sure, describe matters of fact, but the Romantic composers have
brought it to a high degree of poetical suggestiveness. Thus the
horn-calls of Weber and Schubert remind us of “the horns of
Elfland faintly blowing” and much romantic music arouses our
imaginations and enchants our senses in the same way as the
lines of Keats where he tells of “Magic casements opening on
the foam of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn,” the chief glory
of which is not any precise intellectual idea they convey, but the
fascinating picture which carries us from the land of hard and
fast events into the realm of fancy. Schumann claimed that his
object in writing music was so to influence the imagination of
the listeners that they could go on dreaming for themselves. A
second characteristic is the freedom of form. Considering that a
free rein to their fancy was incompatible with strict adherence
to traditional rules, the Romantic spirits refused to be bound
by forms felt to be inadequate. Although this attitude some-
times resulted in diffuseness and obscurity, on the whole (as
Goethe says of romantic literature) “a wider and more varied
subject matter and a freer form has been attained.” The chief
aim of romantic art being to arouse the imagination, we find a
predilection for the use of solo wood-wind instruments, which
are capable of such warmth and variety of tone-color. Whereas
in the classical masters, and even generally in Beethoven, the
melodies are likely to be the upper voice of a harmonic mass,
or assigned to groups of instruments, Weber and Schubert in
particular showed the eloquence to be gained by the use of such
warm-bloodedsoloinstruments as the horn, the oboe and the
clarinet. Schubert fairly conjures with the horn, often holding
us spellbound with its haunting appeal,e.g., in the well-known
second movement of the C major Symphony, the calls of which,
as Schumann said, “seem to come from another world.” Schu-
bert was anything but a thinker, and reflected unconsciously
the tendencies which were in the air; but his wonderful gift of
lyric melody was thoroughly in keeping with the individual ex-
pression for which Romanticism stood. He said himself that his
compositions were the direct result of his inmost sorrows. He
was steeped in romantic poetry and the glowing fancy in his best
work leads us to condone the occasional prolixity referred to by
Schumann as “heavenly length.” Schubert was well named by
Liszt the most poetic of musicians,i.e., a creator of pure beauty
which enthralls the imagination of the hearer. Why expect the
work of any one composer to manifest all possible merits? If
ann
(Ann)
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