is the fate of our music that really concerns us. We have little
reason to grieve if, after a century of wondrous productivity,
nothing particular happens to come to light for some little time.
But there is every reason to beware of suspicious persons who set
themselves up as the trustees and conservators of the "true
German spirit" of our inheritance.

Regarded as individuals, there is not much to blame in these
musicians; most of them compose very well. Herr Johannes Brahms
once had the kindness to play a composition of his own to me--a
piece with very serious variations--which I thought excellent,
and from which I gathered that he was impervious to a joke. His
performance of other pianoforte music at a concert gave me less
pleasure. I even thought it impertinent that the friends of this
gentleman professed themselves unable to attribute anything
beyond "extraordinary technical power" to "Liszt and his school,"
whilst the execution of Herr Brahms appeared so painfully dry,
inflexible and wooden. I should have liked to see Herr Brahms'
technique annointed with a little of the oil of Liszt's school;
an ointment which does not seem to issue spontaneously from the
keyboard, but is evidently got from a more aetherial region than
that of mere "technique." To all appearances, however, this was a
very respectable phenomenon; only it remains doubtful how such a
phenomenon could be set up in a natural way as the Messiah, or,
at least, the Messiah's most beloved disciple; unless, indeed, an
affected enthusiasm for mediaeval wood-carvings should have
induced us to accept those stiff wooden figures for the ideals of
ecclesiastical sanctity. In any case we must protest against any
presentation of our great warm-hearted Beethoven in the guise of
such sanctity. If THEY cannot bring out the difference between