g to his
divine inspirations, and Sir George Grove justly remarks that, "In
hearing Schubert's compositions, it is often as if one were brought
more immediately and closely into contact with music itself, than is
the case in the works of others; as if in his pieces the stream from
the great heavenly reservoir were dashing over us, or flowing through
us, more directly, with less admixture of any medium or channel, than
it does in those of any other writer--even of Beethoven himself. And
this immediate communication with the origin of music really seems to
have happened to him. No sketches, no delay, no anxious period of
preparation, no revision appear to have been necessary. He had but to
read the poem, to surrender himself to the torrent, and to put down
what was given him to say, as it rushed through his mind."

Schubert was the most omnivorous song composer that ever lived. He
could hardly see a poem--good, bad, or indifferent, without being at
once seized by a passionate desire to set it to music. He sometimes
wrote half a dozen or more songs in one day, and some of them
originated under the most peculiar circumstances. The serenade, "Hark,
hark, the lark," for instance, was written in a beer garden. Schubert
had picked up a volume of Shakespeare accidentally lying on the
table. Presently he exclaimed, "Such a lovely melody has come into my
head, if I only had some paper." One of his friends drew a few staves
on the back of a bill of fare, and on this Schubert wrote his
entrancing song. "The Wanderer," so full of original details, was
written in one evening, and when he composed his "Rastlose Liebe,"
"the paroxysm of inspiration," as Grove remarks, "was so fierce that
Schubert never forgot it, but, reticent as he often was, talked of it
years afterward."

These stories remind one of an incident related by Goethe, who one day
suddenly found a poem spontaneously evolved in his mind, and so
complete that he ran to the desk and wrote it diagonally on a piece of
paper, fearing it might escape him if he took time to arrange the
paper.

In a word, Schubert _improvised with the pen_, and he seems to have
been an exception to Schopenhauer's rule, that the greatest writers
are those whose thoughts come to them before writing, and not while
writing. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that much of the music
which Schubert composed in this rapid manner is poor stuff; and
although his short songs are generally perfect in their