.. which
no one believes."

And on the whole he found the music quite charming, and, without doubt,
in the depths of his heart approved of this Frenchman according to
conventional notions that are current in Germany alone. Strauss is
really very fond of Charpentier, and was his patron in Berlin; and I
remember how he showed childish delight in _Louise_ when it was first
performed in Paris.

But Strauss, and most other Germans, are quite on the wrong track when
they try to persuade themselves that this amusing French frivolity is
still the exclusive property of France. They really love it because it
has become German; and they are quite unconscious of the fact. The
German artists of other times did not find much pleasure in frivolity;
but I could have easily shown Strauss his liking for it by taking
examples from his own works. The Germans of to-day have but little in
common with the Germans of yesterday.

I am not speaking of the general public only, The German public of
to-day are devotees of Brahms and Wagner, and everything of theirs seems
good to them; they have no discrimination, and, while they applaud
Wagner and encore Brahms, they are, in their hearts, not only frivolous,
but sentimental and gross. The most striking thing about this public is
their cult of power since Wagner's death. When listening to the end of
_Die Meistersinger_ I felt how the haughty music of the great march
reflected the spirit of this military nation of shop-keepers, bursting
with rude health and complacent pride.

The most remarkable thing of all is that German artists are gradually
losing the power of understanding their own splendid classics and, in
particular, Beethoven. Strauss, who is very shrewd and knows exactly his
own limitations, does not willingly enter Beethoven's domain, though he
feels his spirit in a much more living way than any of the other German
_Kapellmeister_. At the Strasburg festival he contented himself with
conducting, besides his own symphony, the _Oberon Overture_ and a Mozart
concerto. These performances were interesting; a personality like his
is so curious that it is quite amusing to find it coming out in the
works he conducts. But how Mozart's features took on an offhand and
impatient air; and how the rhythms were accentuated at the expense of
the melodic grace. In this case, however, Strauss was dealing with a
concerto, where a certain liberty of interpretation is allowed. But
Mahler, who was less disc