characteristics, to be converted into a principle for the
treatment of our art! Germans are stiff and awkward when they
want to appear mannerly: BUT THEY ARE NOBLE AND SUPERIOR WHEN
THEY GROW WARM. And are we to suppress our fire to please those
reticent persons? In truth, it looks as though they expected us
to do so.

In former days, whenever I met a young musician who had come in
contact with Mendelssohn, I learnt that the master had admonished
him not to think of effect when composing, and to avoid
everything that might prove meretriciously impressive. Now, this
was very pleasant and soothing advice; and those pupils who
adopted it, and remained true to the master, have indeed produced
neither "impression nor meretricious effect;" only, the advice
seemed to me rather too negative, and I failed to see the value
of that which was positively acquired under it. I believe the
entire teaching of the Leipzig Conservatorium was based upon some
such negative advice, and I understand that young people there
have been positively pestered with warnings of a like kind;
whilst their best endeavours met with no encouragement from the
masters, unless their taste in music fully coincided with the
tone of the orthodox psalms. The first result of the new
doctrine, and the most important for our investigations, came to
light in the execution of classical music. Everything here was
governed by the fear of exaggeration (etwa in das Drastische zu
fallen). I have, for instance, hitherto not found any traces that
those later pianoforte works of Beethoven, in which the master's
peculiar style is best developed, have actually been studied and
played by the converts to that doctrine.