Modern music and musicians : [Encyclopedic] . s classification. Such questions are difficultto answer. I should follow Rubinstein in including Schubert in the listof the very greatest composers, but I should not follow him in omittingMozart. Schubert and Mozart have much in common: in both we findthe same delicate sense of instrumental coloring, the same spontaneousand irrepressible flow of melody, the same instinctive command of themeans of expression, and the same versatility in all the branches of theirart. In their amazing fertility, too, they were alike ; and herein lay, andstill lies, on
Modern music and musicians : [Encyclopedic] . s classification. Such questions are difficultto answer. I should follow Rubinstein in including Schubert in the listof the very greatest composers, but I should not follow him in omittingMozart. Schubert and Mozart have much in common: in both we findthe same delicate sense of instrumental coloring, the same spontaneousand irrepressible flow of melody, the same instinctive command of themeans of expression, and the same versatility in all the branches of theirart. In their amazing fertility, too, they were alike ; and herein lay, andstill lies, one of the greatest impediments to their popular longer I live the more I become convinced that composers, likeauthors, usually follow the impulse and write too much. There are afew exceptions, like Berlioz and Chopin—not to forget Wagner, who con-densed all his genius into ten great music-dramas. Had Rossini writtenten operas instead of forty, Donizetti seven instead of seventy, would it 1 Die Musik uud Ihre Meister, p. ANTONIN by T. Johnson. not have been better for their immortality and the perpetual delight ofmankind ? Even Bachs magnificent cantatas would have had a betterchance of appreciation if there were not quite so many. The first thirty-four volumes of Bachs collected works contain one hundred and sixty,for all that, we should be sorry to lose a single one of them. If we areoften amazed at the prevailing ignorance and neglect of many of the greatworks of the masters, we are at the same time obliged to confess that theythemselves are largely to blame : they have given us too much. How-ever, it is easier to give advice than to follow it. There is in creativeminds an impulse to write which it is difficult to curb, and this was 121
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