[Footnote:  Heinrich Marschner, 1796-1861, operatic composer; Weber’s colleague at Dresden, subsequently conductor at Leipzig and Hanover.] in 1848, found me striving to awaken the spirit of the members of the Dresden orchestra, he seriously dissuaded me, saying he thought professional musicians incapable of understanding what I meant.  Certain it is, as I have already said, that the higher and highest professional posts were formerly occupied by men who had gradually risen from the ranks, and in a good journeyman-like sense this had brought about many an excellent result.  A certain family feeling, not devoid of warmth and depth, was developed in such patriarchal orchestras—­ and this family feeling was ready to respond to the suggestions of a sympathetic leader.  But just as, for instance, the Jews formerly kept aloof from our handicraftsmen, so the new species of conductors did not grow up among the musical guilds—­they would have shrunk from the hard work there.  They simply took the lead of the guilds—­much as the bankers take the lead in our industrial society.  To be able to do this creditably conductors had to show themselves possessed of something that was lacking to the musicians from the ranks—­something at least very difficult to acquire in a sufficient degree, if it was not altogether lacking:  namely, a certain varnish of culture (Gebildetheit).  As a banker is equipped with capital, so our elegant conductors are the possessors of pseudo-culture.  I say pseudo-culture, not culture, for whoever really possesses the latter is a superior person and above ridicule.  But there can be no harm in discussing our varnished and elegant friends.

I have not met with a case in which the results of true culture, an open mind and a free spirit, have become apparent amongst them.  Even Mendelssohn, whose manifold gifts had been cultivated most assiduously, never got over a certain anxious timidity; and in spite of all his well-merited successes, he remained outside the pale of German art-life.  It seems probable that a feeling of isolation and constraint was a source of much pain to him, and shortened his life.  The reason for this is to be found in the fact that the motives of a desire for culture, such as his, lack spontaneity—­(dass dem Motive eines solchen Bildungsdranges keine Unbefangenheit innewohnt)—­and arise from a desire to cover and conceal some part of a man’s individuality, rather than to develop it freely.

But true culture is not the result of such a process:  a man may grow extremely intelligent in certain ways; yet the point at which these ways meet may be other than that of “pure intelligence” (reinschende Intelligenz).  To watch such an inner process in the case of a particularly gifted and delicately organized individual is sometimes touching; in the case of lesser and more trivial natures however, the contemplation of the process and its results is simply nauseous.

Flat and empty pseudo-culture confronts us with a grin, and if we are not inclined to grin in return, as superficial observers of our civilization are wont to do, we may indeed grow seriously indignant.  And German musicians now-a-days have good reason to be indignant if this miserable sham culture presumes to judge of the spirit and significance of our glorious music.