failed he would say, "Here, it was just like this"--and then
he would seize his violin, the bow would wave through the air, and the
notes would tell you how Brahms transposed Beethoven's "Kreutzer
Sonata" from A to B flat--a feat he never could have performed if
Remenyi had not told him how. It was Remenyi who introduced Brahms to
Joachim, and it was Joachim who introduced Brahms to Schumann, and it
was Schumann's article, "New Paths," in the "Neue Zeitschrift fur
Musik," that placed Brahms on a pedestal before the world. Brahms was
not the great man that Schumann painted, Remenyi thought, but the
idealization caused him to put forth a heroic effort to be what Clara
and Robert considered him. So it was really these two who compelled him
to push on: otherwise he might have relaxed into a mere concert
performer or a leader of some subsidized band.

Remenyi always seemed to me like a choice antique mosaic, a trifle
weather-worn, set into the present. He used to quote Liszt as if he
lived around the corner, and would criticize Wagner, and tell of
Moescheles, Haertel, the Mendelssohns and the Schumanns, as if they
might all gather tomorrow and play for us at the Hall in the Grove.

Recently I met dear old Herr Kappes, eighty years young, who knew the
Mendelssohns, and admired Brahms, loved Clara Schumann, and liked
Remenyi--sometimes. They were too much alike, I fear, to like each other
all the time. But the harmony is still in the heart of Herr Kappes. He
gives music-lessons, and lectures, and will explain to you just how and
where Brahms differs from Schumann, and where Schubert separates from
both.

Herr Kappes can speak five languages, but even with them all he finds
difficulty in making his meaning clear, and at times adopts the Remenyi
plan, and will just turn to the piano and cry, "It's like this, see!
Schumann wrote it in this way"--and then the strong hands will chase the
keys down and back and over and up. "But Brahms took the motif and set
it like this"--and Herr Kappes will strike the bass a thunderous
stroke--pause, look at you, glide back and down, up and over, and you
are carried away in a swirl of sweet sounds, and see a pink face framed
in its beautiful aureole of white hair. You listen but you do not "see"
the fine distinctions, because you do not care--Herr Kappes is all there
is of it, so animated, so gentle, so true, so lovable--because he used
to pay court to Fanny Mendelssohn and then transferred hi