A sense of helplessness and futility overcomes the writer who, in the
limits of a volume as unpretending as the present one, endeavors to give
the casual radio listener a slight idea of Schubert’s inundating
fecundity and inspiration. Like Bach, like Haydn, like Mozart,
Schubert’s capacity for creative labor staggers the imagination and,
like them, he conferred upon an unworthy—or, rather, an
indifferent—generation treasures beyond price and almost beyond
counting. Outwardly, his life was far less spectacular than Beethoven’s
or Mozart’s. His works are the mirror of what it must have been
spiritually. Volumes would not exhaust the wonder of his myriad
creations. If this tiny book serves to heighten even a little the
reader’s interest in such songs, symphonies, piano or chamber works of
Schubert as come to his attention over the air it will have achieved the
most that can be asked of it.