Brendel having sent him some of Palestrina's music, he writes that "it really sounds sometimes like music of the spheres--and what art at the same time! I am convinced he is the greatest musical genius Italy has produced." Nineteen years previous to this he had written from Brescia: "Were not the Italian language itself a kind of eternal music (the Count aptly called it a long-drawn-out A-minor chord), I should not hear anything rational. Of the ardor with which they play, you can form no more conception than of their slovenliness and lack of elegance and precision." Handel appears to be mentioned only once in all of Schumann's correspondence ("I consider 'Israel in Egypt' the ideal of a choral work"), but Bach is always on his tongue. The following is one of the profoundest criticisms ever written: "Mozart and Haydn knew of Bach only a few pages and passages, and the effect which Bach, if they had known him in all his greatness, would have had on them, is incalculable. The harmonic depth, the poetic and humorous qualities of modern music have their source chiefly in Bach: Mendelssohn, Bennett, Chopin, Hiller, all the so-called Romanticists (I mean those of the German school) _approximate in their music much closer to Bach than to Mozart_." To Wagner there are several references, betraying a most remarkable struggle between critical honesty and professional jealousy. Thus, in 1845, Schumann writes to Mendelssohn of "Tannhaeuser:" "Wagner has just finished a new opera--no doubt a clever fellow, full of eccentric notions, and bold beyond measure. The aristocracy is still in raptures over him on account of his 'Rienzi,' but in reality he cannot conceive or write four consecutive bars of good or even correct music. What all these composers lack is the art of writing pure harmonies and four-part choruses. The music is not a straw better than that of 'Rienzi,' rather weaker, more artificial! But if I should write this I should be accused of envy, hence I say it only to you, as I am aware that you have known all this a long time." But in another letter to Mendelssohn, written three weeks later, he recants: "I must take back much of what I wrote regarding 'Tannhaeuser,' after reading the score; on the stage the effect is quite different. I was deeply moved by many parts." And to Heinrich Dorn he writes, a few weeks after this: "I wish you could see Wagner's 'Tannhaeuser.' It contains profound and original ideas, and is a hundred times better than his previous operas, though some of the music is trivial. In a word, he may become of great importance to the stage, and, so far as I know him, he has the requisite courage. The technical part, the instrumentation, I find excellent, incomparably more masterly than formerly."