“Waelschen Dunst und waelschen Tand....”  How that reproachful speech seems to be misplaced when one is listening to the honest thought expressed in Cesar Franck’s music.  In Les Beatitudes, nothing, or next to nothing, was done for art’s sake.  It is the soul speaking to the soul.  As Beethoven wrote, at the end of his mass in D, “Vom Herzen ... zu Herzen!” ("It comes from the heart to go to the heart").  I know no one but Franck in the last century, unless it is Beethoven, who has possessed in so high a degree the virtue of being himself and speaking only the truth without thought of his public.  Never before has religious faith been expressed with such sincerity.  Franck is the only musician besides Bach who has really seen the Christ, and who can make other people see him too.  I would even venture to say that his Christ is simpler than Bach’s; for Bach’s thoughts are often led away by the interest of developing his subject, by certain habits of composition, and by repetitions and clever devices, which weaken his strength.  In Franck’s music we get Christ’s speech itself, unadorned and in all its living force.  And in the wonderful harmony between the music and the sacred words we hear the voice of the world’s conscience.  I once heard someone say to Mme. Cosima Wagner that certain passages in Parsifal, particularly the chorus “Durch Mitleid wissend,” had a quality that was truly religious and the force of a revelation.  But I find a greater force and a more truly Christian spirit in Les Beatitudes.

And here is an astonishing thing.  At this German musical festival it was a Frenchman who represented not only serious music moulded in a classical form, but a religious spirit and the spirit of the Gospels.  The characters of two nations have been reversed.  The Germans have so changed that they are only able to appreciate this seriousness and religious faith with difficulty.  I watched the audience on this occasion; they listened politely, a little astonished and bored, as if to say, “What business has this Frenchman with depth and piety of soul?”

“There is no doubt,” said Henri Lichtenberger, who sat by me at the concert, “our music is beginning to bore the Germans.”

It was only the other day that German music enjoyed the privilege of boring us in France.

And so, to make up for the austere grandeur of Les Beatitudes they had it immediately followed by Gustave Charpentier’s Impressions d’Italie.  You should have seen the relief of the audience.  At last they were to have some French music—­as Germans understand it.  Charpentier is, of all living French musicians, the most liked in Germany; he is indeed the only one who is popular with artists and the general public alike.  Shall I say that the sincere pleasure they take in his orchestration and the gay life of his subjects is enhanced a little by a slight disdain for French frivolity—­waelschen Tand?