bulk of his early works. Everybody knows how Mozartish, _e.g._,
Beethoven's first symphony is, and how much in turn Mozart's early
works smack of Haydn. Gradually, as courage comes with years, the
gifted composer sets out for unexplored forests and mountain ranges,
attempting to scale summits which none of his predecessors had trod. I
say, as courage comes, for in music, strange to say, it requires much
courage to give the world an entirely new thought. An original
composer needs not only the courage that is common to all explorers,
but he must invariably come back prepared to face the accusation that
his new territory is nothing but a howling wilderness of discords.
This has been the case quite recently with Wagner, as it was formerly
with Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart, the early Italian composers, and
many others, including even Rossini, who certainly did not deviate
very far from the beaten paths. Seyfried relates that when Beethoven
came across articles in which he was criticised for violating
established rules of composition, he used to rub his hands gleefully
and burst out laughing. "Yes, yes!" he exclaimed, "that amazes them,
and makes them put their heads together, because they have not seen it
in any of their text-books."

Fortunately for their own peace of mind, the majority of the minor
composers never get beyond a mere rearrangement of remembered melodies
and modulations. Their minds are mere galleries of echoes. They write
for money or temporary notoriety, and not because their brains teem
with ideas that clamor for utterance. The pianist Hummel was one of
this class of composers. But whatever his short-comings, he had at
least, as Wagner admits, the virtue of frankness. For when he was
asked one day what thoughts or images he had in his mind when he
composed a certain concerto, he replied that he had been thinking of
the eighty ducats which his publisher had promised him!