‘The Young Nun,’ though it has perhaps been overrated, shows a powerful dramatic expression of the singer’s feeling as interpreted by surrounding nature (a favorite device of the Romantic poets). The song rises into religious exaltation, with the thunderstorm outside, as the nun returns resignedly to the praise of her religious contemplation. _Die Allmacht_ is a song in the most exalted style of Beethoven, but executed with a technique which is utterly of the romantic school. God is praised by all his works, by the storm no less than by the devout heart in prayer. Each is expressed by Schubert in a musical passage of great beauty. Yet each section is but an inextricable part of the symphonic movement--for religious adoration is not a collection of separate feelings, but a great emotional synthesis. The music for Goethe’s wonderful ‘Wanderer’s Evensong’ is no less remarkable for the musical blending of shades of emotion. But it is something more, something which is in the highest degree typical of the art-song. For it follows the words, not only in expression but in accent, so that not a syllable is falsified. No recitative could be more just to the spoken value of the words. In fact, this song can be read as a pure recitative, in which the words, spoken sincerely and unaffectedly, correspond exactly with the music. And yet, looked at from the other side, it is a perfect melody. This blending of the declamatory and lyrical elements in a perfect synthesis is true to the spirit of the art-song. For no art-song is good that does any sort of violence to the text, as it would be spoken. And yet no art-song is a song if it has not a musical beauty of its own. And it is one of the highest tests of the trained singer to give full value to both these elements, without letting either crowd out the other. ‘Gretchen’s Prayer’ is another fine example of this, less simple but no less perfect. Here, as the supplication rises into emotional entreaty, the music becomes more independently lyrical, floating in air as though to bear the petition to a higher sphere. Schubert is the great exemplar of a form which has been cultivated by almost every composer since his time--the song-cycle. He was not the originator of the form, for Beethoven (in addition to others) had written a true song-cycle in _An die Ferne Geliebte_. But Schubert was the first to show the full possibilities of the song-cycle.