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Updated: June 15, 2025
The very different manner in which he treats this gentleman, throughout his work, from that in which he speaks of Berlioz, Wagner, Lenz, is striking; but Oulibichef is dead, and cannot reply.
With the later works of the composer Oulibichef had no sympathy. Haydn and Mozart had given him his standards of perfection. We can forgive Beethoven, when at times he rises above all forms and rules in seeking new means of expression; Oulibichef could not. But it is not endless discussions of Beethoven's works which the public at all events, our public demands.
In reading the work carefully, two points strike us in relation to his printed authorities: first, that the list of those quoted by Lenz in his "Catalogue" and "Leben des Meisters" comprises nearly all those cited by Marx; the principal additions being the works of Lenz, Oulibichef, and A. B. Marx, the latter of which he exhibits great skill in finding and making opportunities to advertise; and secondly, that, where the Russian writer, through haste, carelessness, or the want of means to verify facts and correct errors, falls into mistakes, the Berlin Professor generally agrees with him.
Were it a possible supposition, we should imagine it to be a thing manufactured to sell, and, indeed, in some such manner as this; The labors of Lenz taken without acknowledgment for the skeleton of the work; Wegeler, Ries, Schindler, and Seyfried at hand for citations, where Lenz fails to give more than a reference; Oulibichef on the table to supply topics for polemical discussion; a few periodicals and papers, which have come accidentally into his possession, to afford here and there an anecdote or a letter; the works of Professor A. B. Marx supplying the necessary authorities upon points in musical science.
We had hopes that now some one of the great master's countrymen would give us something worthy of him; but the excitement expended itself in pamphlets and articles in periodicals, in which as little was done for Beethoven's history as was effected against the views of Oulibichef. A very feeble champion, this Herr von Lenz.
Some of the Russian's contrapuntal objections to the "Heroic Symphony" are well answered; but, as we are satisfied with the poetic explanation of the work by neither, we must confess, that, after the crystalline clearness of Oulibichef, the muddy wordiness of Marx is not to edification.
Could any words give more concisely the peculiar character of the much misunderstood Mozart, "the most delicate genius of light and love," "the most richly gifted of all musicians"? Does it not tell us more than all the outpourings of Oulibichef? Or this, in speaking of the formation of the opera and the demand for better libretti after the period of Spontini?
Save the first fourteen pages, which are given to Beethoven's sickness in 1802, the testament which he wrote at that time, and some remarks upon the "Christ on the Mount of Olives," these chapters are devoted to the "Heroic Symphony," its history, its explanation, and a polemical discourse directed against the views of Wagner, Berlioz, Oulibichef, and others.
A life of Beethoven, founded upon a careful digest of these writers, combined with the materials scattered through other publications, even though no original researches were made, was still a desideratum, when the very remarkable work upon Mozart, by the Russian, Alexander Oulibichef, appeared, and aroused a singular excitement in the German musical circles through the real or supposed injustice towards Beethoven into which the hero-worship of the author had led him.
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