from the work; it is enough to note that his interpretation was enthusiastically received by the public.  German artists were not responsible for that performance; but they were responsible for that fine cycle of Lieder, An die entfernte Geliebte, which was bellowed by a Berlin tenor at the top of his voice, and for the Choral Symphony, which was, for me, an unspeakable performance.  I could never have believed that a German orchestra conducted by the chief Kapellmeister of Austria could have committed such misdeeds.  The time was incredible:  the scherzo had no life in it; the adagio was taken in hot haste without leaving a moment for dreams; and there were pauses in the finale which destroyed the development of the theme and broke the thread of its thought.  The different parts of the orchestra fell over one another, and the whole was uncertain and lacking in balance.  I once severely criticised the neo-classic stiffness of Weingartner; but I should have appreciated his healthy equilibrium and his effort to be exact after hearing this neurasthenic rendering of Beethoven.  No; we can no longer hear Beethoven and Mozart in Germany to-day, we can only hear Mahler and Strauss.  Well, let it be so.  We will resign ourselves.  The past is past.  Let us leave Beethoven and Mozart, and speak of Mahler and Strauss.

* * * * *

Gustav Mahler is forty-six years old.[193] He is a kind of legendary type of German musician, rather like Schubert, and half-way between a school-master and a clergyman.  He has a long, clean-shaven face, a pointed skull covered with untidy hair, a bald forehead, a prominent nose, eyes that blink behind his glasses, a large mouth and thin lips, hollow cheeks, a rather tired and sarcastic expression, and a general air of asceticism.  He is excessively nervous, and silhouette caricatures of him, representing him as a cat in convulsions in the conductor’s desk, are very popular in Germany.

[Footnote 193:  This essay was written in 1905.]

He was born at Kalischt in Bohemia, and became a pupil of Anton Bruckner at Vienna, and afterwards Hofoperndirecktor ("Director of the Opera”) there.  I hope one day to study this artist’s work in greater detail, for he is second only to Strauss as a composer in Germany, and the principal musician of South Germany.

His most important work is a suite of symphonies; and it was the fifth symphony of this suite that he conducted at the Strasburg festival.  The first symphony, called Titan, was composed in 1894.  The construction of the whole is on a massive and gigantic scale; and the melodies on which these works are built up are like rough-hewn blocks of not very good quality, but imposing by reason of their size, and by the obstinate repetition of their rhythmic design, which is maintained as if it were an obsession.  This heaping-up of music both crude and learned in style, with harmonies that are sometimes clumsy and