To Tell The Truth, This Decrescendo Of Applause, At
The Third Movement Of Your Symphony, Surprises Me Greatly, And I
Would Have Wagered Without Hesitation That It Would Be The Other
Way.
A great disadvantage for this kind of composition is that,
in our stupid musical customs, often very anti-musical,
It is
almost impossible to appeal to a badly informed public by a
second performance immediately after the first; and at Leipzig,
as elsewhere, one only meets with a very small number of people
who know how to apply cause and effect intelligently and
enthusiastically to a piece out of the common, and signed with
the name of a composer who is not dead. Moreover I suspect that
your witty account is tainted with a species of modesty, and I
shall wait, like the general public, for the accounts in the
newspapers in order to form an opinion of your success. Whatever
may come of it, and however well or ill you are treated by the
public or criticism, my appreciation of the value that I
recognize in your works will not vary, for it is not without a
well-fixed criterion, quite apart from the fashion of the day,
and the high or low tide of success, that I estimate your
compositions highly, finding much to praise in them, except the
reservation of some criticisms which almost all sum up as
follows - that your extreme productiveness has not as yet left you
the necessary leisure to imprint a more marked individuality on
your works, and to complete them.
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