Serial 2: Men I've "Slept With" or "Consumed"!

2006/2/21 21:17:51

Classified by type of consumption, there are only two kinds of men: worth consuming and not worth consuming. Among those worth consuming, only a very few are worth consuming in one's sleep -- such as today's subject.

He was the youngest to die among all the greatest composers, finishing life's farce before the age of 32 -- even younger than Mozart. Everyone calls him the "King of Song" -- a very incorrect correct statement. Undoubtedly, he is the greatest, one-of-a-kind song composer in world history, a conclusion that holds absolutely even when including popular music. What he wrote at seventeen, such as "Erlking," became the nightmare of everyone who has ever written songs, unsurpassed to this day. Thanks to him, the art song became a musical form that could stand equal to symphonies and chamber music. A single great art song is absolutely more valuable than a garbage symphony, just as Wang Wei's twenty characters are worth far more than most people's lengthy tomes.

But he was absolutely not just a song composer. At the age when he completed all his creations, Beethoven hadn't even glimpsed the shadow of the "Eroica," let alone "Fate," "Pastoral," or the "Choral." And he left behind the finest string quartets after Beethoven, the finest piano sonatas, the finest symphonies, plus the greatest C major quintet in history. Works like "The Trout" can only be considered run-of-the-mill for him. Most people only know his "Unfinished" or "The Great," but after "The Great" came the "Tenth" -- only three movements were written, yet the greatest music; Mahler falls far short.

In the last three months of his life, he completed one and a half symphonies, three piano sonatas, and the greatest C major quintet, along with a song cycle, a mass, and more. Heights that others couldn't reach in three lifetimes, he achieved in three months. And before that, he had already left behind over a thousand works, all of the highest quality. Schumann, one of Germany's greatest composers, once said with emotion that he would only whisper this man's name to the stars. And over a century later, we can still hear the stars tenderly calling, calling his name: Franz Schubert.