er-architects, Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven; gave no time to line, fascinated as he was by the problems of
color. But color fades. Where are the Turners of yester-year? Form and
form only endures, and so it has come to pass that of his four
symphonies, not one is called great in the land where he was king for a
day. The B-flat is a pretty suite, the C-major inutile--always barring
the lyric episodes--the D-minor a thing of shreds and patches, and the
_Rhenish_--muddy as the river Rhine in winter time.

The _E-flat piano Quintet_ will live and also the piano
concerto--originally a fantasia in one movement. Thus Schumann
experimented and built, following the line of easiest resistance, which
is the poetic idea. If he had patterned as has Brahms, he would have
sternly put aside his childish romanticism, left its unwholesome if
captivating shadows, and pushed bravely into the open, where the sun and
moon shine without the blur and miasma of a _decadent_ literature. But
then we should not have had Schumann. It was not to be, and thus it is
that his is a name with a musical sigh, a name that evokes charming
memories, and also, I must admit, a name that gently plucks at one's
heart-strings. His songs are sweet, yet never so spontaneous as
Schubert's, so astringently intellectual as Robert Franz's. His opera,
his string quartets--how far are the latter from the noble,
self-contained music in this form of Beethoven and Brahms!--and his
choral compositions are already in the sad, gray _penumbra_ of the
negligible. His piano music is without the clear, chiseled contours of
Chopin, without a definite, a great style, yet--the piano music of
Schumann, how lovely some of it is!

I will stop my heartless heart-to-heart talk. It is too depressing,
these vagaries, these senile ramblings of a superannuated musician. Ah,
me! I too was once in Arcady, where the shepherds bravely piped original
and penetrating tunes, where the little shepherdesses danced to their
lords and smiled sweet porcelain smiles. It was all very real, this
music of the middle century, and it was written for the time, it suited
the time, and when the time passed, the music with the men grew stale,
sour, and something to be avoided, like the leer of a creaking,
senescent _beau_, like the rouge and grimace of a debile _coquette_. My
advice then is, enjoy the music of your epoch, for there is no such
thing as music of the future. It is always music of the present.
Schum