that they are hard to stand."

I have dwelt so much on the attitude of the Germans toward Chopin,
because I am convinced that in this attitude lies one of the main
reasons why no one has hitherto dared to place him in the front rank
of composers, side by side with Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner. For the
Germans are the _tonangebende_ (the standard-setting) nation in music
to-day, and, as there seems to be a natural antipathy between the
Slavic and the Teutonic mind, the Germans are apt, like Mendelssohn,
to regard as mannerism what is simply the exotic fragrance which
betrays a foreign nationality. The ultro-Teutons still persist in
their depreciation of Chopin. In the latest edition of Brockhaus's
"Conservations-Lexicon" we read, apropos to Chopin's larger works,
that "he was deficient in the profounder musical attainments"(!) Dr.
Hanslick, generally considered the leading German critic of the
period, in a 534-page collection of criticisms, discussing twenty
concert seasons in Vienna, has only about half a dozen and by no
means complimentary references to Chopin. And even the late Louis
Ehlert, in his appreciative essay on Chopin, comes to the conclusion
that Chopin is certainly not to be ranked with such giants as Bach and
Beethoven. This is Teutonism, pure and simple. No doubt Chopin is, in
some respects, inferior to Bach and Beethoven, but in other respects
he is quite as unquestionably superior to them. He wrote no mammoth
symphonies, but there is a marvellous wealth and depth of ideas in his
smaller works--enough to supply half a dozen ordinary symphony and
opera writers with ideas for a lifetime. His works may be compared to
those men of genius in whose under-sized bodies dwelt a gigantic mind.

Schumann appears to have been the only contemporary composer who did
not underrate Chopin. Whether he would have gone so far as to rank him