d in these pianoforte works and in his
romantic songs. Here we have the "ipsissimus Schumann," as von Buelow
so well remarks. Schumann's pianoforte style is compounded of two
factors: first, his intensely subjective and varied imagination which,
nourished by the love of Romantic literature, craved an individual
mode of expression; second, a power of concentration and of organic
structure which was largely derived from a study of Bach and of the
later works of Beethoven. Schumann saw that the regularity of abstract
form, found in the purely classical writers, was not suited to the
full expression of his moods and so he worked out a style of his own,
although in many cases this was simply a logical amplification or
modification of former practice. In his pianoforte compositions, then,
we find a striking freedom in the choice of subject, which is
generally indicated by some poetically descriptive title, _e.g._,
_Waldscenen_, _Nachtstuecke_, _Fantasiestuecke_, _Novelletten_,
_Kreisleriana_, _Humoreske_, etc. The danger in this form of subject
matter is that it often degenerates into sentimentality coupled with a
corresponding spinelessness of structure. This danger Schumann avoids
by a style noticeable for terseness and structural solidity. His
effort was to give significance to every note; all verbiage,
meaningless scale passages and monotonous arpeggios were swept away,
while the imagination was aroused by the bold use of dissonances and
by the variety of tone-color. A thoroughly novel feature was the
flexibility of the rhythm, which breaks from the old "sing-song"
metres and abounds in syncopations, in contrasted accents, and in
subtle combinations of metrical groups; every effort being made to
avoid the tyranny of the bar-line.

[Footnote 190: Because of an unfortunate accident to one of his
fingers this ambition, however, had to be abandoned. The world thereby
gained a great composer.]

Schumann's career was peculiar in that, beginning as a pianoforte
composer, he tried successively every other form as well--the song,
chamber music, works for orchestra, and for orchestra with solo voices
and chorus--and won distinction to a greater or less degree in every
field save that of the opera. Notwithstanding the beauty of poetic
inspiration enshrined in the four symphonies, a grave defect is the
quality of orchestral tone which greets the ear, especially the modern
ear accustomed to the many-hued sonority of Wagner, Tchaikow