=Schubert’s Compositions=.—Schubert completed more than eleven hundred pieces in about eighteen years. Such fertility is unique in the history of composition, and is scarcely equalled even by Mozart, whose activity extended over nearly thirty years. Schubert’s powers of spontaneous invention have never been approached; he composed generally without making sketches; he seldom revised, for his ideas came faster than he could write them down. It is impossible to enumerate all Schubert’s works, but the following comprise the most important: Nine symphonies, eleven works for the stage, six masses, over seventy part-songs, choruses, etc., for various combinations, twenty-four sonatas for piano, fantasies, overtures, variations, marches and dances for piano duet, impromptus, moments musicals, fantasies, variations and over two hundred dances for piano solo, two trios for piano and strings, a quintet for strings and piano, a string quintet and several string trios, twenty-four string quartets, besides about six hundred songs with piano accompaniment and occasionally with obligatos for other instruments. It is obvious that such fertility is not consistent with evenness of quality; we must pick and choose to find the real Schubert. However, the symphonies in C and B minor (“Unfinished”), the string quartets in D minor and G major, several sonatas for piano, the impromptus, moments musicals, the fantasy in C for piano, the Hungarian Divertissement, several marches and other compositions for four hands, many charming two-hand waltzes, and, finally, such song-cycles as the “Miller-Songs,” the “Winter Journey,” those called “Swan-Songs” by the publishers, as well as about thirty separate songs “The Erl-King,” “The Wanderer,” “To Sylvia,” “The Omnipotent,” “The Young Nun,” the “Serenade,” “Hark! Hark! the Lark,” “Sei mir Gegrüsst,” “Du bist die Ruh,” “Ave Maria,” “Litany,” and others, are the works of Schubert which will live. Schubert at his best entrances us by his wonderful flow of melody, his spontaneity, his symmetrical form, which, however, is sometimes diffuse. His chief qualities lie in the simple expressiveness of his music, a direct appeal to sincerity of emotion, and to the sense of the poetic. He began by imitating the form and style of Mozart and Beethoven; but from his eighteenth year onward he developed an individuality entirely apart. Despite the virtues of his instrumental music, his great achievement was the creation of the German song, in which department he stands unrivalled in the inexhaustibility of his melody, the variety of mood which they display, the subtlety and harmonic beauty of his accompaniments, as well as art in creating vocal effects.