With Schumann the tendency of detailed musical description is carried into a greater number of songs and into a greater variety of details. The declamatory element increases, both in the number of songs which it dominates and in the extent to which it influences the more melodic songs. The part of the piano is tremendously increased, so much so that the _Waldesgespräch_ has been called a symphonic poem with recitative accompaniment by the voice. The harmony, while lacking in Schubert’s entrancingly simple enharmonic changes, is more unusual, showing in particular a tendency to avoid the perfect cadence, which would have hurt Franz Schubert’s ear for a time. Schumann’s songs are commonly called ‘psychological,’ and this much-abused word may be allowed to stand in the sense that Schumann offered a separate statement of the separate strands of an emotional state, while Schubert more usually expressed the emotional state pure and simple. No songs could be more subjective than some of Schubert’s later ones, but many, including Schumann’s, have been more complex in emotional content. But perhaps the first thing one feels on approaching the Schumann songs is that they are consciously wrought, that they are the work of a thinker. This is no doubt partly because Schumann, with all his gifts, did not have at his disposal Schubert’s wonderfully rich melody and was obliged to weigh and consider. But it is also quite to be expected from the nature of the man. While Schumann’s songs are by no means so rich as Schubert’s in point of melody, there are a few of his tunes, especially the famous _Widmung_, which can stand beside any in point of pure musical beauty. Still, it must be admitted that Schumann’s truly great songs, even from the output of 1840, are decidedly limited in number.