It is a long way in music from the simple _Moments musicals_ of Schubert to the B minor and E-flat minor _Intermezzi_ of Brahms. One sings of the dawn of the new era of enthusiasm, one is of the twilight at the end. Midway, in the full flush of noonday, stands Schumann. Yet all are manifestations of the same growth. In the department of pianoforte music Brahms is of the romantic. It is not only that his best work was in short pieces; it is the nature of these pieces themselves. They are the sound in music of moods, they are fantastical and lyrical. Furthermore, more than the music of Schubert or Schumann, Brahms is national; not so much German as northern. Strains of Hungarian melodies and echoes of Schubert are not sufficient to dispel the gloom which is characteristic of his race. He speaks a profound language that will claim universal attention, but it is unmistakably colored and thoroughly permeated with the ideals and the imaginings of a northern, seacoast people. It has not the perennial warmth of Schubert and Schumann. There are no quick-changing moods, no interchanges of smiles and tears, no flashes of merriment and wit. It is cold, it is still and serious. And who will say that it is not the more romantic for being so? Deep underneath there is mysterious fervor and passion. To one of two ends the Romantic movement was bound to come from its confident stage of self-conscious emotionalism: on the one hand, to the glorification of the senses, on the other, to the distrust of them. In the music of Liszt the one goal is reached; unmistakably in this music of Brahms the other. The sober coloring of his pianoforte music, its intellectual complexity, its moderation, all speak of that development which in the world of philosophy and society was year by year intensifying the struggle between individualism and its arch-enemy, the natural sciences. In the music of Brahms the power of Reason has asserted itself. His music conforms first and always to law. And it is one of the paradoxes in the history of music that this composer, who, more than any other in modern times, acquired an objective mastery of his art, remained the slave of his intense personality. FOOTNOTES: [32] The following remark is prefixed to the eighteenth dance: _Ganz zum Überfluss meinte Eusebius noch Folgendes; dabei sprach aber viel Seligkeit aus seinen Augen_. [33] According to C. F. Weitzmann, the original of Johannes Kreisler was Ludwig Böhner (1787-1860), a wandering, half-mad pianist. [34] Part of the quotation is given in our ‘Narrative History,’ II, pp. 308f. CHAPTER VII CHOPIN