Of course, it is impossible to touch on all the aspects of such a genius as his. In his songs clear and beautiful melody is, as a rule, combined with a descriptive accompaniment. Sometimes the description is given by means of only a few chords, like the preluding ones in "Am Meer." At other times the description runs through the entire accompaniment, like the waves that flash and dance around the melody of "Auf dem Wasser zu Singen"; the galloping horse in the "Erlking"; the veiled mist that seems to hang over the scenes in the wonderfully dramatic poem, "Die Stadt"; the flutter of the bird in "Hark, Hark, the Lark"; the brook that flows like a leitmotif through the "Maid of the Mill" cycle--these are a few of the examples that with Schubert could be cited by the dozen.
And the range of his work--here again space forbids the multiplication of examples. It extends from the naive "Haiden Röslein" to the tragic "Doppelgänger"; from the whispering foliage of the "Linden Tree" to the pathetic drone of the "Hurdy-Gurdy Man"; from the "Serenade" to "Todt und das Mädchen." Schubert is the greatest genius among song composers. Compare the growing reputation of him who of all musicians was perhaps the most neglected during his life, with that of Mendelssohn, the most fêted of composers, but now rapidly dropping to the position of a minor tone poet, and who, although he wrote eighty-three songs, is as a song writer remembered outside of Germany by barely more than one _Lied_, the familiar "On the Wings of Song."
In Schumann's songs the piano part is more closely knit and interwoven with the vocal melody than with Schubert's, and, as a result, the voice does not stand out so clearly. While his songs are not what they have been called by a German critic, "pianoforte pieces with accidental vocal accompaniments," at times, in his vocal compositions, the pianoforte gains too great an ascendancy over the voice. If asked to draw a distinction between Schubert and Schumann, I should say that there is a twofold interest in most of Schubert's songs. He reproduces the feeling of the poem in his vocal melody; then, if the poem contains a descriptive suggestion, he produces that phase of it in his accompaniment, without, however, allowing the pianoforte part to encroach on the vocal melody. The melody gives the feeling, the accompaniment the description or mood picture. Schumann, on the other hand, rarely is descriptive. Nearly always he produces a mood picture in tone, but requires both voice and pianoforte to effect his purpose. As this, however, is Schumann's method of composition, and as it is better that each composer should leave the seal of his individuality on everything he does, and not be an imitator, it is not cause for regret that while Schubert is Schubert, Schumann is Schumann.