"
These stories remind one of an incident related by Goethe, who one day
suddenly found a poem spontaneously evolved in his mind, and so
complete that he ran to the desk and wrote it diagonally on a piece of
paper, fearing it might escape him if he took time to arrange the
paper.
In a word, Schubert _improvised with the pen_, and he seems to have
been an exception to Schopenhauer's rule, that the greatest writers
are those whose thoughts come to them before writing, and not while
writing. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that much of the music
which Schubert composed in this rapid manner is poor stuff; and
although his short songs are generally perfect in their way, his
longer compositions would have gained very much had he taken the
trouble to think them out beforehand, or to revise and condense them
afterward, which he very rarely did.
With a strange perversity and persistency, musical students and the
public have been led to believe that the surest sign of supreme
musical inspiration is the power to dash off melodies as fast as the
pen can travel. Weber relates in his autobiographic sketch that he
wrote the second act of one of his early operas in ten days, and adds,
significantly, that this was "one of the many unfortunate results of
the wonderful anecdotes about great masters, which make a deep
impression on youthful minds, and incite them to imitation.
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