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 into closer touch
with the tone poet than the objective state which accepts with
the ears what is intended for the spirit, which hears the sounds
and is deaf to their import, unless the public can separate the