In the intervals of his busy life Liszt managed to pen some sixty or more _Lieder_, of which a large proportion are of high quality. They suffer less than the other classes of his compositions from the intrusion of banality and gallery play. In them Liszt is never the poet of delicate emotion, but certain things he did better than either Schubert or Schumann. The high heroism, often mock, which we feel in his orchestral writing is here, too. He had command of large design; he could paint the splendid emotion. His ballads are, on the whole, among the best we have. In his setting of Uhland’s ‘The Ancestral Tomb,’ he caught the mysterious aura of ancient balladry as few others have. When there is a picture to be described Liszt always has a musical phrase that suits the image. And in a few instances, as in his settings of _Der du von dem Himmel bist_ and _Du bist wie eine Blume_, he achieved the lyric at its least common denominator--the utmost simplicity of sentiment expressed by the utmost simplicity of musical phrase. It was a feat he rarely repeated. For in these songs he painted not only the picture, but also the emotion. In Mignon’s song, ‘Know’st thou the Land?’ he has put into a single phrase the very breath of homesickness. His setting of ‘The Loreley’ has already been mentioned. It could hardly be finer in its style. The preliminary musing of the poet, the quivering of a dimly remembered song, the flow of the Rhine, the song of the Loreley, the sinking of the ship, are all described. Still finer is ‘The King of Thule,’ which, with all its elaboration of detail, keeps to the sense of archaic simplicity that is in Goethe’s poem. In his settings of Victor Hugo, Liszt was as appropriate as with Goethe, and we find in them all the transparency of technique and the delicacy of sentiment that distinguishes French verse. In all these songs Liszt uses the utmost freedom of declamation in the voice part, with fine regard for the integrity of the text. H. K. M. FOOTNOTES: [88] W. J. Henderson: ‘Songs and Song Writers,’ pp. 182 ff. [89] Carl Friedrich Zelter, b. Petzow-Werder on the Havel, 1758; d. Berlin, 1832. [90] Johann Rudolph Zumsteeg, b. Sachsenflur (Odenwald), 1760; d. Stuttgart, 1802. [91] In 1796 at Löbejün, near Köthen. He was educated in Halle, patronized by King Jerome of Westphalia, Napoleon’s brother, and later became municipal musical director at Stettin. He died in Kiel, 1869.