Schumann worked generously in all forms except church music. At first he was chiefly a composer for the piano, and his genre pieces, ‘pianistic’ in a quite new way, opened the field for much subsequent music from other pens. In them his romantic fervor best shows itself. They are buoyantly pictorial and suggestive, though avoiding extremes, and they abound in literary mottoes. In 1840 begins his chief activity as a song composer, and here he takes a place second only to Schubert in lovableness and second to none in intimate subjective expression. Between 1841 and 1850 come four lovely symphonies, uneven in quality and without distinction in instrumentation, but glowing with vigorous life. In the last ten years of his life come the larger choral works, the ‘Faust’ scenes, several cantatas, the ---- and the opera ‘Genoveva.’ Throughout the latter part of his life are scattered the chamber works which are permanent additions to musical literature. These works, and their contributions to musical development, will be described in succeeding chapters. * * * * * These are the preëminent romantic composers. What they have in common is not so evident as seems at first glance. The very creed that binds them together makes them highly individual and dispartite. At bottom, the only possible specific definition of romantic music is a description of romantic music itself. ‘Romantic’ is at best a loose term; and it happens always to be a relative term.