The first performances of classical compositions with us have, as a rule, been very imperfect. (One has but to recall the accounts of the circumstances under which Beethoven’s most difficult symphonies were first performed!).  A good deal also has, from the first, been brought before the German public in an absolutely incorrect manner (compare my essay on “Gluck’s Overture to Iphigenia in Aulis” in one of the earlier volumes of the “Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik.”) [Footnote:  Wagner.  “Gessammelte Schriften.”  Vol.  V.. p.143.] This being so, how can the current style of execution appear other than it is?  In Germany the “conservators” of such works are both ignorant and incompetent.  And, on the other hand, suppose one were to take an unprejudiced and impartial view of the manner in which a master like Mendelssohn led such works!  How can it be expected that lesser musicians, not to speak of musical mediocrities generally, should really comprehend things which have remained doubtful to their master?  For average people, who are not specially gifted, there is but one good guide to excellence—­a good example; and a guiding example was not to be found in the path chosen by the host of mediocrities.  Unfortunately, they entirely occupy this path or pass, at present,—­without a guide or leader—­and any other person who might, perchance, be capable of setting up a proper example, has no room left.  For these reasons I deem it worth while to strip this spirit of reticence and shallow pretence of the halo of sanctity with which it poses as the “chaste spirit of German art.”  A poor and pretentious pietism at present stifles every effort, and shuts out every breath of fresh air from the musical atmosphere.  At this rate we may live to see our glorious music turned into a colourless and ridiculous bug-bear!

I therefore think it advisable to take a straightforward survey of this spirit, to look closely into its eyes, and to openly assert that it has nothing in common with the true spirit of German music.  It is not easy to estimate the positive weight and value of modern, Beethovenian, music—­but we may perhaps hope to get at some negative proof of its worth, by an examination of the pseudo-Beethovenian-classicism now in the ascendant.

It is curious to note how the opposition to the things I advocate finds vent in the press, where uneducated scribblers clamour and create a disturbance, whilst in the profession proper, the utterances are far from noisy, though sufficiently bitter. ("You see he cannot express himself,” a lady once said to me with a sly glance at one of these reticent musicians).  As I have said at the outset this new musical Areopagus consists of two distinct species:  Germans of the old type, who have managed to hold out in the South of Germany, but are now gradually disappearing; and the elegant Cosmopolites, who have arisen from the school of Mendelssohn in the North, and are now in the ascendant.  Formerly the two species did