“But shall we, therefore, pity a man who all the while reveled in the treasures of his creative ore, and from the very depths of whose despair sprang the sweetest flowers of song?  Who would not battle with the iciest blast of the north if out of storm and snow he could bring back to his chamber the germs of the ‘Winterreise?’ Who would grudge the moisture of his eyes if he could render it immortal in the strains of Schubert’s ‘Lob der Thrane?’”

Schubert died in the flower of his youth, November 19, 1828; but he left behind him nearly a thousand compositions, six hundred of which were songs.  Of his operas only the “Enchanted Harp” and “Rosamond” were put on the stage during his lifetime.  “Fierabras,” considered to be his finest dramatic work, has never been produced.  His church music, consisting of six masses, many offertories, and the great “Hallelujah” of Klopstock, is still performed in Germany.  Several of his symphonies are ranked among the greatest works of this nature.  His pianoforte compositions are brilliant, and strongly in the style of Beethoven, who was always the great object of Schubert’s devoted admiration, his artistic idol and model.  It was his dying request that he should be buried by the side of Beethoven, of whom the art-world had been deprived the year before.

Compared with Schubert, other composers seem to have written in prose.  His imagination burned with a passionate love of Nature.  The lakes, the woods, the mountain heights, inspired him with eloquent reveries that burst into song; but he always saw Nature through the medium of human passion and sympathy, which transfigured it.  He was the faithful interpreter of spiritual suffering, and the joy which is born thereof.

The genius of Schubert seems to have been directly formed for the expression of subjective emotion in music.  That his life should have been simultaneous with the perfect literary unfolding of the old Volkslied in the superb lyrics of Goethe, Heine, and their school, is quite remarkable.  Poe-try and song clasped hands on the same lofty summits of genius.  Liszt has given to our composer the title of le musicien le plus poetique, which very well expresses his place in art.

In the song as created by Schubert and transmitted to his successors, there are three forms, the first of which is that of the simple Lied, with one unchanged melody.  A good example of this is the setting of Goethe’s “Haideroslein,” which is full of quaint grace and simplicity.  A second and more elaborate method is what the Germans call “through-composed,” in which all the different feelings are successively embodied in the changes of the melody, the sense of unity being preserved by the treatment of the accompaniment, or the recurrence of the principal motive at the close of the song.  Two admirable models of this are found in the “Lindenbaum” and “Serenade.”