But there are more important conclusions to be drawn from a hearing of this kind.  The first is that Strauss’s talent is becoming more and more exceptional in the music of his country.  With all his faults, which are considerable, Strauss stands alone in his warmth of imagination, in his unquenchable spontaneity and perpetual youth.  And his knowledge and his art are growing every day in the midst of other German art which is growing old.  German music in general is showing some grave symptoms.  I will not dwell on its neurasthenia, for it is passing through a crisis which will teach it wisdom; but I fear, nevertheless, that this excessive nervous excitement will be followed by torpor.  What is really disquieting is that, in spite of all the talent that still abounds, Germany is fast losing her chief musical endowments.  Her melodic charm has nearly disappeared.  One could search the music of Strauss, Mahler, or Hugo Wolf, without finding a melody of any real value, or of any true originality, outside its application to a text, or a literary idea, and its harmonic development.  And besides that, German music is daily losing its intimate spirit; there are still traces of this spirit in Wolf, thanks to his exceptionally unhappy life; but there is very little of it in Mahler, in spite of all his efforts to concentrate his mind on himself; and there is hardly any at all in Strauss, although he is the most interesting of the three composers.  German musicians have no longer any depth.

I have said that I attribute this fact to the detestable influence of the theatre, to which nearly all these artists are attached as Kapellmeister, or directors of opera.  To this they owe the melodramatic character of their music, even though it is on the surface only—­music written for show, and aiming chiefly at effect.

More baneful even than the influence of the theatre is the influence of success.  These musicians have nowadays too many facilities for having their music played.  A work is played almost before it is finished, and the musician has no time to live with his work in solitude and silence.  Besides this, the works of the chief German musicians are supported by tremendous booming of some kind or another:  by their Musikfeste, by their critics, their press, and their “Musical Guides” (Musikfuehrer), which are apologetic explanations of their works, scattered abroad in millions to set the fashion for the sheep-like public.  And with all this a musician grows soon contented with himself, and comes to believe any favourable opinion about his work.  What a difference from Beethoven, who, all his life, was hammering out the same subjects, and putting his melodies on the anvil twenty times before they reached their final form.  That is where Mahler is so lacking.  His subjects are a rather vulgarised edition of some of Beethoven’s ideas in their unfinished state.  But Mahler gets no further than the rough sketch.