tic wise in his theoretical
knowledge, say, as was and is said of Chopin, "He is weak in
sonata form!"

In art our opinions must, in all cases, rest directly on the
thing under consideration and not on what is written about it.
Without a thorough knowledge of music, including its history and
development, and, above all, musical "sympathy," individual
criticism is, of course, valueless; at the same time the
acquirement of this knowledge and sympathy is not difficult, and
I hope that we may yet have a public in America that shall be
capable of forming its own ideas, and not be influenced by
tradition, criticism, or fashion.

Every person with even the very smallest love and sympathy for art
possesses ideas which are valuable to that art. From the tiniest
seeds sometimes the greatest trees are grown. Why, therefore,
allow these tender germs of individualism to be smothered by that
flourishing, arrogant bay tree of tradition--fashion, authority,
convention, etc.

No art form is so fleeting and so subject to the dictates of
fashion as opera. It has always been the plaything of fashion,
and suffers from its changes.

Always respectable in his forms, no one else could have made
music popular among the cultured classes as could Mendelssohn.
This also had its danger; for if Mendelssohn had written an opera
(the lack of which was so bewailed by the Philistines), it would
have taken root all over Germany, and put Wagner back many years.

Handel's great achievement (besides being a fine composer) was to
crush all life out of the then promising school of English music,
the foundation of which had been so well laid by Purcell, Byrd,
Morley, etc._

(On Mozart). _His later symphonies and operas show us the man at
his best. His piano works and early operas show the effect of the
"virtuoso" style, with all its empty concessions to technical
display and commonplace, ear-catching melody ... He possessed a
certain simple charm of expression which, in its directness, has
an element of pathos lacking in the comparatively jolly
light-heartedness of Haydn.

Music can invariably heighten the poignancy of spoken words
(which mean nothing in themselves), but words can but rarely, in
fact I doubt whether they can ever, heighten the effect of
musical declamation.

To hear and enjoy music seems sufficient to many persons, and an
investigation as to the causes of this enjoyment seems to them
superfluous. And yet, unless the public comes