ushed to the Stadtconvict school, his
only _alma mater_, and sang it to the scholars. The music-master,
Rucziszka, was overwhelmed with rapture and astonishment, and embraced
the young composer in a transport of joy. When this immortal music was
first sung to Goethe, the great poet said: "Had music, instead of words,
been my instrument of thought, it is so I would have framed the legend."

The "Serenade" is another example of the swiftness of Schubert's
artistic imagination. He and a lot of jolly boon-companions sat one
Sunday afternoon in an obscure Viennese tavern, known as the Biersack.
The surroundings were anything but conducive to poetic fancies--dirty
tables, floor, and ceiling, the clatter of mugs and dishes, the loud
dissonance of the beery German roisterers, the squalling of children,
and all the sights and noises characteristic of the beer-cellar. One of
our composer's companions had a volume of poems, which Schubert looked
at in a lazy way, laughing and drinking the while. Singling out some
verses, he said: "I have a pretty melody in my head for these lines, if
I could only get a piece of ruled paper." Some staves were drawn on the
back of a bill-of-fare, and here, amid all the confusion and riot, the
divine melody of the "Serenade" was born, a tone-poem which embodies the
most delicate dream of passion and tenderness that the heart of man ever
conceived.

Both these compositions were eccentric and at odds with the old canons
of song, fancied with a grace, warmth, and variety of color hitherto
characteristic only of the more pretentious forms of music, which had
already been brought to a great degree of perfection. They inaugurate
the genesis of the new school of musical lyrics, the golden wedding of
the union of poetry with music.

For a long time the young composer was unsuccessful in his attempts to
break through the barren and irritating drudgery of a schoolmaster's
life. At last a wealthy young dilettante, Franz von Schober, who had
become an admirer of Schubert's songs, persuaded his mother to offer him
a fixed home in her house. The latter gratefully accepted the overture
of friendship, and thence became a daily guest at Schober's house. He
made at this time a number of strong friendships with obscure poets,
whose names only live through the music of the composer set to verses
furnished by them; for Schubert, in his affluence of creative power,
merely needed the slightest excuse for his genius to fl