'The interest of all present was centred on the new symphony, which, on the whole, justified the great expectations with which it had been awaited. Its effect on the audience was the most intense that has been produced by any new symphony within our remembrance. Schumann in his time did not attain such.... The composition is to be viewed and measured from the standpoint of Beethoven's ninth, and of Schumann's second, symphony. The aim of the three works is the same. To reach it, Brahms, well-equipped and daring spirit as he is, goes his own way. He is great in attack as his two predecessors, and has the same wide vision over the domain of spiritual-human existence.... As regards uninterrupted energy of creative power, we would give the palm to the first movement. The second, with its fervour and longing, accords with it. To the third we should gladly have listened longer. It supplied a counterpoise of sentiment to what had gone before which had not been maintained long enough when the movement closed. Of the finale we would almost venture to surmise that it gave the composer the most trouble. Here he relinquishes his independence, and flies to Beethoven in order to get new force for his climax. We do not regard the resort to Beethoven as accidental, but believe the composer to have been well aware of it. He came, however, to one over whom he could not prevail. 'A long pause followed the symphony; one, however, that was not long enough in some measure to quiet the exaltation of mind produced by the work. The songs and variations which followed, and which we should have welcomed at another time, were almost tiresome to us. Let the symphony be repeated soon, and, if possible, without other music.'[52] Louis Ehlert says of the symphony: 'Brahms has a wide-reaching and speculative brain, and is a mixture of the musician of the good old times who heard many voices sounding together within him, whose very cradle cover was embroidered with a contrapuntal pentagram, and of the man of the present day with his variously cultured intellect.... What distinguishes his music from that of all his contemporaries is the mysterious apparition within it of another world--its gentle, pathetic tapping at the heart. 'The first movement of the symphony is, perhaps, the most artistically important of the work.... An inexorable causality proceeds from bar to bar, stayed by no illusion, and softened only by the distant light of a few solitary stars. In the introduction and finale the enigmatical sphinx seems to call to us, "That which ascends from me, mounting upwards to battle and to life, sinks back again within me. Of all life I, the eternal riddle, am the beginning and the end."'