we crave dynamic power of emotion or sublimity of thought we
may have recourse to Bach and Beethoven; but the spontaneous
charm of Schubert never grows old; and it is not without interest
to note that his music fulfils the definition of one of the most
poetic composers of our time, Debussy, who claims that music
is chiefly meant “to give pleasure.”
We note these same tendencies in Weber as shown in the over-
tures to his three Romantic operas,Der Freischütz,Euryanthe
andOberon, which are the foundations of the modern art of
dramatic orchestration,i.e., the intensification of certain ideas
and situations by the special tone color and register of solo-
instruments or by a novel use of customary means,e.g., the
divided violins in the mysterious passage of theEuryantheover-
ture. Another favorite means of arresting the attention was by
modulation; not used in a constructive sense, simply to pass
from one point to another, or to connect themes in different
keys, but to furnish the ear with a purely sensuous delight, cor-
responding to that which the eye derives from the kaleidoscopic
colors of a sunset. The works of Schubert, Chopin and to a
lesser degree of Schumann abound in these shifting harmonies
by which we seem to be wafted along on a magic carpet. A fi-
nal characteristic, shared by all the Romantic composers, is the
prevalence of titles—the logical result of the close connection
between music, literature and the world of outward events,—
thus Mendelssohn’s Overture to theMidsummer Night’s Dream
with its romantic opening chords, hisHebridesOverture, the
musical record of a trip to Scotland, and Schumann’sManfred,
from Byron. Liszt even went so far as to draw inspiration from a
painting, as in hisBattle of the Huns, and again from a beautiful
vase inOrpheus.
We shall now make a few specific comments on the style of Schu-
bert and Weber and then analyze some of their representative
works. Schubert was a born composer of songs, and though
his works for Pianoforte, String quartet and Orchestra were of
marked significance and have proved of lasting value, the in-
stinct for highly individualized, lyric melody predominates, and
all his instrumental compositions may fairly be called “Songs
without words."[177] It is evident that the solo-song, unencum-
bered by structural considerations, is one of the best media for
expressing the Romantic spirit, and many of its fairest fruits are
found in this field. Schubert’s songs are often tone-dramas in