And when they insisted, saying:

"Which matters most in music, harmony or counterpoint?"

He replied:

"Music. Show me what you have done."

They were all agreed about their own music. These intrepid warriors who,
when they were not pummeling each other, were whacking away at some dead
Master whose fame had endured too long, were reconciled by the one passion
which was common to them all: an ardent musical patriotism. France was to
them _the_ great musical nation. They were perpetually proclaiming the
decay of Germany. That did not hurt Christophe. He had declared so himself,
and therefore was not in a position to contradict them. But he was a little
surprised to hear of the supremacy of French music: there was, in fact,
very little trace of it in the past. And yet French musicians maintained
that their art had been admirable from the earliest period. By way of
glorifying French music, they set to work to throw ridicule on the famous
men of the last century, with the exception of one Master, who was very
good and very pure--and a Belgian. Having done that amount of slaughter,
they were free to admire the archaic Masters, who had been forgotten, while
a certain number of them were absolutely unknown. Unlike the lay schools
of France which date the world from the French Revolution, the musicians
regarded it as a chain of mighty mountains, to be scaled before it could
be possible to look back on the Golden Age of music, the Eldorado of art.
After a long eclipse the Golden Age was to emerge again: the hard wall
was to crumble away: a magician of sound was to call forth in full flower
a marvelous spring: the old tree of music was to put forth young green
leaves: in the bed of harmony thousands of flowers were to open their