n all that may fairly be said
against him has been said and given due weight, the truth remains that
he is one of the few great composers of this century. I myself, in all
humility, allowing fully that I may be altogether wrong, while
convinced that I am absolutely right, deliberately set him far above
Brahms, above Gounod, above Schumann--above all save Beethoven, Weber,
Schubert, and Wagner. His accomplishment as a sheer musician was
greater than either Gounod's or Schumann's, though far from being
equal to Brahms'--for Brahms as a master of the management of notes
stands with the highest, with Bach, Mozart, and Wagner; while as a
voice and a new force in music neither Brahms nor Schumann nor Gounod
can be compared with him other than unfavourably. All that are
sensitive to music can feel, as I have said, the new throb, the new
thrill; and that decides the matter.

It is now a long time since Mr. Henry Wood, one winter's afternoon,
the only Englishman who may be ranked with the great continental
conductors, gave a Tschaikowsky concert, with a programme that
included some of the earlier as well as one or two of the later works.
It served to show how hard and how long Tschaikowsky laboured to
attain to lucidity of expression, and why the "Pathetic" symphony is
popular while the other compositions are not. In all of them we find
infinite invention and blazes of Eastern magnificence and splendour;
but in the earlier things there is little of the order and clarity of
the later ones. Another and a more notable point is that in not one
thing played at this concert might the human note be heard. The suite
(Op. 55) and the symphony (Op. 36) are full of novel and dazzling
effects--for example, the scherzo of the symphony played mainly by the
strings pizzicato, and the scherzo of the suite, with the short, sharp
notes of the brass and the rattle of the side-drum; the melodies also
are new, and in their way beautiful; in form both symphony and suite
are nearly as clear as anything Tschaikowsky wrote: in fact, each work
is a masterwork. But each is lacking in the human element, and without
the human element no piece of music can be popular for long. The fame
of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, is still growing and will continue to
grow, because every time we hear their music it touches us; while
Weber, mighty though he is, will probably never be better loved than
he is to-day, because his marvellously graphic picturesque music does
not t