lav nor Latin nor Teuton had seen them before; the touch
of things aroused in him moods dissimilar from those that had been
aroused in anyone before. Hence, while we English regard him as a
representative Russian, or at anyrate Slav, composer, many Russians
repudiate him, calling him virtually a Western. He has the Slav fire,
rash impetuosity, passion and intense melancholy, and much also of
that Slav naivete which in the case of Dvorak degenerates into sheer
brainlessness; he has an Oriental love of a wealth of extravagant
embroidery, of pomp and show and masses of gorgeous colour; but the
other, what I might call the Western, civilised element in his
character, showed itself in his lifelong striving to get into touch
with contemporary thought, to acquire a full measure of modern
culture, and to curb his riotous, lawless impulse towards mere sound
and fury. It is this unique fusion of apparently mutually destructive
elements and instincts that gives to Tschaikowsky's music much of its
novelty and piquancy. But, apart from this uncommon fusion, it must be
remembered that his was an original mind--original not only in colour
but in its very structure. Had he been pure Slav, or pure Latin, his
music might have been very different, but it would certainly have
been original. He had true creative imagination, a fund of original,
underived emotion, and a copiousness of invention almost as great as
Wagner's or Mozart's. His power of evolving new decorative patterns of
a fantastic beauty seemed quite inexhaustible; and the same may be
said of his schemes and combinations and shades of colour, and the
architectural plans and forms of his larger works. It is true that his
forms frequently enough approach formlessness; that his colours--and
especially in his earlier music--are violent and inharmonious; and
that in his ceaseless invention of new patterns his Slav naivete and
lack of humour led him more than a hundred times to write
unintentionally comic passages. He is discursive--I might say voluble.
Again, he had little or no real strength--none of the massive, healthy
strength of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner: his force is sheer
hysteria. He is wanting in the deepest and tenderest human feeling. He
is plausible to a degree that leads one to suspect his sincerity, and
certainly leaves it an open question how long a great deal of his
music will stand after this generation, to which it appeals so
strongly, has passed away. But whe