. Schubert's passion for
rhythm comes outasstronglyinmany of thesongs
as it does in his marches and scherzos. In the
two just named, though persistent throughout,
the rhythm is subordinated to the general effect.
But in others, as 'Suleika,' 'Die Sterne,' the
'
Nachtgesang imWalde,' 'Erstarrung,' or ' Friihlingssehnsucht,'
it forces itself more on the
attention.
Schubert's basses are always splendid, and
are so used as not only to be the basis of the
harmony but to add essentially to the variety
and effect of the songs. Sometimes, as in Die
'
Krahe,' they are in unison with the voice-part.
Often they share with the voice-part itself in
the melody and structure of the whole. The
wealth of ideas which they display is often
astonishing. Thus in 'Waldesnacht,' a very
long song of 1820, to a fine imaginative poem
by F. Schlegel, describing the impressions produced
by a night in the forest, we have- a
splendid example of the organic life which
Schubert can infuse into a song. The pace is
rapid throughout ; the accompaniment for the
right hand is in arpeggios of semiquavers
throughout, never once leaving off; the left
hand, where not in semiquavers also, has a
succession of noble and varied rhythmical
melodies, independent of the voice, and the
whole is so blended with the voice part—itself
extraordinarily broad and dignified throughout
the spirit and variety, and the poetry of the
whole are so remarkable, and the mystery of
the situation is so perfectly conveyed, as to
make the song one of the finest of that class
in the whole Schubert collection. The same
qualities will be found in 'Auf der Bruck'(1825).
We do not say that this is the highest class
of his songs. The highest class of poetry, and
of music illustrating and enforcing poetry, must
always deal with human joys and sorrows, in