The musical productiveness of modern Germany has been displayed in no single branch so overwhelmingly as in songs. It may truly be said that every composer, great and small, has produced his sets of Lieder, though it has been vouchsafed to only a chosen few to merit distinction in this over-crowded field. Among the multitude who have composed songs in a light style are several whose services to popular music ought not to be underestimated. The most prominent of this class are Heinrich Proch (1809–78), Friedrich Kücken (1810–82), and Franz Abt (1819–85). Of these, Abt is the ablest and the most widely known. Most of his songs are trivial in character, but a few, like “When the Swallows Homeward Fly,” have touched the popular heart and deserve their widespread fame. The preceding brief account of the minor composers of Germany, belonging to the “classical” and “romantic” periods, may serve to show that in art as well as nature the “survival of the fittest” seems to be the governing principle of evolution. Comparatively few works of musical art are monumental, and survive the changes of fashion, the inconstancy of the public, and the ravages of time. Among the crowd of masters who are grouped around the central figures are some who merit a better fate than has befallen them. Some day, no doubt, their now forgotten works will be revived, just as those of neglected poets and painters have been. Surely fame is to some extent the accident of fortune. The case of Sebastian Bach is the most striking illustration. Of the majority of imitators or epigones, however, it may briefly be written, as the abstract of the historian’s page,—they lived—and died. [Illustration: SALOMON JADASSOHN. From a photograph from life by Naumann, of Leipsic. (See page 595.) ] We come now to the more recent and widely celebrated composers, Raff, Brahms, Rubinstein, Goldmark, Bruch and Rheinberger, who form the subject of special articles in this work. These masters are not to be classed with the new movement inaugurated by Berlioz and Liszt in concert music and by Wagner in the music-drama, but with the “classical-romantic” masters. Raff, it is true, wrote “program” music, but he differs from Berlioz and Liszt in holding almost strictly to the regular construction of the symphonic form. Though Raff, in his earlier days, was a warm advocate of the ideas of Wagner, his own music bears little relation to the great works of the musical dramatist. Raff has a style of his own. He never repeated himself, notwithstanding the enormous amount of music he composed. This fertility of ideas was in fact a source of weakness, since it rendered him careless in the choice of themes, and blunted his feeling for what was truly refined and elevated. He often failed to keep to the high level of the true symphonic spirit and style. His “salon” style crops out here and there. The “Lenore” and “Im Walde” symphonies are his most celebrated works. [Illustration: MORITZ HAUPTMANN.