That which makes our great music great is the very thing which
confuses these people; unfortunately, this cannot be expressed in
words and concepts, nor in arithmetical figures. Yet, what is it
other than music? and music only! What, then, can be the reason
of this barrenness, dryness, coldness, this complete inability to
feel the influence of true music, and, in its presence, to forget
any little vexation, any small jealous distress, or any mistaken
personal notion? Could Mozart's astonishing gift for arithmetic
serve us for a vague explanation? On the one hand, it seems that
with him--whose nervous system was so excessively sensitive to
any disturbing sound, whose heart beat with such overflowing
sympathy--the ideal elements of music met and united to form a
wondrous whole. On the other hand, Beethoven's naive way of
adding up his accounts is sufficiently well known; arithmetical
problems of any sort or kind assuredly never entered into his
social or musical plans. Compared with Mozart he appears as a
monstrum per excessum in the direction of sensibility, which, not
being checked and balanced by an intellectual counterweight from
the arithmetical side, can hardly be conceived as able to exist
or to escape premature destruction, if it had not fortunately
been protected by a singularly tough and robust constitution. Nor
can anything in Beethoven's music be gauged or measured by
figures; whilst with Mozart a good deal that appears regular--
almost too regular (as has already been touched upon) is
conceivable, and can be explained as the result of a naive
mixture of those two extremes of musical perception. Accordingly
the professional musicians under examination appear as
monstrosities in the direction of musical arithmetic; and it is
not difficult to understand how such musicians, endowed with the
very reverse of a Beethovenian temperament, should succeed and