Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 3, No. 3 (1928-12)

84 The Phonograph Monthly Review December, 1928 found “The Erl King” almost as effective when it was played on the piano, and was moved more deeply by the murmuring hum of the wheel than by the voice of Margaret, the singer, who spoke scornfully of “connivance in the degradation of vocal melody to a secondary place.” Some find his songs to be primitive, too objective; his piano pieces too full of padding; his chamber and or- chestral music too distressingly long-winded. Others, as Rubinstein, put him by the side of Bach and Beethoven. Few composers have been valued with such fluctuations. Schubert was a born melodist in the sense that Mozart and Rossini were melodists. He express- ed himself in music at a very early age. Others have done the same, but their individual melodic gift was not as pronounced. Furthermore, the melody of Schubert was neither Italian, although Rossini then ruled the musical world and Salieri tried to teach the young Viennese, nor was it in- fluenced by Beethoven for whom Schubert enter- tained feelings of superstitious reverence. His voice was his own; his melody was unmistakable; and as the boy developed and wrote, not merely because he wished to write, but because for him there were no other ways of expression, his har- monic schemes, his surpassing merits, his weak- nesses, his failures were equally individual. He could have echoed the proud boast of Musset: he drank out of his own glass; nor was this glass a small one. Schubert was not called to the dramatic stage. If he had lived to be prosperous and sixty, I do not believe that any opera by him would have been worth the hearing. One may say, are not “Group from Tartarus,” “Der Doppelganger,” and other songs dramatic ? They are indeed dra- matic; but the ability to write a piece of ab- solute music does not include, necessarily, the ability to write a long, sustained dramatic work for the operatic stage. One might argue as well that because the Manfred overture of Schumann is intensely dramatic, Schumann should, there- fore, have been a great composer of opera. In- trospection, often morbid, half-crazed, gives to Schumann’s most authoritative works the dis- tinguishing quality. The uncommon and prevail- ing lyrical quality of Schubert’s work places him apart from other writers of songs. Neither of these distinguishing qualities is of great import- ance in the opera. How many purely lyrical operas have kept the stage? Even Bellini knew the necessity of dramatic strokes, and had the ability to place these strokes that we find no- where in Schubert’s cantatas and works for the stage. Schubert’s natural medium of expression was the song. I do not praise him because he wrote so many. Would that he had written less! In the discussion of these songs the old questions arise, “Should the spirit of the entire scene, per- son or thought, be pictured and provided for, or the separate meaning of every word?” “If a 'false love’ or 'death’ be mentioned ever so in- cidentally in the midst of the liveliest carol writ- ten for girl’s voice, should the strain for a few notes or measures become gloomy, sinister, dis- cordant?” As you answer these questions, you may decide in favor of the “Ave Maria,” the “Standchen,” “Hark, hark the Lark,” or “The Post,” or you may prefer such a song as “Krie- gers Ahnung.” A song should never be a panor- ama; the elaboration of the detail forbids any general, irresistible effect. In the store-house of Schubert are songs of all descriptions. Costly are those in which he speaks directly to the heart, or suggests at once a mood, in which the hearer is conscious of a voice confirming that mood. The costliest are those in which the mood is at once suggested by a few measures of the accompani- ment, and the voice enlarges and broadens the mood until the sensitive hearer is, in his mind, himself the singer. Instances of this last revela- tion of genius are many. I cite here “The Wan- derer,” “The Trout,” “The Young Nun,” “The Maiden’s Lament,” “Auf dem Wasser,” “Death and the Maiden,” “Die Stadt,” “Am Meer.” Now these songs are of the best known; and not with- out reason; for the winnowing of Time is not done idly or hurriedly. There are attempts to bring into favor that which Time has put in the dustbin; but such attempts are almost always futile. The survival of the fittest is a law in music as well as in nature. Fashion may amuse itself with a work for a season. Fashion is soon tired and seeks another plaything. And that which is boosted into prominence by fashion, sel- dom has a fixed and lasting position. The cyclus “Die Schone Mullerin” is not with- out a touch of parochialism in its sentiment. The sentimental German arises, passionate in garden- ing, mooning, talking of “Die Natur,” which, in his eyes is fairest when covered with tables of beer, knitting women, artificial sheetiron machin- ery, and blaring military bands. I admit the freshness and buoyancy, the pleasing melancholy of some of the songs, but the cyclus, as a whole, is an acquired taste to foreigners. The “Winter- reise” cyclus is a higher, more imaginative flight, and this flight passes immediately the boundar- ies of the singer’s country. The striking characteristics of Schubert’s best songs are spontaneous, haunting melody, a nat- ural birthright-mastery over modulation, a singu- lar good fortune in finding the one inevitable phrase for the prevailing sentiment of the poem, and in finding the fitting descriptive figure for salient detail. His best songs have an atmos- phere which cannot be passed unnoticed, which cannot be misunderstood. In these songs, in which he surpasses all other composers—he surpasses himself. Remember, too, that he created the song, as it has been known since he began to sing. Considering his instrumental music, judgment is not so sure of itself. Even in his largest in- strumental moments, Schubert is not often so unerring or authoritative. This may be said of several of his finest compositions: the first move- ment is noble, inspiring, radiant in beauty ; it speaks with “the perfect rectitude and insouci- ance of the movements of animals, and the unim-