For a moment only, for is it not the soul, a kind of discontented
crying out against pleasure and pain, which comes back distressingly
into this after all pathetic music? All modern music is pathetic;
discontent (so much idealism as that!) has come into all modern music,
that it may be sharpened and disturbed enough to fix our attention. And
Tschaikowsky speaks straight to the nerves, with that touch of
unmanliness which is another characteristic of modern art. There is a
vehement and mighty sorrow in the Passion Music of Bach, by the side of
which the grief of Tschaikowsky is like the whimpering of a child. He is
unconscious of reticence, unconscious of self-control. He is unhappy,
and he weeps floods of tears, beats his breast, curses the daylight; he
sees only the misery of the moment, and he sees the misery of the moment
as a thing endless and overwhelming. The child who has broken his toy
can realise nothing in the future but a passionate regret for the toy.
In Tschaikowsky there is none of the quieting of thought. The only
healing for our nerves lies in abstract thought, and he can never get
far enough from his nerves to look calmly at his own discontent.
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