In 1827 he wrote the Winterreise songs, the fantasia for piano and violin, and the two piano trios; in 1828 the Song of Miriam, the C major symphony, the Mass in E flat, and the exceedingly beauti ful Tantum Ergo in the same key, the string quintet, the second Benedictus to the Mass in C, the last three piano sonatas, and the collection of songs known as Scliwanengesang. Six of these are to words by Heine, whose Buck der Lieder had recently appeared. Everything pointed to the renewal of an activity which should equal that of his greatest abundance, when he was sud denly attacked by typhus fever, and after a fortnight's illness died on Nov. 19 at the house of his brother Ferdinand. He had not completed his 32nd year.
Some of his smaller pieces were printed shortly after his death, but the more valuable seem to have been regarded by the pub lishers as waste paper. In 1838 Schumann, on a visit to Vienna, found the dusty manuscript of the C major symphony and took it back to Leipzig, where it was performed by Mendelssohn and celebrated in the Neue Zeitschrif t. The most important step towards the recovery of the neglected works was the journey to Vienna which Sir George Grove and Sir Arthur Sullivan made in the autumn of 1867. The travellers rescued from oblivion seven symphonies, the Rosamunde music, some of the Masses and operas, some of the chamber works, and a vast quantity of miscel laneous pieces and songs. Their success gave impetus to a wide spread public interest and finally resulted in the definitive edition of Breitkopf and Hartel.
Schubert is best summed up in the well-known phrase of Liszt, that he was "le musicien le plus poete qui fut jamais." In clarity of style he was inferior to Mozart, in power of musical construction he was far inferior to Beethoven, but in poetic impulse and suggestion he is unsurpassed. He wrote always at headlong speed, he seldom blotted a line, and the greater part of his work bears, in consequence, the essential mark of improvisa tion : it is fresh, vivid, spontaneous, impatient of restraint, full of rich colour and of warm imaginative feeling. He was the greatest song-writer who ever lived, and almost everything in his hand turned to song. In his Masses, for instance, he seems to chafe at the contrapuntal numbers and pours out his whole soul on those which he found suitable for lyrical treatment. In his symphonies the lyric and elegiac passages are usually the best, and the most beautiful of them all is, throughout its two move ments, lyric in character. The standpoint from which to judge
him is that of a singer who ranged over the whole field of musical composition and everywhere carried with him the artistic form which he loved best.
Like Mozart, whose influence over him was always considerable, he wrote nearly all the finest of his compositions in the last ten years of his life. His early symphonies, his early quartets, even his early Masses, are too much affected by a traditional style to establish an enduring reputation. It is unfair to call them imi tative, but at the time when he wrote them he was saturated with Mozart, and early Beethoven, and he spoke what was in his mind with a boy's frankness. The andante of the Tragic symphony (No. 4) strikes a more distinctive note, but the fifth is but a charming adaptation of a past idiom, and the sixth, on which Schubert himself placed little value, shows hardly any appreciable advance. It is a very different matter when we come to the later works. The piano quintet in A major (1819) may here be taken as the turning-point ; then come the Unfinished symphony, which is pure Schubert in every bar; the three quartets in A minor, D minor and G major, full of romantic colour; the delightful piano trios; the great string quintet; and the C major symphony which, though diffuse, contains many passages of surpassing beauty.
His larger operas are marred both by their inordinate length and by their want of dramatic power. The slighter comedies are pretty and tuneful, but, except as curiosities, are not likely to be revived. We may, however, deplore the fate which has deprived the stage of the Rosamunde music. It is in Schubert's best vein; the entr'actes, the romance, and the ballets are alike excellent, and it is much to be hoped that a poet will some day arise and fit the music to a new play.
Of his pianoforte compositions, the sonatas, as might be expected, are the least enduring, though there is not one of them which does not contain some first-rate work. On the other hand his smaller pieces, in which the lyric character is more appar ent, are throughout interesting to play and extremely pleasant to hear. A special word should be added on his fondness for piano duets, a form which before his time had been rarely attempted: His concerted pieces for the voice are often extremely diffi cult, but they are of a rare beauty which would well repay the labour of rehearsal.