Of "Fierabras" it need only be said that the libretto was a bad one, the scene was Spain in the days of Carlovingian romance, the score filled one thousand manuscript pages, and the opera was never performed. The romances, entr'actes, choruses, and ballet music, written this year for the drama of "Rosamunde," rank among the composer's most beautiful works, and are often performed as concert-pieces, though the drama itself has been lost.
During part of this year 1823 Schubert was ill and obliged to go to the hospital. Yet besides all this quantity of operatic music, he composed the cycle of twenty songs known as "Die schöne Müllerin," to the words of Wilhelm Müller, containing the exquisite "Wohin?," "Ungeduld," "Trockne Blumen," and others scarcely less beautiful. Some of these were written in the hospital. As if this were not enough, the same year's list contains "Du bist die Ruh," and "Auf dem Wasser zu singen"; as well as the piano sonata in A minor, Op. 143.
The year 1824 was marked chiefly by piano compositions,--two sonatas and an overture for four hands, besides a vast quantity of dance music, and the "Divertissement à l'hongroise," suggested by an air hummed by the kitchen maid at the Esterhazys' country house, where Schubert spent the summer to recruit his health. There was also a string quartet, and the celebrated octet for strings and wood which is now so familiar. This activity in the sonata form seems to have culminated next year in the ninth symphony, which was almost surely finished about August, 1825, but which has quite disappeared from sight. There were three piano sonatas, besides the fragment of a fourth. Of these the sonata in A minor, Op. 42, must probably be pronounced the greatest of Schubert's works for the piano, showing along with its wealth of inventiveness a mastery of form almost as complete as the best of the songs. Among the grand songs of this year must be mentioned "Die junge Nonne," and the group of seven to Scott's "Lady of the Lake," of which the most famous is the "Ave Maria."
[Illustration: SCHUBERT'S MONUMENT IN VIENNA.--From a photograph.]
Our composer's progress toward perfect achievement in instrumental music is marked in 1826 by the two string quartets in G and D minor. The latter is not only Schubert's greatest work in chamber music, but is hardly surpassed by the work of any other composer in this department. At the same time came the piano sonata in G, Op. 78, of remarkable breadth and grandeur. The Shakespeare songs already mentioned belong to this year.