“These are my frank opinions upon these gentlemen. What a sad phenomenon! So many talents from which--with the exception of Rimsky-Korsakov--we can scarcely dare to hope for anything serious. But this is always our case in Russia: vast forces which are impeded by the fatal shadow of a Plevna from taking the open field and fighting as they should. But all the same, these forces exist. Thus Moussorgsky, with all his ugliness, speaks a new idiom. Beautiful it may not be, but it is new. We may reasonably hope that Russia will one day produce a whole school of strong men who will open up new paths in art. Our roughness is, at any rate, better than the poor, would-be-serious pose of a Brahms. The Germans are hopelessly played out. With us there is always the hope that the moral Plevna will fall, and our strength will make itself felt. So far, however, very little has been accomplished. The French have made great progress. True, Berlioz has only just begun to be appreciated, ten years after his death; but they have many new talents and opponents of routine. In France the struggle against routine is a very hard matter, for the French are terribly conservative in art. They were the last nation to recognise Beethoven. Even as late as the forties they considered him a _madman_ or an _eccentric_. The first of French critics, Fétis, bewailed the fact that Beethoven had committed so many sins against the laws of harmony, and obligingly _corrected_ these mistakes twenty-five years later. “Among modern French composers Bizet and Délibes are my favourites. I do not know the overture _Patrie_, about which you wrote to me, but I am very familiar with Bizet’s opera _Carmen_. The music is not profound, but it is so fascinating in its simplicity, so full of vitality, so sincere, that I know every note of it from beginning to end. I have already told you what I think of Délibes. In their efforts towards progress the French are not so rash as our younger men; they do not, like Borodin and Moussorgsky, go beyond the bounds of possibility.” V _To N. F. von Meck._ “SAN REMO, _January_ 1_st_ (13_th_), 1878.