of the thematic tissue. We may consider it established that in
classical music written in the later style MODIFICATION of Tempo
is a sine qua non. No doubt very great difficulties will have to
be overcome. Summing up my experiences I do not hesitate to
assert that, as far as public performances go, Beethoven is still
a pure chimera with us. [FOOTNOTE: i.e.. in 1869.]

I shall now attempt to describe what I conceive to be the right
way of performing Beethoven, and music akin to his. In this
respect also the subject seems inexhaustible, and I shall again
confine myself to a few salient points.

One of the principal musical forms consists of a series of
VARIATIONS upon a theme. Haydn, and eventually Beethoven, have
improved this form, and rendered it artistically significant, by
the originality of their devices, and particularly, by connecting
the single variations one with the other, and establishing
relations of mutual dependence between them. This is accomplished
with the happiest results in cases where one variation is
developed from another--that is to say, when a degree of
movement, suggested in the one is carried further in the other,
or when a certain satisfactory sense of surprise is occasioned by
one variation supplying a complementary form of movement, which
was wanting in the one before it. The real weakness of the
Variation-form, however, becomes apparent when strongly
contrasting parts are placed in juxtaposition, without any link
to connect them. Beethoven often contrives to convert this same
weakness into a source of strength; and he manages to do so in a
manner which excludes all sense of accident or of awkwardness:
namely--at the point which I have described above as marking the