ndish tone colours, what
strange, unearthly sounds! It is not Bach, however, who first comes to
mind when Huneker is at his tricks, but Papa Haydn--the Haydn of the
Surprise symphony and the Farewell. There is the same gargantuan gaiety,
the same magnificent irreverence. Haydn did more for the symphony than
any other man, but he also got more fun out of it than any other man.

"Old Fogy," of course, is not to be taken seriously: it is frankly a
piece of fooling. But all the same a serious idea runs through the book
from end to end, and that is the idea that music is getting too
subjective to be comfortable. The makers of symphonies tend to forget
beauty altogether; their one effort is to put all their own petty trials
and tribulations, their empty theories and speculations into cacophony.
Even so far back as Beethoven's day that autobiographical habit had
begun. "Beethoven," says Old Fogy, is "dramatic, powerful, a maker of
storms, a subduer of tempests; but his speech is the speech of a
self-centred egotist. He is the father of all the modern melomaniacs,
who, looking into their own souls, write what they see therein--misery,
corruption, slighting selfishness and ugliness." Old Ludwig's groans, of
course, we can stand. He was not only a great musician, but also a great
man. It is just as interesting to hear him sigh and complain as it would
be to hear the private prayers of Julius Caesar. But what of
Tschaikowsky, with his childish Slavic whining? What of Liszt, with his
cheap playacting, his incurable lasciviousness, his plebeian warts? What
of Wagner, with his delight in imbecile fables, his popinjay vanity, his
soul of a _Schnorrer_? What of Richard Strauss, with his warmed-over
Nietzscheism, his flair for the merely horrible? Old Fogy sweeps them
all into his ragbag. If art is to be defined as beauty seen through a
temperament, then give us more beauty and cleaner temperaments! Back to
the old gods, Mozart and Bach, with a polite bow to Brahms and a
sentimental tear for Chopin! Beethoven tried to tell his troubles in his
music; Mozart was content to ravish the angels of their harps. And as
for Johann Sebastian, "there was more real musical feeling, uplifting
and sincerity in the old Thomas-kirche in Leipzig ... than in all your
modern symphony and oratorio machine-made concerts put together."

All this is argued, to be sure, in extravagant terms. Wagner is a mere
ghoul and impostor: "The Flying Dutchman" is no more