real, an attempt at pastoral gaiety which
has resulted merely in lack of character, at anyrate the second theme
is delightful; if the opening of the slow movement is also twaddle,
there are pleasant passages later on; the dainty allegretto is as
fresh and fragrant as a wild rose; and the finale, though void of
significance, is full of an energy rare in Brahms. Then there are many
of the songs in which Brahms' astonishing felicity of phrase, and his
astounding trick of finding expression for an emotion when the emotion
has been given to him, enable him almost to work miracles. And it must
be remembered that all his music is irreproachable from the technical
point of view. 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. The only difference between
the Wagner score and the Brahms score is, that while the former is
always alive, always the product of a fervent inner life, the latter
is sometimes alive too, but more frequently as dead as a door-mat, the
product of extreme facility and (I must suppose) an extraordinary
inherited musical instinct divorced from exalted thought and feeling.
The difference may be felt when you compare a Brahms and a
Tschaikowsky symphony. Although in his later years Tschaikowsky
acquired a mastery of the technique of music, and succeeded in keeping
his scores clear and clean, he never arrived at anything approaching
Brahms' certainty of touch, and neither his scoring nor his
counterpoint has Brahms' perfection of workmanship. Yet one listens to
Tschaikowksy, for the present at least, with intense pleasure, and
wants to listen again. I have yet to meet anyone who pretends to have
received any intense pleasure from a Brahms symphony.

Brahms is dead; the old floods of adulation will no longer be poured
forth by the master's disciples; neither will the enemies his friends
made for him have any reason to depreciate his music; and ultimately
it will be possible to form a fair, unbiassed judgment on him. This is
a mere casual utterance, by the way.

ANTON DVORAK

I remember the Philharmonic in its glory one evening, when it had a
couple of distinguished foreigners to a kind of musical