Our purists are unable to realize that the shadows are the
least vital part of the great men who cast them. We remember
that the only wish expressed by Diogenes when Alexander came
to see him was that the king should stand aside so that he
could enjoy the light of the sun.

To return: We find that Beethoven was the first exponent of
our modern art. Every revolution is bound to bring with it a
reaction which seeks to consolidate and put in safe keeping,
as it were, results attained by it. Certainly Beethoven alone
can hardly be said to have furthered this end; for his revolt
led him into still more remote and involved trains of thought,
as in his later sonatas and quartets. Even the Ninth Symphony,
hampered as it is by actual words for which declamation and a
more or less well-defined form of musical speech are necessary,
suffers from the same involved utterance that characterizes
his last period.

Schubert, in his instrumental work, was too ardent a seeker
and lover of the purely beautiful to build upon the forms of
past generations, and thus his piano music, neither restrained
nor supported by poetic declamation, was never held within
the bounds of formalism.

It was Mendelssohn who first invested old and seemingly worn-out
forms of instrumental music (especially for the pianoforte)
with the new poetic license of speech, which was essentially
the spirit of the age of revolution in which he lived.

In holding up Mendelssohn as a formalist against Beethoven,
and at the same time presenting him as the composer directly
responsible for our modern symphonic poem, there is a
seeming contradiction, which, however, is more apparent than
real. While Beethoven never hesitated to overturn form (harmonic
or otherwise) to suit the exigencies of his inspiration,
Mendelssohn cast all his pictures into well-defined and orthodox
forms. Thus his symphonic poems, for example, the overtures to
"The Lovely Melusina," "Fingal's Cave," "Ruy Blas," etc., are
really overtures in form; whereas, the so-called "Moonlight"
sonata of Beethoven, as well as many others, are sonatas only
in name. The emotional and problematic significance given by
Mendelssohn to many of his shorter piano pieces, including even
such works as preludes and fugues, is familiar to us all. These
works, however, but rarely departed from the orthodox forms
represented by their names. His "Songs without Words" have
been so often quoted as constituting a new art form