riety and the dramatic touches of orchestration. In Schubert
we do not look for the development of a complicated plot but
give ourselves up unreservedly to the enjoyment of pure melodic
line, couched in terms of sensuously delightful tone-color. The
transitional passage of the Recapitulation (measures 231-253)
illustrates Schubert’s fondness for modulation just for its own
sake; we care not what the objective point of the music may
be—enthralled, as we are, by the magical shifts of scene. In
the Second Movement, likewise, the chief beauty—especially of
the second theme—consists in the lyric quality, in the color of
the solo instruments, the oboe, clarinet and horn, and in the
enharmonic changes,e.g., where, in measures 80-95, the theme
modulates from C-sharp minor to D-flat major. Note in the or-
chestral score the charming dialogue in this passage between the
clarinet, oboe and flute. The Development, based upon the sec-
ond theme, with some effective canonic treatment, shows that
Schubert was by no means entirely lacking in polyphonic skill.
At any rate he can work wonders with the horn, for at the close
of the Development (measures 134-142) by the simple device of
an octave leap,ppp, he veritably transports the listener,e.g.
[Music]
The Coda has a dream-like quality all its own.
[Footnote 183: So appropriately called by Berlioz the “heroine
of the orchestra.”]
Weber’s permanent contribution to musical literature has proved
to be his operas—a form of art not treated in this book. But the
whole nature of his genius was so closely related to the Romantic
spirit, as shown in the intimate connection between literature
and music, in his descriptive powers and his development of the
orchestra, that for the sake of comprehensiveness some famil-
iarity should be gained with the essential features of his style.
Of Weber it may be said with conviction that there is hardly a
composer of acknowledged rank in whom style,i.e., the way and
the medium by which musical thought is presented, so prevails
over the substance of the thought itself. There are few if any
of Weber’s melodies which are notable for creative power, and
as a harmonist he was lamentably weak. It has been scathingly
said, though with considerable truth, that all his melodies are
based upon an alternation of tonic and dominant chords![184]
But when we consider what his themes are meant to describe,