Franz’s melody is likely to veil itself against the first glance. It is always beautiful and well proportioned, but it so persistently avoids striking effects that it is apt to seem colorless. But if we listen with our inner ears we shall find it eloquent. Avoiding the striking, Franz’s melody also avoids the obvious and at first hearing we are apt to find it a trifle aimless and meandering. But its continuous subtle deviations from the expected are never without purpose, and never, if we know how to listen, without meaning. Usually, too, there is little or no obvious design, no striking climax point, no resounding cadence. But here again we need only look beneath the surface to discover the most restful and satisfying architecture. Though the emotional color may be almost unvarying from beginning to end, though the final note of the voice may not be on the tonic and may glide in the piano postlude, yet we discover that if any note had been changed the whole would have been less perfect. These qualities we find in their simplest form in such masterpieces as _Widmung_ and _Bitte_, songs simple as any folk-song yet rich with conscious artistry. Franz’s harmony is not radical or striking. It contains practically nothing which could not be found in Schumann before him; we might almost say that it contains nothing that could not be found in the Beethoven sonatas. He is fluent though not frequent with modulation; his greatest radicalism is a stimulating use of altered chords and passing notes. In fact, his harmony is in every way more conservative than that of Schumann; for, whereas Schumann was professedly an innovator, Franz loved best the old German tradition--that of the Bach fugues and the Lutheran chorale.