its abrupt appearance shall prove attractive rather than repellant?  Very appropriately, the new theme first appears like a delicate, hardly distinguishable dream, in unbroken pp, and is then lost in a melting ritardando; thereafter, by means of a crescendo, it enters its true sphere, and proceeds to unfold its real nature.  It is obviously the delicate duty of the executants to indicate the character of the new movement with an appropriate modification of tempo—­i.e., to take the notes which immediately succeed the Adagio for a link, and so unobtrusively to connect them with the following that a change in the movement is hardly perceptible, and moreover so to manage the ritardando, that the crescendo, which comes after it, will introduce the master’s quick tempo, in such wise that the molto vivace now appears as the rhythmical consequence of the increase of tone during the crescendo.  But the modifications here indicated are usually overlooked; and the sense of artistic propriety is outraged by a sudden and vulgar vivace, as though the whole piece were meant for a jest, and the gaiety had at last begun!  People seem to think this “classical.” [Footnote:  For further comments upon this Quartet see Appendix B.]

I may have been top circumstantial, but the matter is of incalculable importance.  Let us now proceed to look still more closely into the wants and requirements of a proper performance of classical music.  In the foregoing investigations I hoped to have elucidated the problem of the modification of tempo, and to have shewn how a discerning mind will recognise and solve the difficulties inherent in modern classical music.  Beethoven has furnished the immortal type of what I may call emotional, sentimental music—­it unites all the separate and peculiar constituents of the earlier essentially naive types; sustained and interrupted tone, cantilena and figurations, are no longer kept formally asunder—­the manifold changes of a series of variations are not merely strung together, but are now brought into immediate contact, and made to merge one into the other.  Assuredly, the novel and infinitely various combinations of a symphonic movement must be set in motion in an adequate and appropriate manner if the whole is not to appear as a monstrosity.  I remember in my young days to have heard older musicians make very dubious remarks about the Eroica. [Footnote:  Beethoven’s Symphony, No.  III.] Dionys Weber, at Prague, simply treated it as a nonentity.  The man was right in his way; he chose to recognise nothing but the Mozartian Allegro; and in the strict tempo peculiar to that Allegro, he taught his pupils at the Conservatorium to play the Eroica!  The result was such that one could not help agreeing with him.  Yet everywhere else the work was thus played, and it is still so played to this day!  True, the symphony is now received with universal acclamations; but, if we are not to laugh at the whole thing, the real reasons for its success must be sought in the fact that Beethoven’s music is studied apart from the concert-rooms—­particularly at the piano—­ and its irresistible power is thus fully felt, though in rather a round-about way.  If fate had not furnished such a path of safety, and if our noblest music depended solely upon the conductors, it would have perished long ago.