Finally, there is Silcher, who is to Germany exactly what Stephen Foster is to America. His songs are innumerable, and the number of great folk-songs among them is astonishing. The very heart of German music pulses in Silcher. The famous ‘Loreley’ melody is his, and also _Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz_ and the wonderful _Lebewohl_. He is one of the three or four composers in the world who could with any considerable frequency equal the beauty and directness of folk-songs. He is a text for this chapter. Only the student who knows and loves Silcher can truly know and love Schubert. FOOTNOTES: [20] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII). [21] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII). [22] Vol. II, p. 230 ff. CHAPTER IX ROBERT SCHUMANN Romantic music and romantic poetry--Schumann as a song-writer--The earlier songs--The ‘Woman’s Life’ cycle; the ‘Poet’s Love’ cycle; the later songs--Schumann’s contemporaries. Schubert died just before the great artistic outburst which we know as the romantic period. We have seen elsewhere[23] how this force grew and achieved expression in Paris, and thanks partly to political conditions spread to all parts of Europe. Schumann, though not at all interested in politics, felt this force in its artistic aspect, as did all other sensitive men of the time. After Schubert, he was the one man preëminently to express the new feeling in terms of song. Much had happened between 1828, when Schubert died, and 1840, when Schumann wrote his first songs. To put the case briefly, the romantic movement in music had got under way. People had begun to know Schubert’s songs and the later symphonies of Beethoven. The pianoforte had grown to perfection and had come to have a technique and literature of its own. The technique of harmony and polyphony had undergone (partly at Schumann’s own hands) striking changes in the direction of freedom and expressiveness. The short piece in free form had become a recognized part of musical literature. The national movement in Germany, with its extensive use of the folk-song, had been universally accepted. The travelling virtuoso had become a fixed part of musical life, and the musical centre of gravity had shifted from the nobles to the masses. In short, people had come to look for intimate emotional expression in music, and music had developed the means of supplying the demand.