This genius was, along with that of Mozart, the most spontaneous the world of music had ever seen. It seemed to work by a sort of divination. Whereas Beethoven’s musical ideas developed slowly and under great mental pressure from themes of little value, Schubert’s songs often came into his mind almost in an instant complete from beginning to end. From the age of thirteen (and probably earlier) he was continually writing songs. Often he would compose as many as three or four in a single morning, especially when he was unusually pressed for money. Most of the time he did but little revising. If the musical idea as it came was not of fine quality, then it could go to the scrap-basket or to anybody who cared for it; there were plenty more good tunes where that came from. Schubert’s supply of beautiful melodies was inexhaustible. He never had to nurse and pet a tune in order to get the maximum of musical service out of it. More than any other song-writer Schubert ‘sings himself.’ And his songs, for the most part, ‘wrote themselves.’ The poet would pick up a book on a friend’s table and, discovering therein some lovely poems, would be seized by musical settings for them. Sometimes he wrote as though in a trance. The music seemed to come from some anterior source, and, passing through his brain on its way to the paper, to make him intoxicated. When he died at the age of thirty he left behind him some eleven hundred musical works, of which more than six hundred were songs of all descriptions. This was the product of scarcely more than fifteen years of activity. It is obvious there could not have been much revision. But this is hardly evidence that Schubert was incapable of self-criticism. He had his favorites among his songs and doubtless realized that many were as worthless as later generations have found them. And he did, in certain cases, spend considerable effort in revision; there exist, for instance, several different versions of ‘The Erl King’ in Schubert’s handwriting. But his lack of revision was a result of his overpowering fertility rather than of carelessness. If he kept on writing new songs he might strike a masterpiece any time. Why waste his time polishing second-rate pieces? Briefly stated, what Schubert did for song was to establish it as one of the great departments of music. We know what it was before his time--an unpretentious amusement, considered appropriate chiefly for the vaudeville theatres and the banquet tables of roistering students. Among the educated classes song was loved, but hardly respected. The great composers wrote songs only as bagatelles for their amusement or for a special occasion. It was hardly realized that the song form, so slight and so modest, could receive the burden of great ideas and radical innovation.