The second group of Impromptus (Op. 142) stands below the first in importance. It was with Schubert as with Mozart; good and bad inspirations came to him alike, and he could not discriminate them. Yet they contain the dainty A flat major piece, which demands nothing but a gentle touch; and in the variations of the third Impromptu (which is therefore no impromptu) the likeness to Schumann is once more astonishing. It is a peculiar pleasure to detect Schumann in Schubert, and it is a piece of historic justice which has often been neglected. More successful, indeed Schubert’s greatest achievement, was the “Moments Musicals,” which appeared in 1828, the year of his death. The first of these is a naturalistic free musical expatiation; the second a gentle movement in A flat major; the third the well-known F minor dance--in which a dance became a penetrating and sorrow-laden tongue--the fourth the Bach-like C sharp minor moderato, with its placid middle section in D flat major; the fifth a fantastic march with a sharply cut rhythm; and the sixth, perhaps Schubert’s most profound piano-piece, that reverie in still chords, which only once are more violently shaken in order to lull us to sleep with its pensive and dainty sorrow, its delicate connections, its singing imitations, its magic enharmonics, and its sweet melodies rising like flowers from the soft ground. The conclusion of the trio, in the style of a popular chorale, with its harmonisation in thirds, is (like many of his harmonic passages in octaves or sixths) exceedingly characteristic of the popular nature of Schubert’s music.