wrote too much music!--When one is not rich one should
at least have enough pride to be poor!{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} The sympathy which here and there
was meted out to Brahms, apart from party interests and party
misunderstandings, was for a long time a riddle to me, until one day
through an accident, almost, I discovered that he affected a particular
type of man. He has the melancholy of impotence. His creations are not the
result of plenitude, he thirsts after abundance. Apart from what he
plagiarises, from what he borrows from ancient or exotically modern
styles--he is a master in the art of copying,--there remains as his most
individual quality a _longing_.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} And this is what the dissatisfied of all
kinds, and all those who yearn, divine in him. He is much too little of a
personality, too little of a central figure.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} The "impersonal," those who
are not self-centred, love him for this. He is especially the musician of
a species of dissatisfied women. Fifty steps further on, and we find the
female Wagnerite--just as we find Wagner himself fifty paces ahead of
Brahms.--The female Wagnerite is a more definite, a more interesting, and
above all, a more attractive type. Brahms is touching so long as he dreams
or mourns over himself in private--in this respect he is modern;--he becomes
cold, we no longer feel at one with him when he poses as the child of the
classics.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} People like to call Brahms Beethoven's heir: I know of no more
cautious euphemism--All that which to-day makes a claim to being the grand
style in music is on precisely that account either false to us or false to
itself. This alternative is suspicious enough: in itself it contains a
casuistic question concerning the value of the two cases. The instinct of
the majority protests against the alternative; "false to us"--they do not
wish to be cheated;--and I myself would certainly always prefer this type
to the other ("False to itself"). This is _my_ taste.--Expressed more
clearly for the sake of the "poor in spirit" it amounts to this: Brahms
_or_ Wagner.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Brahms is _not_ an actor.--A very great part of other
musicians may be summed up in the concept Brahms--I do not wish to say
anything about the clever apes of Wagner, as for instance Goldmark: when
one has "The Queen of Sheba" to one's name, one belongs to a
menagerie,--one ought to put oneself on show.--Nowadays all things tha