Wagner, of course, is not to be reckoned with in this connection. His work was of an altogether different order, and no useful purpose is served in discussing him along with the composers of absolute music. This favourable opinion of Brahms is not, however, shared by some critics, and as it is well to hear both sides, some of the opposing views may usefully be quoted. The well-known German composer-conductor Felix Weingartner, in a recently published article on the post-Beethoven symphonists, says:—“Brahms was, above all, a master of form. His works are of an unimpeachable technical perfection, but I have only discerned a warm, palpitating feeling of life in a very few of them, which then has great value, owing to the junction of beautiful thoughts and a perfect construction.... Taken altogether Brahms’s is, I might say, scientific music, composed of sonorous forms and phrases; it is not the language of humanity, mysterious, but still infinitely expressive and comprehensible.... The music of our great masters is artistic, and, as such, natural; that of Brahms is artificial.... The works of Brahms which attract me most, such as, for instance, the Symphony in D major, are not esteemed as the summit of his creative power by his enthusiastic partisans. They give the preference to several others, such as the Triumphlied, the E minor Symphony, and the Clarinet-Quintett, which, to me, are loud-sounding hollownesses.” [Sidenote: =H.T. Finck=] Henry T. Finck,[26] the American critic, disputes the position usually ascribed to Brahms. After implying that Schumann was already affected by a growing mental malady when he so strongly advocated Brahms’s works, Mr. Finck goes on to say that, “it was not until it occurred to his admirers to pit him against Wagner that Brahms began to loom up as a big man.... In England another violent enemy of Wagner[27] and intimate friend of Brahms’s, Joachim, championed Brahms’s cause and helped him to a temporary vogue.... It was a very clever bit of strategy thus to pit Brahms against Wagner, for it gave him a prominence which otherwise he would never have had.... In chamber music Brahms holds his own against any modern rival; but his symphonies, while cleverly constructed, have not one tithe of the ideas to be found in Rubinstein’s Dramatic and Ocean Symphonies; and the same lack of ideas we note in his songs, as compared with Franz’s. Yet Brahms’s symphonies and songs are to-day on all concert programmes, while Franz and Rubinstein are neglected. But it will not remain so.... Ideas alone confer immortality on works of art; and genius might be defined as the faculty for originating ideas. Brahms was a great dress-maker—a musical Worth. No one ever knew better than he how to cut and shape musical garments, and to trim them with elegant variations. But his faculty for originating ideas was weak, and therefore he is not immortal.” [Footnote 26: _Songs and Song-writers_, p. 155.]