Identifier : modernmusicmusic02elso ( find matches )
Title : Modern music and musicians : (Encyclopedic)
Year : 1918 ( 1910s )
Authors : Elson, Louis Charles, 1848-1920
Subjects : Piano Musicians Composers
Publisher : New York : The University Society Inc.
Contributing Library : Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor : Brigham Young University

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ooabsurd to call for comment to-day, but as regards the first part of hiscriticism I do not hesitate to say that, greatly as I esteem Schubertssongs, I value his instrumental works even more highly. Were all of hiscompositions to be destroyed but two, I should say, Save the last twosymphonies. Fortunately we are not confronted by any such necessity. The loss ofSchuberts pianoforte pieces and songs would indeed be irreparable. Foralthough much of their spirit and substance has passed into the worksof his imitators and legitimate followers, the originals have never beenequaled in their way. In most of his works Schubert is unique in melody,rhythm, modulation, and orchestration, but from a formal point of viewhe certainly is most original in his songs and his short pieces for piano.In his symphonies, chamber music, operas, and sacred compositions, hefollows classical models ; but in the lied, the Musical Moment, the Im-promptu, he is romanticist in every fiber. Yet he wrote no fewer than
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128 FRANZ SCHUBERT 129 twenty-four sonatas (in which he follows classical models) for pianofortefor two or four hands. We can trace the influence of Beethovens styleeven in the three which he wrote in the last year of his life. This seemsstrange when we consider that in the lied and the short pianofortepieces he betrayed no such influence even in his earliest days. The ErlKing and The Wanderer, written respectively when he was eighteenand nineteen, are Schubert in every bar, whereas the piano sonatas andsymphonies of this period are much more imitative, much less individual.One reason for this, doubtless, is that just as it is easier to write a shortlyric poem than a long epic, so it is easier for a young composer to beoriginal in short forms than in the more elaborate sonata and symphony;and we must remember that Schubert died at thirty-one. But there was another reason. The tendency of the romantic schoolhas been toward short forms, and although Weber helped to show theway, to Schub

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