CHAPTER X

THE CONTEMPORARIES OF SCHUBERT AND SCHUMANN

The spirit of the ‘thirties’ in France; the lyric poets of the French romantic period--Monpou and Berlioz--Song-writers of Italy; English song-writers--Robert Frans--Löwe and the art-ballad.

In another volume[26] we have seen what a remarkable wave of literary romanticism swept over France in the late twenties and early thirties of the nineteenth century. There has rarely been an age of more pronounced lyricism, rarely an age which created in a short time so many excellent lyrics. There were a number of fine talents working at this time. The purely literary virtuosity was remarkable. The radicalism of their method was marked, and the strangeness of their product revealed a movement in all the vigor of its early youth. In their insistence on the sensuous quality of words the romanticists of the thirties looked forward to the France of the early twentieth century, with its hazy, indefinite outlines. The early romanticists reduced the sound of words to a fine art. The later impressionists reduced it almost to an exact science.

The central tenet of the romanticists was freedom--freedom from the old classic forms, freedom from a host of conventions which governed the French language in poetry, and freedom especially from the severity and reserve of the classic ideal. To the poet of the Napoleonic age any violence of manner was an error in taste. He shunned it as he would have shunned the smell of garlic on a peasant’s breath. To the poet of the age of Louis Philippe any conscious reserve of manner was a coldness, a lack of genuine human feeling, an artistic lie. The emotions as well as the artistic sense must be stirred. And they must be stirred both by the picturing of emotion and by the beauty of lovely sounds. We have occasion to notice throughout the art of the nineteenth century an increasing insistence on the sensuous (it cannot be too often repeated). It shows in every department of artistic life. In poetry it is shown in a development of the mellifluousness of rhythm and suggestiveness of word. The French romanticists did for French poetry what Shelley did for English and what Poe did for American. These three qualities--freedom, emotionalism, and sensuousness--we may accept as the dominant notes of French romantic poetry.

High above all literary men of the time towered Victor Hugo. This man, along with Shakespeare, Dante, and Goethe, was one of the greatest virtuosos of language the world has ever seen. Pity only that he had not the genius of the other three! To his time he seemed supreme. But since his death his reputation has been steadily declining. We have come to see how much of his work was only--language. He attained his emotional effects through emotional words rather than through emotional interpretation. He was incurably melodramatic and only his power of language saves a large share of his work from falling to the level of any yellow-back novel or the cheap theatre romance. He attempted to cover the whole of life--to interpret the criminal, the hero, and the child, as well as woman in every one of her moods and states. But through all the work, even the magnificent scenes of _Les Misérables_, the true human touch is somehow lacking. Everything is sacrificed to the great god Effect, to whom alone Hugo offered his most precious burnt offerings. Much of his work was in the form of short lyrics, but it is in this department that his reputation has suffered most in the half century just past. The lyric demands a naïveté which Hugo, already famous at the age of seventeen, never had. His lyric poems are always overweighted with their language, always too foreign to the spirit of the folk-poem, which is at the foundation of all lyric expression. They were, however, freely set to music, as was inevitable, and furnish a goodly share of the texts for the song literature of the time.

Lamartine in his lyric work suffered considerably from the disease of the time--over-emphasis. He ranked as a philosopher in his day--much the sort of philosopher which Maeterlinck pretends to be to-day. He had a goodly share of the didactic in his makeup, as Hugo never had (except toward the end of his life, when didacticism became the fashion). As a result we can hardly place Lamartine any higher than Hugo as a lyric poet. But his ardent religious sense, combined with his fine power over eloquent language, made him greatly loved in his day and as a result his texts enter largely into the song literature of the time. Béranger had much more of the true lyric in him. His language was simple, his message popular. He was always more at home in the streets than in the drawing room. In some ways he might be called the Kipling of his time. He appealed to the French sense of national pride, dwelling upon the glorious history of the past and the nobility of the French character with all the paraphernalia of the jingo poet. In particular he resuscitated, or rather created, the Napoleonic myth. The age in which he wrote was a new one, containing few of the immediate conditions of Napoleon’s time. A new generation had sprung up, a generation which had not experienced the heartaches and miseries of the Napoleonic wars, or else had forgotten them, and thought of the time only as the age in which France single-handed had defeated the whole of Europe. Napoleon was no longer the epileptic and egomaniac who had shattered the fine ideals of the French Revolution and for his own ambition brought France almost to the verge of ruin. He was now _le petit caporal_ who had fought with his men on the bridge at Arcola, had eaten the same food and slept on the same hard ground with his army. The myth was tremendously attractive, and made it possible some twenty years later for a shallow adventurer to become Emperor of France (merely because he happened to be the nephew of the great Bonaparte) and bring France once more to the verge of ruin to please personal and dynastic ambition. In the creation of this myth Béranger’s sense of the picturesque and popular served him well. As a lyric poet, apart from the peculiar nature of his subject matter, he would hardly be remembered. The most genuine and most refined of the literary men of the time was Musset, for many years the lover of Georges Sand and Chopin’s successor in her affections. His work partook far less of the spectacular than that of his contemporaries. He was interested in interpreting the human soul and he did his work with the most delicate literary art. His inspiration was fresh and creative; his workmanship was finished to the last degree. It is a great pity that he had no Schubert to set his poems to music. A musician of the stature of Musset might have created a distinctive and great French song literature fifty years earlier than it came.

I

If the right composer had been at hand French song literature in the nineteenth century might have equalled the German, for the conditions seemed to be ripe. But the French musical tradition for many decades was extraordinarily emasculated, and in no department of musical activity did this show so plainly as in the songs. With a few exceptions the French songs from 1830 to 1890 show very few qualities of creative vigor. The ideal was suavity and facility. Doubtless there was beneath the smooth melodies a subtlety of suggestion that gave them a certain artistic value, but this quality is peculiarly French, and without other elements of interest the French songs could hardly attain any great international vogue. It is astonishing--the sameness of these songs which appear in volumes, with eternal repetition and rigid convention. The sentimentalism of the period dominates the whole song output. The composers were extraordinarily timid; the melodies followed the same suave line, and the harmonies were the same eternal succession. The tradition of good taste became little better than a worship of the accredited and commonplace.

The one composer who was markedly free of this fault was, of course, Hector Berlioz, one of the most powerful geniuses in all French music. There is little to connect his work with that of other French composers: in many ways he was their polar opposite. A certain love for graceful and somewhat cold melody (a quality he derived from Gluck and not from his contemporaries), a certain clinging to established forms (with very revolutionary content), and here ends the list of similarities. For the rest he carried into his vocal music the qualities which made his symphonies seem so wild and so anarchic to his countrymen. His harmonies were daring in the extreme. His vocal parts were irregular, without balanced phrases, without regular succession and contrast of similar sections, without any of the clearness of outline which is almost the sole virtue in most of his contemporaries. He modulated through any number of keys, introduced dissonance in unheard of quantity, and filled his accompaniment with rich detail to an extent which to the taste of his time was nothing short of vulgar. Throughout his work he followed his own whim where other men would have followed iron convention. But, though his songs are few in number and though they contain peculiar difficulties which have prevented their extensive use in concert programs, they have held their place in the estimation of musicians far better than any other French songs of the period. There are no waste places in these songs. Throughout it is the creative musician who is speaking. The conventional melodic phrases and harmonic sequences, when they are used, have a fine sincerity. When the music is unconventional it is stimulating and suggestive. The impression one gets is that of a vigorous, even violent, brain ceaselessly creating, willing to experiment, willing to make mistakes, but always writing what he believes to be his best. His artistic sincerity is shown by the several versions which exist of some of his songs; his richness of invention by the variants in these versions. Most of the songs are highly elaborate and dramatic. Sometimes, as often happened with Berlioz, they tend to the pretentious and pompous. They are never easy to grasp. But each and every one of them is worth a musician’s study and the student of singing in particular cannot well afford to let Berlioz remain a closed book to him.

The earlier songs, written before 1830, are in general simple and conventional. At times we feel the young man who has not yet realized his creative powers. But even these early songs have a high standard compared to the sort of thing that was being produced at the time. Before 1830 Berlioz was still under the spell of Gluck (if, indeed, he ever emerged from it) and his conventionality is that of the great master of opera rather than that of the familiar French _chanson_. ‘The Dead Shepherdess,’ dating from 1827, is remarkable for its classic dignity and beauty. The Irish Songs, in 1829 and 1830, composed to words by Thomas Moore, show the surging up of the revolutionary fervor which took hold of him about this time and came to fruit in the _Symphonie Fantastique_ that so startled and shocked Parisian audiences. The songs are in the strophic form, as were most of Berlioz’s songs, but otherwise they are unusual enough to prove a problem for the singer. They are by no means steady in quality, and doubtless there is evidenced a failure on the structural side, an inability to keep genius within firmly controlled limits. ‘At Sunset’ is typical. It is irregular and so filled with detail that it tends to become ‘spotty.’ It is obviously an attempt at atmosphere--at the same atmosphere upon which the recent French song-writers have built their reputation. The singer’s problem lies in keeping these details from protruding from the general design and still giving them their individual value. The task of selecting the essential in the song and keeping this to the fore is truly a task for the singer’s intellect, that intellect which is called on so little in the mass of French songs. ‘Rich and Rare’ has much sensuous beauty and is a real problem in expressive singing. ‘Farewell Bessy’ is altogether lovely. But the finest of the songs is the last, the ‘Elegy.’ Here Berlioz reaches a height of tragic impressiveness which he never equalled in his songs and equalled only rarely in his symphonic music. The effect of this song in concert is tremendous.

The song called ‘The Captive’ (three versions of it exist) is one of the best known and one of the simplest. Here Berlioz has been content with a conventional accompaniment and has spent his effort on the melody--an irregular and somewhat arbitrary melody, but one with a certain aristocratic charm which the singer must find for himself. The ‘Villanelle’ is perhaps the best of all. Here the originality of Berlioz’s genius finds expression within very narrow limits. The simple old form is combined with a harmonic energy that is admirable. ‘In the Graveyard’ is a study in the tragic mood, unconventional, needless to say, and thoroughly successful. Other songs which deserve mention are: ‘I Believe in Thee,’ a sentimental love song; ‘On the Lagoon,’ a slow barcarolle in six-eight time; and ‘Zaïde,’ a bolero that is highly effective for concert use.

François Louis Hippolyte Monpou (born 1804; died 1841) was the recognized song-writer of the romantic movement. He is now little more than a historical fact. In his early years he was an organist and conductor of church music, but his ability was not marked and he drifted looking for something to do. He gained some local fame in 1828 from his three-part setting of Béranger’s _Si j’étais petit oiseau_ and was taken up in the drawing rooms as a representative of the romantic school. He took the drawing room verdict seriously and turned out a number of songs to the words of Hugo, Musset, Béranger, and others. His songs had a certain popular quality and an effect of boldness which suited the fancy of the romantic school. But his musicianship was faulty and his harmony and rhythm were awkward and unresourceful. After he became established as a song-writer he took to doing operas, some of which are melodically effective and dramatically vigorous.

II

Italy has for three centuries been deficient in art-songs, but she has produced a certain amount of lyric music which the student will discover and sing gladly from time to time, and a few of her song-writers should be mentioned here. Giuseppe Mercadante (1795-1870) was primarily an opera composer, but, unlike most of the Italian opera writers, produced a goodly number of songs. These are simple and florid, possessed of a certain Italian charm, but on the one hand too thin to rank as true interpretative music, and on the other somewhat too operatic to convey a simple lyrical sentiment. However, his vogue was great and he may be considered the originator of the modern Italian song tradition. The continuer of the tradition was Luigi Gordigiani (1806-1860), a peasant boy who showed marked talent for music and carried into his work a feeling for folk-song which was new to Italian music at the time. He was one of the first native collectors of folk-music and one of the first to appreciate it. He is known almost solely as a song-writer, and so popular have his songs become and so firmly have they remained in people’s hearts that he has with some justice been called ‘the Italian Schubert.’ However, we must not be from this led to suppose that he had anything like Schubert’s richness of melodic inspiration, musical resource, or genuine dramatic power. His songs are in every case supplied with the simplest accompaniment and in form do not go much beyond the folk-songs which are their model. They have a certain freedom, a development which is typical of the art-song rather than the folk-song. But their materials are of the simplest, and with their technical sameness and their general melancholy tinge they tend toward monotony. Among the loveliest of his songs is _La Bianchina_, a melody of much sweetness cast in the strophic form. _Il Tempo Passato_ shows more energy and passion than is usual in Gordigiani. Some of his religious songs are effective, especially _O Sanctissima Vergine Maria_, which is said to have been admired by Chopin. We should mention also Gordigiani’s waltz songs, which are brilliant and effective without becoming cheap. Another Italian song writer, and one better known in foreign lands than Gordigiani, is Ciro Pinsuti (1829-1888), whose output was immense. He exemplifies Italian grace and suavity and imparted to his part-songs in particular a beauty which has carried them to singing societies the world over.

In England in the first part of the nineteenth century song writing, as we have seen in another chapter,[27] was at a very low ebb. The chief output of songs was in the street ballad class and in the slightly superior opera ballad. The ballad opera of the nineteenth century was not that of the previous century, of which ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ was a type. The newer ballad opera was usually romantic, somewhat elaborate, and composed by one musician instead of ten. Of this opera ‘The Bohemian Girl’ by Michael Balfe (1808-1870) is an excellent example. Three of its ‘ballads’--‘I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls,’ ‘The Heart Bowed Down,’ and ‘When Other Lips’--are among the best known of household songs. And if we except the omnipresent street ballad and ‘occasional’ song (such as cheap pæans of triumph over Napoleon) such lyrics were the chief item in English song. Their beauty is obvious to everybody. They deserve their long life and popularity. But it cannot be said that they are an interpretation of their text, as is the case in a song by Schubert. In addition to his opera ballads Balfe has at least one thoroughly fine song to his credit--‘Killarney,’ said to have been written on his deathbed. Rarely has a conscious composer caught the true Irish idiom and flavor as Balfe did here. Balfe’s once popular setting of Longfellow’s ‘The Day Is Done’ is admirably expressive. Sir Henry Bishop (1786-1855) and Julius Benedict (1804-1885) were popular composers of the time, known rather by their operas than by their songs. But of the group only William Vincent Wallace (1814-1865), in addition to Balfe, can be said to have lived. His ‘Maritana’ is still occasionally performed, and the song, ‘Scenes That Are Brightest,’ from that work, has a popularity analogous to that of ‘The Heart Bowed Down.’ But whatever occasional beauties may have lived from the England of the early nineteenth century, we must feel how dead the period was productively. Much of the English music of the time is _gauche_ in the extreme, and none of it shows any of the creative vigor which goes to make history.

III

It is hard to say anything about Robert Franz (1815-1892). All that there is to be said about him he has said in his songs. He lived the most quiet of lives, hindered in his work by ill health throughout most of his maturity. His musical output, if we except a few pieces of church music, consists almost wholly of songs. (He composed 279 in all.) He was not ambitious; his only desire in life seems to have been to do his work well. He had no qualities of self-advertisement. His fame came very slowly and for a long time he was known only among the elect. He was through most of his life miserably poor and the greater part of his energy went to work which was not much better than that of a hack. But he has by this time attained a rank among the greatest song writers of all time. In some respects he is supreme. Probably no other song writer, not even Brahms, produced such a high proportion of great songs or such an even standard of excellence in his whole output. He shows little variation or development. His first songs are as good as his last. All were the best he could do. Schumann, who discovered and ‘announced’ Franz, as he had so many other notable composers, wrote of his opus 1 in the _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_: ‘Were I to dwell on all the exquisite details I should never come to an end.’ It was through Schumann’s influence that the unknown and modest musician had his first work published.

[Illustration: Robert Franz] _After a photograph from life._

When we come to examine Franz’s songs in detail we discover an astonishing subtlety and variety of method and expression within the superficially narrow limits he allowed himself. Probably no other song composer save Hugo Wolf has made each one of his songs so perfectly individual. We find this individuality first in the outline and superficial character of the melody; next we discover it in the technical methods and devices used in development and elaboration; finally, we trace it in all the niceties of ornament and prove the absolute fitness down to the last note. Franz’s peculiar success in all this is due, of course, first of all to selection of themes which are very accurately adjusted to the end in view. A poetic melody, an accompanying figure which provides just the right suggestion, and we have the materials for a fine song. In a majority of cases we have the whole thematic material for the song in the first three or four measures. The simple germ is developed without the introduction of extraneous matter, yet without a suggestion of vain repetition. When we consider that the majority of the songs are in the strophic form (and the strophe is usually very brief) we may realize the artistry which achieved utter individuality within the space of a few bars. In other words, the perfection of Franz’s songs comes not from elaboration but from selection--the test, as we have so often pointed out, of the true lyric composer.

Franz’s melody is likely to veil itself against the first glance. It is always beautiful and well proportioned, but it so persistently avoids striking effects that it is apt to seem colorless. But if we listen with our inner ears we shall find it eloquent. Avoiding the striking, Franz’s melody also avoids the obvious and at first hearing we are apt to find it a trifle aimless and meandering. But its continuous subtle deviations from the expected are never without purpose, and never, if we know how to listen, without meaning. Usually, too, there is little or no obvious design, no striking climax point, no resounding cadence. But here again we need only look beneath the surface to discover the most restful and satisfying architecture. Though the emotional color may be almost unvarying from beginning to end, though the final note of the voice may not be on the tonic and may glide in the piano postlude, yet we discover that if any note had been changed the whole would have been less perfect. These qualities we find in their simplest form in such masterpieces as _Widmung_ and _Bitte_, songs simple as any folk-song yet rich with conscious artistry. Franz’s harmony is not radical or striking. It contains practically nothing which could not be found in Schumann before him; we might almost say that it contains nothing that could not be found in the Beethoven sonatas. He is fluent though not frequent with modulation; his greatest radicalism is a stimulating use of altered chords and passing notes. In fact, his harmony is in every way more conservative than that of Schumann; for, whereas Schumann was professedly an innovator, Franz loved best the old German tradition--that of the Bach fugues and the Lutheran chorale.

Franz’s treatment of the words is individual. Few song writers have ever set their texts with more conscientious regard for the niceties of metre and accent. Yet it is musical design and not verbal peculiarities which determines his melodic line. The melody is always and beyond all a melody. The perfect marriage of words and music in Franz comes from his selection of melodies which would nicely fit the words in hand. Neither is strained; neither is sacrificed to the other. In this respect Franz is surpassed by no song writer who ever lived. Now and then the melody is so handled as to seem like very reserved declamation, but even these instances are rare. Franz was not a purist in the setting of his texts; he did hold strictly to the ‘one syllable one note’ principle. Not infrequently he uses the slurred phrase on a single vowel. But we can never feel that this was done out of a careless disregard for the integrity of the text. In his accompaniment Franz is even greater than in his treatment of the voice. It is here that his extreme artistry becomes most evident. The accompaniment is always rich, always a thing of value in itself. Usually it would make a perfectly satisfactory musical composition alone. It is so well filled with musical beauties that with a little more emphasis it might overpower the voice part. But always it is kept nicely in its proper function. In no other song writer are the voice and piano parts so perfectly fused. In Franz’s accompaniments is shown his great musical resourcefulness. No two are alike. Nearly all the recognized means are used--solid chords, broken chords, melodic figurations over a spread bass, four-part chorales with free passing notes, contrapuntal melodies against the voice, suggestive devices innumerable. But in every case the germ principle is simple and is strictly adhered to throughout. Franz’s accompaniments are, as a whole, more polyphonic than those of any other song writer. In the greater part of his songs the inner notes do not serve merely for harmonic filling-in; they are parts of individual voices which are preserved in their integrity. In all these songs there is nothing ambitious or spectacular. But so deeply based is his musicianship that we may say that anyone who knows the Franz songs accurately knows in epitome the whole development of German classical music. Moreover, they are the finest of cultural exercises. For one who has learned to love the Franz songs has learned one of the most precious things music has to give--the art of _listening_.

The germ figures which Franz uses in his accompaniments are almost endless in their variety. Sometimes they are, in a restrained way, highly picturesque. We may point out the triplets in _Was pocht mein Herz so sehr?_, the suggestion of ripples in _Auf dem Meere_, the broken accompaniment in _Es treibt mich hin_, the delicate trill which persists through _Ach, wenn ich doch ein Immchen wär_, the long rolling diatonic figure in _Meeresstille_, and so on through innumerable instances. The attainment of the most exquisite beauty within the smallest limits may be studied in _Widmung_, _Deine weissen Lilienfinger_, _Leise zieht durch mein Gemüth_, and _Treibt der Sommer seinen Rosen_, the last a remarkable example of a song built up out of the repetition of the briefest of units, yet without monotony. Franz’s range of expression is usually limited to the tender and graceful. He has not succeeded in the mood of tragedy or deep emotion. But several of his songs are powerfully energetic, witness _Frühlingsfeier_ and _Das ist ein Brausen und Heulen_. The dramatic element, too, is almost entirely absent, though in such a song as _Childe Harold_ we have something approaching it. The influence of the chorale, of which traces are to be found in nearly every one of the songs, is predominant in such ones as _Gute Nacht_, _Wenn sich zwei Herzen Scheiden_, _Habt ihr sie schön gesehen_, _Stille Liebe_, _In der Fremde_, _Der Schmetterling ist in die Rose verliebt_, and _Frühling_, as well as others already mentioned.

To name all the Franz songs which are distinguished in musical beauty and workmanship would be to name the best portion of his life work. But we may point out as of especial beauty (in addition to those already named) _Auf geheimen Waldespfade_, _Auf dem Teich_, _Der Sommer ist schön_, _Die Welt ist so öd_, _Im Friedhof_, _Im Walde_, _Für Musik_, _Im Mai_, _Ich hab’ in deinen Augen_, _Der junge Tag erwacht_, and _Er ist gekommen_.

IV

We have seen in a previous chapter how Schubert, having created one supremely great ballad, failed ever to write another. So the task of creating the art-ballad fell not upon his shoulders but upon those of another, Johann Carl Gottfried Löwe, who was born in North Germany in 1796, almost at the same time as Schubert, and long outlived the gentle Viennese composer. Löwe wrote a quantity of choral and church music, but he is chiefly known for his numerous ballads, which he made known throughout Europe in his own concert tours and which have pretty well held their own to this day, in spite of serious drawbacks. Löwe’s songs were almost solely in the ballad form. To this he gave his best talents, which were marked though uneven. Undoubtedly he was an artist, working with sincerity and reserve in a form which, more than most forms, would tempt a composer to artistic excess. Add to this the fact that Löwe was not endowed with a rich fund of musical ideas (at least from the standpoint of pure beauty) and we must pay considerable respect to the man who stuck to his guns as he did and produced such a sincere and admirable body of work as he did. Löwe’s ballads are descriptive in the highest degree. Every resource that the composer has at his command he calls upon to make the scene pictorial and vivid. In his search for effects he stumbled upon many musical devices which must have proved valuable to later composers. His harmony, considering the time in which he worked, is free and daring. His modulation goes by direct chromatic progression to the most remote keys. Dissonance he uses freely for poignant effect. But the great fault is that he was not a melodist. Melody is, of course, not needed in the ballad as it is in the lyric, but none the less the composer who cannot call forth a beautiful melody when he needs it must jog along as a second-rate artist. It is the lack of melody which we miss most in Löwe’s ballads. Melody is obviously absent because the composer could not command it, not because he chose not to use it. Time and again he writes what is meant to be, and perhaps was believed to be, a pleasing tune. But too often it is only empty and angular. It was in developing the form and technique of the art-ballad that Löwe performed his chief service to music.

Apart from this failing in point of melody many of Löwe’s ballads are altogether admirable. He caught the spirit of the ballad as few others have, that spirit expressed so well in Goethe’s words: ‘The ballad requires a mystical touch, by which the mind of the reader is brought into that frame of undefined sympathy and awe which men unavoidably feel when face to face with the miraculous or with the mighty forces of nature.’ Löwe’s resource in the invention of picturesque musical formulas is very great. With his fine sense of drama he managed to make his best ballads impressive and moving. In the _Erlking_ or ‘Sir Oluf’ we feel (if they are well sung) that we are living through a great life experience with the characters represented. His _Erlking_ is not comparable with Schubert’s in loveliness. But it emphasizes the dramatic elements of the poems as Schubert did not try to and probably could not have done if he had tried. The galloping of the horse is represented graphically in the accompaniment. The three characters speak in three different kinds of voice--the father’s is quiet and low, the son’s high and excited, the Erlking’s eerie and unsubstantial. The Erlking’s speeches are all in G major and on the notes of the tonic chord. For the effective delivery of the song there are demanded not only dramatic fire and intensity of emotional expression, but the careful differentiation of the three qualities of voice.

One of the finest of the ballads is ‘Sir Oluf,’ in which there are four speaking characters and an abundance of picturesque stage machinery. Sir Oluf, riding through the forest on his way to his wedding, is accosted by the elves and invited to dance, with the fatal consequences usual in ballads. Oluf’s ride is described in a stirring _allegro vivace_ in the introduction, and the dance of the elves is pictured in a charming passage. Another of the great ballads, perhaps the best known of all, is ‘Edward,’ the text being that of the famous Scotch folk-ballad of the same name. (Brahms wrote a piano piece on the subject, and also set the words as a duet.) The dramatic power is gained from the repetition many times over of an incisive emotional phrase. The whole effect is broad and tragic. Among the many others of Löwe’s ballads which are worthy of study and of frequent inclusion in concert programmes we may mention ‘Henry the Fowler,’ ‘The Moorish Prince,’ and ‘Odin’s Ride Over the Sea.’

Few composers have given their best to the ballad form. This is a pity, because no single form of poetry has such a universal and direct appeal as the condensed dramatic story in verse. No type of poetry is more difficult to write with sincerity and human truthfulness. The ballad has remained almost as it was in the beginning, the peculiar property of folk-art. It is, on the other hand, the easiest form for a musician to abuse, the one which tempts most to cheap and clumsy effects. Löwe is one of the few composers who has given his best to the ballad form and, while that best is far inferior to what a first-rate genius would have done, it is too stimulating and suggestive to be absent from any singer’s cultural equipment.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Vol. II, chapter VI.

[27] Chapter VII.