As everything is thus apparently in good order, and seems likely to remain so, I am again tempted to ask how can this be?  We entertain lurking doubts whether these gentlemen really are musicians; evidently they do not evince the slightest musical feeling; yet, in fact, they hear very accurately (with mathematical, not ideal, accuracy; contretemps like that of the faulty orchestra parts do not happen to everyone); they are quick at a score, read and play at sight (many of them, at least, do so); in short, they prove true professionals; but, alongside of this, their general education (Bildung)—­in spite of all efforts--is such as can pass muster in the case of a musician only; so that, if music were struck from the list of their attainments, there would be little left—­least of all, a man of spirit and sense.  No, no! they certainly are musicians and very competent musicians, who know and can do everything that pertains to music.  Well, then?  As soon as they begin to perform music they muddle matters, and feel unsafe all round, unless it be in “Ewig, selig,” or at best in “Lord Sabaoth!”

That which makes our great music great is the very thing which confuses these people; unfortunately, this cannot be expressed in words and concepts, nor in arithmetical figures.  Yet, what is it other than music? and music only!  What, then, can be the reason of this barrenness, dryness, coldness, this complete inability to feel the influence of true music, and, in its presence, to forget any little vexation, any small jealous distress, or any mistaken personal notion?  Could Mozart’s astonishing gift for arithmetic serve us for a vague explanation?  On the one hand, it seems that with him—­whose nervous system was so excessively sensitive to any disturbing sound, whose heart beat with such overflowing sympathy—­the ideal elements of music met and united to form a wondrous whole.  On the other hand, Beethoven’s naive way of adding up his accounts is sufficiently well known; arithmetical problems of any sort or kind assuredly never entered into his social or musical plans.  Compared with Mozart he appears as a monstrum per excessum in the direction of sensibility, which, not being checked and balanced by an intellectual counterweight from the arithmetical side, can hardly be conceived as able to exist or to escape premature destruction, if it had not fortunately been protected by a singularly tough and robust constitution.  Nor can anything in Beethoven’s music be gauged or measured by figures; whilst with Mozart a good deal that appears regular—­ almost too regular (as has already been touched upon) is conceivable, and can be explained as the result of a naive mixture of those two extremes of musical perception.  Accordingly the professional musicians under examination appear as monstrosities in the direction of musical arithmetic; and it is not difficult to understand how such musicians, endowed with the very reverse of a Beethovenian temperament, should succeed and flourish with a nervous system of the commonest kind.