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Strauss received a sound musical education; he could handle the old symphonic form, absolute music, before he began writing in the vein modern; his evolution has been orderly and consistent. He looked before he leaped. His songs prove him to be a melodist, the most original since Brahms in this form. Otherwise, originality is conditioned.
And, what thoughts were those of a Mendelssohn, a Brahms, a Schumann, and, following them, the whole legion of little writers of affected and tearful Lieder! Built on sand. Never rock. Wet and shapeless clay. It was all so foolish, so childish often, that Christophe could not believe that it never occurred to the audience.
Lohengrin, the reader must have observed, was not a road leading anywhere, but an impasse; a step towards the attainment of his ideal it was not: it was, on the whole, a step backwards, although it is a much more beautiful work than Tannhäuser. Wagner's mind, like Thoreau's, Carlyle's, Brahms', needed filtering an operation that could only be performed in perfect peace and loneliness.
But the wonderful Brahms concerto, those of Beethoven and Max Bruch; of Mozart and Mendelssohn it is hard to express a preference for works so different in the quality of their beauty. The Russian Conus has a fine concerto in E, and Sinding a most effective one in A major.
Brahms is certainly with Bach, Mozart, and Wagner in point of musicianship: in fact, these four might be called the greatest masters of sheer music who have lived. A Brahms score is as wonderful as a Wagner score; from beginning to end there is not a misplaced note nor a trace of weakness; and one stands amazed before the consummate workmanship of the thing.
This study has suffered the most of all, for Brahms, in his heavy, Teutonic way, set it grinding double sixths, while Isidor Philipp, in his "Studies for the Left Hand," has harnessed it to sullen octaves.
"No," she said, "that!" She gave me Brahms' Second Concerto, Op. 58, and curled up on the sofa watching me as I set myself slowly to play.... "I say," he said when I had done, "that's fine. I didn't know those things could play like that. I'm all astir..." She came and stood over me, looking at me.
So when I became an editor I determined, in view of my own unhappy experiences and that of many others, to give the aspiring fiddler who really wanted to 'get at' the violin parts of the best symphonic music, from Bach to Brahms and Richard Strauss, a chance to do so.
The programme must be classic enough to satisfy the critic; yet tuneful enough not to bore the amateur, and accordingly it roamed from Brahms to Molloy, and included that first Slavonic Dance of Dvorák which sets the pulses of Pagan and Philistine alike to tingling with a barbarous joy in the mere consciousness of living. Thayer alone had refused to accept dictation at the hands of the committee.
Sherwood has this touch; Tausig had it, and de Pachmann and Rubinstein most of all. It is not taught in Germany as it should be. The best American teachers are far ahead in this respect; in a few years the Europeans will come to us to learn these things." The first composition played to Dr. Mason was the G minor Rhapsodie of Brahms, with which, as it happened, he was unfamiliar.
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