It is this the one charge that cannot be brought home to
the earlier German group of reaction against the classic idea.
There is melody, almost abundant, in Wagner and Liszt and their German
contemporaries. Indeed it was an age of lyricists. The fault was that
they failed to recognize their lyric limitation, lengthening and padding
their motives abnormally to fit a form that was too large. Hence the
symphony of Liszt, with barren stretches, and the impossible plan of the
later music-drama. The truest form of such a period was the song, as it
blossomed in the works of a Franz.
Nor has this grandiose tendency even yet spent its course. A saving
element was the fashioning of a new form, by Liszt himself,--the
Symphonic Poem,--far inferior to the symphony, but more adequate to the
special poetic intent.
Whatever be the truth of personal gossip, there is no doubt that
Bruckner lent himself and his art to a championing of the reactionary
cause in the form that was intrinsically at odds with its spirit. Hence
in later works of Bruckner these strange episodes of borrowed romance,
abruptly stopped by a firm counterpoint of excellent quality,--indeed
far the best of his writing. For, if a man have little ideas, at least
his good workmanship will count for something.
In truth, one of the strangest types is presented in Bruckner,--a pedant
who by persistent ingenuity simulates a master-work almost to
perfection. By so much as genius is not an infinite capacity for pains,
by so much is Bruckner's Ninth not a true symphony.
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