Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1922-01-28
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY =
~ FIVE YEARS AGO next Tuesday,

n NENb I1DNDhbD AAND - y" DAHs
" FIVE YEARS AGO next Tuesday
that is, on January 81. 1877, there
was born in Vienna the most poetic
and inexhaustible musical genius the
world has ever known--Franz Schu-
bert. He was also the one great mu-
steal composer native TO the city, which
was the home Of Gluck, Of Mozart, Of
Beethoven, Of Schubert himself and Of
Brahms, among the giants, to say
nothing Of an innumerable host Of Sec
ondary musical lights.
In spontaneity, Schuber. has had no
rival in the history Of music, with the
exception of Mozart, who always looms
up whenever the matter of superlative
musical greatness is considered, no
matter in what connection. In the
brief span of thirty -one years, during
which this great luminary flashed
across the musical heavens, he left a
mass Of compositions which is almost
unrivaled in quantity. as well as quail
ity, even by composers who attained
Schubert's compositions which re-
main in the permanent repertoire
began when he was thirteen years of age,
and in the following eighteen years he
produced nearly 1000 compositions,
many of which are among the most
treasured and best, loved of musical
works-and all this was done practi-
cally without a real education in the
art OF composition.
THE youthful precocity of the great
L composer is almost beyond belief.
Imagine today a boy Of eighteen years
OF age writing the Mass in +, the
songs "The Fri King" '"Fho Wan
derer," the three songs Of the harper in
"Wilhelm Meister.' ''The Wanderers
Night Song" and a host of others
equally well known. At an age when
Schubert had composed ten (although in
this connection il must be considered
that of the ten only two survive), be-
sides mass Of other works great and
small.
But at the age Of twenty five he had
produced the Il minor (unfnished)
symphony, work which was unlike
anything symphonic which had then
been composed. why this great work
was never finished is not known.
Schubert lived six years after the COM
pletion OF the two movements which we
have, and although the few measures
of the scherzo which are in existence
seem to indicate that a larger compo-
siton was in mind, he never did any
thing more with 1t. For a composer
of his facility It would have been an
easy matter to have finished 1t in a
short time had he desired TO do so,
which lends color to the theory ad-
vnnced that he considered the work
complete as It stood and never intended
TO write the scherzo or the finale. But
the symphony shows an advance be-
tween It and the symphony in G (of
1918. not the great one of 1923 in the
same key) that is quite as great as was
Beethoven's between his second and the
"Eroica." This symphonic power cul-
minated in the gigantic symphony in Z,
written in the year Of his death, six
years after the Unfinished.
SCHUBERT was decidedly the least
- learned Of the great composers.
But this does not mean that he had
no technical skill. In hearing his
great works the listener is never I'M.
pressed with the cleverness of the COM
position, but always with its absolute
beauty and the poetry with which 1t is
t1llcd. Inc tpCunlCdl Ibruho 10 AoIh
ing: the musical end everything. The
musical content is so abundant and so
full of variety that 1t needs no en-
hancing by means Of technical devices.
He did nothing TO extend the limits
Of form and rarely. if ever, departs from
the Haydn pattern. A canon, such
as the schcrzo of the piano trio in f
fat. a round as in some of the part
songs. or simple imitation. as In the
b fat trio, Is pretty nearly all the
science he shows. He was deficient
in counterpoint. his vocal fugues are
weak and the symphonies
and the quartets rarely show the
piquant fugatos which are so conspicu-
Gus and charming in the works of Mo-
zart, Beethoven and Brahms.
But in the art OF writing what he
to say. Schubert never had a
superior, and his works, even in the
largest forms. are endowed with Il ro-
nance and a beauty which seem to
render all technical artifices unneces-
sary. in his case at least.
He never hesitnted in writing down
his ideas and he rarely revised any ,
thing once written. His speed in COM