All
those wild, broken rhythms, rushing this way and that, are letting out
his secret all the time: "I am unhappy, and I know not why I am unhappy;
I want, but I know not what I want." In the most passionate and the most
questioning music of Wagner there is always air; Tschaikowsky is
suffocating. It is himself that he pities so much, and not himself
because he shares in the general sorrow of the world. To Tristan and
Isolde the whole universe is an exultant and martyred sharer in their
love; they know only the absolute. Even suffering does not bring
nobility to Tschaikowsky.
To pass from Wagner to Tschaikowsky, from "Parsifal" to the Pathetic
Symphony, is like passing from a church in which priests are offering
mass to a hut in which peasants are quarrelling, dancing, and making
love. Tschaikowsky has both force and sincerity, but it is the force and
sincerity of a ferocious child. He takes the orchestra in both hands,
tears it to pieces, catches up a fragment of it here, a fragment of it
there, masters it like an enemy; he makes it do what he wants. But he
uses his fist where Wagner touches with the tips of his fingers; he
shows ill-breeding after the manners of the supreme gentleman.
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