[A] None the less, in these arts, taste and individuality can and will unceasingly find refreshment and rejuvenation.

[B] Tradition is a plaster mask taken from life, which, in the course of many years, and after passing through the hands of innumerable artisans, leaves its resemblance to the original largely a matter of imagination.

[C] “Die Ur-Musik,” is the author's happy phrase. But as this music never has been, our English terms like “primitive,” “original,” etc., would involve a non sequitur which is avoided, at least, by “infinite.” [Translator's Note.]

[D] In the recitatives of his Passions we hear “human speech”; not “correct declamation.”

[E] As characteristic traits of Beethoven's individuality I would mention the poetic fire, the strong human feeling (whence springs his revolutionary temper), and a portent of modern nervousness. These traits are certainly opposed to those of a “classic.” Moreover, Beethoven is no “master,” as the term applies to Mozart or the later Wagner, just because his art foreshadows a greater, as yet incomplete. (Compare the section next-following.)

[F] “Together with the problem, it gives us the solution,” as I once said of Mozart.

[G] “… Beethoven, dont les esquisses thématiques ou élémentaires sont innombrables, mais qui, sitôt les thèmes trouvés, semble par cela même en avoir établi tout le développement …” [Vincent d'Indy, in “César Franck.”]

[H] How strongly notation influences style in music, and fetters imagination, how “form” grew up out of it and from form arose “conventionalism” in expression, is shown very convincingly and avenges itself in tragic wise in E. T. A. Hoffmann, who occurs to me here as a typical example.

This remarkable man's mental conceptions, lost in visionary moods and revelling in transcendentalism, as his writings set forth in oft inimitable fashion, must naturally—so one would infer—have found in the dreamlike and transcendental art of tones a language and mode of expression peculiarly congenial.

The veil of mysticism, the secret harmonies of Nature, the thrill of the supernatural, the twilight vagueness of the borderland of dreams, everything, in fact, which he so effectively limned with the precision of words—all this, one would suppose, he could have interpreted to fullest effect by the aid of music. And yet, comparing Hoffmann's best musical work with the weakest of his literary productions, you will discover to your sorrow how a conventional system of measures, periods and keys—whereto the hackneyed opera-style of the time adds its share—could turn a poet into a Philistine. But that his fancy cherished another ideal of music, we learn from many, and frequently admirable, observations of Hoffmann the littérateur.

[I] The author probably had in mind the languages of southern Europe; the word is employed in English, and in the tongues of the Scandinavian group, with precisely the same meaning as in German. [Translator's Note.]

[J] The only kind of people one might properly call musical, are the singers; for they themselves can sound. Similarly, a clown who by some trick produces tones when he is touched, might be called a pseudo-musical person.

[K] “But these pieces are so musical,” a violinist once remarked to me of a four-hand worklet which I had characterized as trivial.

[L] “My dog is very musical,” I have heard said in all seriousness. Should the dog take precedence of Berlioz?

[M] Such has been my own fate.

[N] With a friend I once indulged in such trifling in order to ascertain how many commonly known compositions were written according to the scheme of the second theme in the Adagio of the Ninth Symphony. In a few moments we had collected some fifteen analogues of the most different kinds, among them specimens of the lowest type of art. And Beethoven himself:—Is the theme of the Finale in the “Fifth” any other than the one wherewith the “Second” introduces its Allegro?—or than the