Thus Much Have I Learned
Of Our Neu-Weymar-Verein.
169. To Professor L. A. Zellner in Vienna
[General Secretary of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde ("Society
of Lovers of Music") in Vienna; composer and writer on music.]
To my letter of yesterday I have still to add a postscript, my
dear friend, concerning the information in your new
Abonnement,[The Blatter fur Musik, Theater, and Kunst ("Pages of
Music, theater, and Art"), edited by Z.] in which I was struck
with the name of Bertini among the classics, which does not
seem to me suitable. As far as I know, Bertini is still living,
[He did not die till 1876.] and according to the common idea, to
which one must stick fast, only those who are dead can rank as
classic and be proclaimed as classic. Thus Schumann, the
romanticist, and Beethoven, the glorious, holy, crazy one, have
become classics. Should Bertini have already died, I take back my
remark, although the popularity of his Studies is not, to me, a
satisfactory reason for making his name a classic. - Moscheles'
and Czerny's Studies and "Methods" would have a much more just
claim to such a thing, and your paper has especially to set
itself the task of counteracting, with principle and consistency,
the confusion of ideas from which confusion and ruin of matters
arise. Hold fast then to this principle, both in great and small
things, for the easier understanding with the public, that the
recognition of posterity alone impresses the stamp of "classical"
upon works, in the same way as facts and history are established;
for thus much is certain, that all great classics have been
reviled in their own day as innovators and even romanticists, if
not bunglers and crazy fellows, and you yourself have commented
on, and inquired into, this matter many times.. - .
In your number of today I read an extract from my letter to
Erkel, [A well-known Hungarian composer ("Hunyadi Laszlo")] in
which, however, the points are missing.
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