was for a long time a riddle to me: until one day through an accident, almost, I discovered that he affected a particular type of man. He has the melancholy of impotence. His creations are not the result of plenitude, he thirsts after abundance. Apart from what he plagiarises, from what he borrows from ancient or exotically modern styles--he is a master in the art of copying,--there remains as his most individual quality a _longing...._ And this is what the dissatisfied of all kinds, and all those who yearn, divine in him. He is much too little of a personality, too little of a central figure.... The "impersonal," those who are not self-centred, love him for this. He is especially the musician of a species of dissatisfied women. Fifty steps further on, and we find the female Wagnerite--just as we find Wagner himself fifty paces ahead of Brahms.--The female Wagnerite is a more definite, a more interesting, and above all, a more attractive type. Brahms is touching so long as he dreams or mourns over himself in private--in this respect he is modern;--he becomes cold, we no longer feel at one with him when he poses as the child of the classics. ... People like to call Brahms Beethoven's heir: I know of no more cautious euphemism.--All that which to-day makes a claim to being the grand style in music is on precisely that account either false to us or false to itself. This alternative is suspicious enough: in itself it contains a casuistic question concerning the value of the two cases. The instinct of the majority protests against the alternative; "false to us"--they do not wish to be cheated;--and I myself would certainly always prefer this type to the other ("False to itself"). This is _my_ taste.--Expressed more clearly for the sake of the "poor in spirit" it amounts to this: Brahms _or_ Wagner.... Brahms is _not_ an actor.--A very great part of other musicians may be summed up in the concept Brahms.--I do not wish to say anything about the clever apes of Wagner, as for instance Goldmark: when one has "The Queen of Sheba" to one's name, one belongs to a menagerie,--one ought to put oneself on show.--Nowadays all things that can be done well and even with a master hand are small. In this department alone is honesty still possible. Nothing, however, can cure music as a whole of its chief fault, of its fate, which is to be the expression of general physiological contradiction,--which is, in fact, to be modern.