that the music often delays the simple, natural course of the story, and at last becomes tedious. Löwe was the first to combine all the wearisome details into one concrete picture. Reichardt and Zelter, after the fashion of the epic folk-song, paid little or no regard to the action, and Schubert and Zumsteeg lost the simple form of the narrative in their efforts to develop the action also, in music. Löwe was the first to combine the two things, and he did it in the easiest and most natural way. He condensed into one, or at most two lines, the romance tone which is more adapted to the popular taste, and which is in its popular form expanded into an entire verse-structure, and in this way he found the tone most appropriate to a narrative increased into an epic. This more rhetorical, but wholly complete melodic phrase forms the keynote which, modified melodically as well as rhythmically and harmonically in the course of the action, decides the importance and also the execution of the various parts, pervading the whole ballad as the refrain does the folk-song, or still more accurately, as the keynote of the verbal melody does the narrative. At the same time this treatment gives the pianoforte accompaniment the ample scope required by this form. The accompaniment begins to take an active part in portraying the real elements of the ballad.

Such are the principles of the new form as established by Löwe, and Schumann also adopted them when he applied himself to the ballad form. Certain of the Eichendorff songs even, such as "Es war als hätt' der Himmel," are evolved from a single vocal phrase, and this mode of construction helped him to continue the ballad in Löwe's spirit. His own individuality, as well as the course of his growth, led him to this field of labour, and enabled him to accomplish valuable results. We recognized as the strongest characteristic of his individuality, his fancy for

working under the influence of definite, outward events, and for making them the objects to be represented in his creations. His instrumental compositions are based upon such incidents, and in his songs he incorporated actual situations and circumstances as far as the lyric mood would permit, thus gaining the only possible point of view from which the ballad could be composed, the chief aim of the ballad being also to depict the facts which underlie it. Schumann's singular position towards his predecessor is the sole and simple explanation of his variation from the form fixed by Löwe. When he was attracted to write ballads, outward events were still only valuable to him as suggestions, and his imagination so completely transformed them that they almost wholly lost their connection with the actual world. Thus they never seem to be used so intentionally in his ballads as in those of Löwe; nor are they so carefully elaborated into clearness, and it is easier for him to combine the various features. The great superiority of Schumann's ballads to those of Löwe, however, lies in the fact that we never detect a weak passage in them; they are written at one sitting, and are always composed of the same noble materials. We can, therefore, readily understand his preference for the romance form and the ballad form proceeding from it. In the romance the idea is more highly valued than its interpreter and the fact that inspired it, and to Schumann, also, the event was only significant in so far as it expressed an idea which he was capable of pursuing and recasting in music. With him, to be sure, this event could never be so far subordinated as had formerly been the case, and the romance thus assumed greater amplitude than ever before. Even in the briefest setting the accompaniment tries to show this foundation upon facts in its own way. For all that, Schumann is closely akin to Löwe, since he too employs the rhetorical

vocal phrase even in the romance, and also condenses it into a concise verse-structure in his ballads. He thus failed to create any really original ballad style, but he moulded romance and ballad into such close similarity that in the new work of art resulting therefrom, poetic meaning and foundation on facts seem equally important.

We have already stated that Geibel's "Der Knabe mit dem Wunderhorn," "Der Page," and "Der Hidalgo” served him as stepping-stones to this new style of composition. None of these poems can be called romances. But each of them can be traced back to such distinct and actual premises that a romance-like treatment was not only admissible but directly demanded. The three songs are also kept more in the ballad strain, in harmony with their outward arrangement, the melody only still having a more song-like movement.

The next number (Op. 31, comp. 1840) contains three ballads, "Die Löwenbraut," "Die Kartenlegerin," and " Die rothe Hanne," the first of which, particularly, is broadly outlined, and yet the whole course of the action is laid before us in rapid development and with the most minute details. The rhetorical vocal phrase governs the whole succeeding construction more than in the rest of his songs, particularly in "Die Kartenlegerin." The most striking example of this form was, however, published in Op. 45 (1840), "Romances and Ballads" (Part I.), and Op. 49 (Part II., 1840). In "The Two Grenadiers" and "Die feindlichen Brüder," especially, the master unites quietness of description to rapid and energetic development of the plot to a degree which he often failed to reach afterwards, as in "Belshazzar," where he loses the desired effect in his eagerness to give the details.

With this new phase upon which he entered, his progress reached its climax, as we have already had occasion to

observe. In the new field which he now entered, he first learned thoroughly to comprehend the entire organism of formal construction; he first fully recognized the vast significance which form assumes in reference to invention; he became conscious that it is better to force an idea to assume the form established by everlasting laws by expanding or re-modelling it, than, reversing the process, to seek a new form for the idea. Having thus opened his imagination to the influence of the old forms, he no longer needed those outward expedients by which he was forced, in earlier years, to try to concentrate it upon a distinct object. Imagination still inspired him, but it no longer moulded and shaped as heretofore. Thus he gained the last great condition for instrumental, and particularly for orchestral composition, which he now began to prosecute with extreme vigour.

Before turning to consider this new period of his labours, it will be wise to examine his work as a critic in connection with that period, as this work influenced his new productive industry in many ways and more than ever before.

CHAPTER V.

WORK AS A CRITIC.

S already stated, the real beginning of Schumann's

year 1831, when he published his notice of Chopin's Op. 2, in the "Allgemeine Musikzeitung." This is not, properly speaking, a criticism of the work, but in the true sense of the word merely a statement of the effect which it produced upon Florestan and Eusebius, and their high estimate of the work, in which Master Raro also agreed. We cannot, therefore, fail to be surprised that Schumann and his friends felt prompted to set up a newspaper of their own a few years later, to pave the way for a new critical tendency; for the characteristic of that criticism against which the 'young hot-heads contended was to mislead by "instructing." The founder of the "Leipsic Allgemeine Zeitung," Fr. Rochlitz, was one of the first advocates of that school of criticism which judged artistic work only by its effect upon heart, soul, and ear; which hastily declared all technical explanation to be an offence against art, and simply tried to condense the presumptive poetical meaning into a few high-sounding phrases. His newspaper retained the same tendency under his successor, G. Fink; but some portion of genuine workmanship gradually crept in. Some purely technical, as well as psychological analysis, was employed; but this was soon done on a far more limited scale than in the case of the theorists of the

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