HIDE AND SUPPRESS. The members of the fraternity hardly think it
desirable to show that they are "musicians" at all; and they have
sufficient reason for this.

Our true German musician was originally a man difficult to
associate with. In days gone by the social position of musicians
in Germany, as in France and England, was far from good. Princes,
and aristocratical society generally, hardly recognised the
social status of musicians (Italians alone excepted). Italians
were everywhere preferred to native Germans (witness the
treatment Mozart met with at the Imperial Court at Vienna).
Musicians remained peculiar half-wild, half-childish beings, and
were treated as such by their employers. The education, even of
the most gifted, bore traces of the fact that they had not really
come under the influence of refined and intelligent society--
(think of Beethoven when he came in contact with Goethe at
Teplitz). It was taken for granted that the mental organisation
of professional musicians was such as to render them
insusceptible to the influence of culture. When Marschner,
[Footnote: Heinrich Marschner, 1796-1861, operatic composer;
Weber's colleague at Dresden, subsequently conductor at Leipzig
and Hanover.] in 1848, found me striving to awaken the spirit of
the members of the Dresden orchestra, he seriously dissuaded me,
saying he thought professional musicians incapable of
understanding what I meant. Certain it is, as I have already
said, that the higher and highest professional posts were
formerly occupied by men who had gradually risen from the ranks,
and in a good journeyman-like sense this had brought about many
an excellent result. A certain family feeling, not devoid of
warmth and depth, was developed in such patriarchal orchestras--