It is interesting to notice, in passing, that Schubert gets his most tragic and pathetic effects out of the major mode rather than out of the minor. Besides the example just quoted one recalls the entrance of the major in _Ihr Bild_,--an effort of most delicate pathos; and the ending of ‘Death and the Maiden,’ in which the coming of the minor brings with it the feeling of deep human tragedy as contrasted with the somewhat spooky tragedy of the preceding minor. Schubert’s effects, though usually very simple, rarely come from a reliance on conventional means. Another of Schubert’s expressive devices is famous. It is the dissonance of D flat against D against C (or a corresponding combination), recurring in ‘The Erl King’ when the boy shrieks in terror at the sight of the evil ghost. It was strenuously objected to by certain ones who heard it in Schubert’s time, and it is recorded that one of the objectors withdrew his criticism because the compound dissonance resolved so smoothly. The justification, if justification is needed, is something other than this. It is that the device is tremendously expressive. In ‘The Erl King’ we cannot fail to notice how the triplet motive in the accompaniment binds the song closely together. In nearly every case Schubert finds some means of accomplishing this end, when the free form of the song might threaten to distract one’s attention. In a number of the _Müllerlieder_, in which the brook figures constantly, the rippling water is suggested (not imitated) in the accompaniment. The devices by which the suggestion is accomplished seem naïve to us to-day, but it is perhaps more artistic than an attempt at imitation would be. Suggestive devices are innumerable. Note the movement of the breeze in ‘Suleika’s Second Song’; the opening chords, suggestive of deepening night over the sea, in _Am Meer_; the delicate will-o’-the-wisp figure in _Irrlicht_; the bass figure that suggests huge weight in _Atlas_; the leaping triplet figure in ‘The Trout’; the tragic snatches of melody in the bass of _Aufenthalt_, and so on without limit. It must be remembered that such details as these were much more of a novelty in Schubert’s time than now. A century ago the use of music for detailed expression was comparatively strange.