“The Concerto[76] of Brahms does not please me better than any other of his works. He is certainly a great musician, even a Master, but, in his case, his mastery overwhelms his inspiration. So many preparations and circumlocutions for something which ought to come and charm us at once--and nothing does come, but boredom. His music is not warmed by any genuine emotion. It lacks poetry, but makes great pretensions to profundity. These depths contain nothing: they are void. Take the opening of the Concerto, for instance. It is an introduction, a preparation for something fine; an admirable pedestal for a statue; but the statue is lacking, we only get a second pedestal piled upon the first. I do not know whether I have properly expressed the thoughts, or rather feelings, which Brahms’s music awakens in me. I mean to say that he never expresses anything, or, when he does, he fails to express it fully. His music is made up of fragments of some indefinable _something_, skilfully welded together. The design lacks definite contour, colour, life. “But I must simply confess that, independent of any definite accusation, Brahms, as a musical personality, is antipathetic to me. I cannot abide him. Whatever he does--I remain unmoved and cold. It is a purely instinctive feeling.” _To Modeste Tchaikovsky._ “ROME, _February_ 26_th_ (_March_ 9_th_), 1880. “To-day I went on foot to the Vatican and sat a long while in the Sistine Chapel. Here a miracle was worked. I felt--almost for the first time in my life--an artistic ecstasy for painting. What it means to become gradually accustomed to the painter’s art! I remember the time when all this seemed to me absurd and meaningless....” _To Modeste Tchaikovsky._ “BERLIN, _March_ 4_th_ (16_th_), 1880. “In Paris I went to the ‘Comédie Francaise,’ and fell in love with Racine or Corneille (which of them wrote _Polyeucte_?). The beauty and strength of these verses and, still more, the lofty artistic truth! At the first glance this tragedy seems so unreal and impossible. The last act, however, in which Felix, conscience-stricken and illumined by Christ, suddenly becomes a Christian, touched me profoundly....