Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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that they are too pretentious and exaggerated,
and are wanting in naivete and spontaneity.
Methods were adopted by Meyerbeer more
suitable to the exigencies of opera than to the
simple song.
With Robert Schumann we approach a new
departure in song-writing ; and no composer
since Schubert has exerted so wide and deep an
influence upon the subsequent development of
this art, both in Germany and in other countries.
Schumann was at once poet and musician.
His songs are the very soul of romantic poetry.
With scrupulous art he reproduces all that runs
in the poet's mind, be it ever so subtle and
delicate, but he also permeates it with a deeper
shade of meaning. This may be seen especially
in his settings of the poets Heine, Reinick,
Kerner, Geibel, Chamisso,^ Ruckert,^ and
Eichendorif, the last five of whom were essentially
romantic poets. Schumann's kindred
imagination was stimulated into full activity
by the supernatural splendour, mediiEval charm,
and mystic vagueness of their conceptions.
Visions of midnight scenes arise in prompt
obedience to the spell of Schumann's music.
It conjures up for eye and ear the dark vault
of the starry heavens, the solitudes of haunted
woods, the firefly's restless lamp, the song of
nightingales, the accents of human passion
idealised, and all else that makes the half-real
and the half-unreal world in which the romantic
spirit loves to dwell. It is to Heine that
Schumann's nature most deeply responded.
Whether the poet be in a mood of subtle irony
or bitter mockery, of strong passion or delicate
tenderness, of joy or sorrow, with equal fidelity
is he portrayed in the composer's music.
What Schubert was to Goethe, Schumann was
to Heine ; but the requirements of the two
poets wei-e not the same. Goethe's thought is
ever expressed in clear and chiselled phrase ;
while it is a habit of Heine to veil his meaning
and leave whatever may be wanting to be
supplied by the reader's imagination. The
composer who would adequately interpret him
must, therefore, have poetic fancy no less than a
mastery of his own art. This Schumann had,
and none of his songs rank higher than the
splendid cycle ' Dichterliebe ' from Heine's
Buck der Lieder. Their melodic treatment is
declamatory ; not in recitative, but in perfectly
clear-cut strophes, with great attention bestowed
on the accentuation of emphatic words. As a
general rule theinstrumental part of Schumann's
songs is too important, too independent to be
called an accompaniment ; it is an integral
factor in the interpretation of the poem. While
the voice-part often seems only to suggest, the
^ ChamfBso'a cycle 'Frauenliebe land Leben' is daacrtbed fnlly
under Schduann.
3 Buckert'e Terse did not perhaps evoke in Schumann so full a
measure of spontaneous melody as Eichendorff and Kemer. The
most melodious, and perhaps the best known of the Buckert
collection, are Nos. 2, 4, and 11, and these are by Frau Clara
Schumann.
SONG 613
pianoforte part unfolds the sentiment of the
song, and evolves from the poem a fuller significance
than it could ever have owed to the poet's
own unaided art.^ These few remarks will
have sufficed to show that togetherwith Schubert
in music, and Goethe and Heine in literature,
Schumann has lifted Song to a higher pinnacle
of excellence than it ever reached before.
We will here allude to another branch of
modern German song, which comprises the
Ballade, the Botnanze, and the Mhapsodie. In
the ordinary English sense, the ballad is;
primarily a, poem descriptive of an event cr
chain of incidents, leaving the reader to gather
sentiment and reflection from bare narration.
But the Ballade, as a German form of song, has:
some other properties. Goethe says it ought
always to have a tone of awe-inspiring mystery,
which fills the reader's mind with the presence
of supernatural powers, and contain strong
dramatic elements. The Bomanze is of the
same class as the Ballade, but is generally of
more concise form, and by more direct references
to the feelings which its story evokes
approaches nearer to the lyric song. As distinguished
from the Ballade and Eomanze, the
Ehapsodie is deficient in form, and its general
structure is loose and irregular. The first poet
who wrote poems of the true Ballade type was
Biirger ; his example was followed by Goethe,
Schiller, Uhland, and others, and then the attention
of composers was soon caught. Inspired
by SchUler, Zumsteeg composed in this vein,
and his work is interesting as being the first of
its kind. But Zumsteeg had too little imagination
to handle this form successfully, and his best
songs belong more correctly to the Komanze.
We miss in his Balladen the bold, melodic, principal
theme (which should stand out in relief
from all secondary themes and ideas, and be
repeated wherever the story needs it),* although
in some of them the details are very well and
tnithfuUy painted— for instance, the tine gloomy
opening phrase of the ' Pfarrers Tochter.
Neither Eeichardt nor Zelter succeeded any
better with the Ballade. They treated the ' Erlkonig
' as a Romanze, and Schiller's Balladen,
'
Ritter Toggenburg, ' and Der Handschuh, ' ' as
Rhapsodies. And even Schubert in his longer
pieces was inclined to compose in a rhapsodical
form. In some, such as 'Der Taucher,' 'Die
'
Biirgschaft, ' Der Sanger, ' where he is faithful
to the Ballade form, and where there are exquisite
bits of melody appositely introduced, and the
accompaniments are thoroughly dramatic, the
general effect of the piece is overlaid and
marred by multiplicity of elaborate details, apd
drawn out to too great length. To the Romanze
Schubert gave the pure strophical form, as, for
instance, in Goethe's ' Heidenrbslein.'
3 Further evidence of the importance of Schumann's innovations
in song-writing will be found under ScnuUANN.
4 Loewe's ballads stilkingly illustrate the value of this
characteristic.