From this field Schubert’s instinct selected the purely lyrical, without regard to its tendency, with little critical discrimination of any sort. Thanks to his fertility, he included in his list of songs all the best lyric poets of his time. And to these poets he owed what was new and historically significant in the spirit of his musical output. This new element, reduced to its simplest terms, was the emotional lyrical quality at its purest. His musical training was almost exclusively classical, so far as it was anything at all. He knew and adored first Mozart and later Beethoven. But these composers would not have given him his wonderful gift of expressive song. And since it is never sufficient to lay any specific quality purely to inborn genius (innate genius is, on the whole, undifferentiated and not specific), we must lay it, in Schubert’s case, to the romantic poets. From the earliest years of his creative (as opposed to his merely imitative) life, he set their songs to music; he found nothing else so congenial; inevitably the spontaneous song called forth by these lyrics dominated his musical thinking. The romantic poets had taught him to create from the heart rather than from the intelligence. Franz Schubert was born at Lichtenthal, a suburb of Vienna, in 1797, one of a family of nineteen children, of whom ten survived childhood. Instructed in violin playing by his father--nearly all German school-masters played the violin--he evinced an astounding musical talent at a very early age, was taken as boy soprano into the Vienna court chapel, and instructed in the musical choir school--the _Convict_--receiving lessons from Rucziszka and Salieri. At sixteen, when his voice changed, he left the _Convict_ and during three years assisted his father as elementary school teacher in Lichtenthal. But in the meantime he composed no less than eight operas, four masses, and other church works and a number of songs. Not till 1817 was he enabled, through the generosity of his friend Schober, to devote himself entirely to music; never in his short life was he in a position to support himself adequately by means of his art: as musical tutor in the house of Esterhàzy in Hungary (1818-1824) he was provided for only during the summer months; Salieri’s post as vice-kapellmeister in Vienna as well as the conductorship of the Kärntnerthor Theatre he failed to secure. Hence, he was dependent upon the meagre return from his compositions and the assistance of a few generous friends--singers, like Schönstein and Vogl, who made his songs popular. Narrow as his sphere of action was the circle of those who appreciated him. Public recognition he secured only in his last year, with a single concert of his own compositions. He died in 1828, at the age of thirty-one. During that short span his productivity was almost incredible; operas, mostly forgotten (their texts alone would make them impossible) and some lost choral works of extraordinary merit; symphonies, some of