Dash these fellows, they are utterly given over to heathenism, prejudice,
and beer."*
--
* `Letters', p. 88.
--
The best expression of his ideal of what a great composer should be,
is in a letter written to his wife just after he had read
the life of Robert Schumann: --
New York, Sunday, October 18, 1874.
I have been in my room all day; and have just concluded
a half-dozen delicious hours, during which I have been devouring,
with a hungry ferocity of rapture which I know not how to express,
"The Life of Robert Schumann", by his pupil, von Wasielewski.
This pupil, I am sure, did not fully comprehend his great master.
I think the key to Schumann's whole character, with all
its labyrinthine and often disappointing peculiarities, is this: That he had
no mode of self-expression, or, I should rather say, of self-expansion,
besides the musical mode. This may seem a strange remark to make of him
who was the founder and prolific editor of a great musical journal,
and who perhaps exceeded any musician of his time in general culture.
But I do not mean that he was confined to music for self-expression,
though indeed, the sort of critical writing which Schumann did so much of
is not at all like poetry in its tranquillizing effects upon
the soul of the writer. What I do mean is that his sympathies
were not BIG enough, he did not go through the awful struggle of genius,
and lash and storm and beat about until his soul was grown large enough
to embrace the whole of life and the All of things, that is,
large enough to appreciate (if even without understanding)
the magnificent designs of God, and tall enough to stand in the trough
of the awful cross-waves of circumstance and look over their heights
along the whole sea of God's manifold acts, and deep enough to admit the peace
that passeth understanding.
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