composed. He put his dreams in music and guessed their meaning
afterward."

Of Liszt and Chopin: "To all of this new, strange music [the piano
music of the Romantics] Liszt and Chopin added the wonderful tracery
of Orientalism. The difference between these two is, that with Chopin
this tracery developed poetic thought as with a thin gauze; whereas
with Liszt [in his piano music] the embellishment itself made the
starting-point for almost a new art in tonal combination, the effects
of which one sees on every hand to-day. To realise its influence one
need only compare the easy mastery of the arabesque displayed in the
simplest piano piece of to-day with the awkward and gargoyle-like
figuration of Beethoven and his predecessors. We may justly attribute
this to Liszt rather than to Chopin, whose nocturne embellishments are
but first cousins to those of the Englishman, John Field."

Of Wagner: "His music-dramas, shorn of the fetters of the actual
spoken word, emancipated from the materialism of acting, painting, and
furniture, must be considered the greatest achievement in our art."

Concerning Form in music, he observed: "If by the word 'form' our
purists meant the most poignant expression of poetic thought in music,
if they meant by this term the art of arranging musical sounds so that
they constituted the most telling presentation of a musical idea, I
should have nothing to say. But as it is, the word in almost its
invariable use by theorists stands for what are called 'stoutly-built
periods,' 'subsidiary themes' and the like, a happy combination of
which in certain prescribed keys is supposed to constitute good form.
Such a principle, inherited from the necessities and fashions of the
dance, and changing from time to time, is surely not worthy of the