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IV. Always he has concentrated his message into as few tones as possible, and his music, therefore, becomes filled to overflowing with meaning. About the meaning of the masters, one of them has written this: "Whenever you open the music of Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven, its meaning comes forth to you in a thousand different ways."
"They don't speak our language or think our thoughts," Elisabeth said; "and the music of their whole lives is of a different order from that of the lives of the fourth-dimension people." "Distinctly so; all the difference between a Sonata of Beethoven and a song out of a pantomime." "I haven't much patience with the three-dimension people; have you?" asked Elisabeth.
They are bound to be there, for, even while they scoff, they like to keep an eye on Mrs. Lloyd Avalons for fear she may prove to be worth knowing after they have snubbed her; so play your best. It may lead to other engagements to come." "And the Liszt Rhapsodie?" he asked mournfully. "Bad, I admit." "It is detestable. The Rhapsodies are the forlorn hope of artists who have failed on Beethoven."
But it is not only the spirit of French classicism that Ravel and Debussy inherit. In one respect their art is the continuation of the music that came to a climax in the works of Haydn and Mozart. It is subtle and intimate, and restores to the auditor the great creative rôle assigned to him by so much of the music before Beethoven. The music of Haydn and Mozart defers to its hearer.
"Is a blind painter to be imagined?" asks Wagner in this connection. If we can imagine a great painter painting his masterpieces, but never being permitted to see any, an analogy may be found in the exclusion of Beethoven from all participation in the rendering of his works, which was the case in his later years, being unable even to conduct them.
And Tolstoi's claim, that Beethoven must have written it under the inspiration of a too amorous mood, is pretty well answered by the fact that Beethoven, who was so liberal of his dedications to women, whenever they had inspired him, dedicated this work to two different violinists, both men.
In Bach and Handel, the great masters of fugue and counterpoint; in Rossini, Mozart, and Weber, the consummate creators of melody then, according to this view, we only recognize thinkers in the realm of pure music. In Beethoven, the greatest of them all, was laid the basis of the new epoch of tone-poetry.
The clumsiness of the music is due to several causes. He modelled it, he says, upon three composers, Beethoven, Spontini and Marschner the second and third being by far the more potent influences. Now, gracefulness is not a characteristic of either of them.
The sand was of grains of gold, and my keel slid through them without jar or sound. The air was radiant with excess of light, though no sun was to be seen. I inhaled the most delicious perfumes; and harmonies, such as Beethoven may have heard in dreams, but never wrote, floated around me.
German music is undoubtedly the most universal music, especially that of Mozart and Beethoven. It seems as if there were fewer particles of their native soil imbedded in the works of these two masters than is common among their countrymen. They bring out in sharp relief the cultural internationalism of Germany.
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