d the last, longer drawn than the rest, "gere curam mei
finis," followed by a hushed pause, is indeed awful as the silence of
the finish. Quite as great is the effect of the same kind in the
"Agnus Dei," which was either written by Mozart, or by Sussmayer with
Mozart's spirit looking over him. Written by Mozart, the Requiem
necessarily abounds in tender touches: the trebles at "Dona eis"
immediately after their first entry; the altos at the same words
towards the end of the number, and at the twenty-eighth bar of the
"Kyrie"; the first part of the "Hostias," the "Agnus Dei," the
wonderful "Ne me perdas" in the "Recordare." And if one wants sheer
strength and majesty, turn to the fugue on "Quam olim Abrahae," or the
C natural of the basses in the "Sanctus." But the prevailing mood is
one of depressing sadness, which would become intolerable by reason of
its monotony were it possible to listen to the Requiem as a work of
art merely, and not as the tearful confessions of one of the most
beautiful spirits ever born into the world.

"FIDELIO"

As an enthusiastic lover of "Fidelio" I may perhaps be permitted to
put one or two questions to certain other of its lovers. Is it an
opera at all?--does it not consist of one wonderfully touching
situation, padded out before and behind,--before with some
particularly fatuous reminiscences of the old comedy of intrigue,
behind with some purely formal business and a pompous final chorus?
"Fidelio" exists by reason of that one tremendous scene: there is
nothing else dramatic in it: however fine the music is, one cannot
forget that the libretto is fustian and superfluous nonsense. Had
Beethoven possessed the slightest genius for opera, had he possessed
anything like Mozart's dramatic instinct (and of course his own
determination to touch nothing but fitting subjects), he would have
felt that no meaner story than the "Flying Dutchman" would serve as an
opportunity to say all that was aroused in his heart and in his mind
by the tale of Leonora. As he had no genius whatever for opera, no
sense of the dramatic in life, the tale of Leonora seemed to him good
enough; and, after all, in its essence it is the same as the tale of
Senta. The Dutchman himself happens to be more interesting than
Florestan because of his weird fate; but he is no more the principal
character in Wagner's opera than Florestan is the principal character
in Beethoven's opera. The principal character in each case