Wagner
can use the whole strength of the orchestra, and not make a noise: he
never ends on a bang. But Tschaikowsky loves noise for its own sake; he
likes to pound the drum, and to hear the violins running up and down
scales like acrobats. Wagner takes his rhythms from the sea, as in
"Tristan," from fire, as in parts of the "Ring," from light, as in
"Parsifal." But Tschaikowsky deforms the rhythms of nature with the
caprices of half-civilised impulses. He puts the frog-like dancing of
the Russian peasant into his tunes; he cries and roars like a child in a
rage. He gives himself to you just as he is; he is immensely conscious
of himself and of his need to take you into his confidence. In your
delight at finding any one so alive, you are inclined to welcome him
without reserve, and to forget that a man of genius is not necessarily
a great artist, and that, if he is not a great artist, he is not a
satisfactory man of genius.
I contrast him with Wagner because it seems to me that Wagner, alone
among quite modern musicians, and though indeed he appeals to our nerves
more forcibly than any of them, has that breadth and universality by
which emotion ceases to be merely personal and becomes elemental.
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