s broad and
self-righteous manner. His music is full of but slightly disguised
quotations. The trumpet-theme that ushers in Mahler's Fifth Symphony,
for instance, appears the result of an attempt to cross the theme of the
funeral march of the "Eroica Symphony" with the famous four raps of
Beethoven's Fifth. In the first movement of the Second Symphony, just
before the appearance on the oboe of the scarcely disguised "Sleep"
motif from "Die Walkuere," a theme almost directly lifted out of
Beethoven's violin concerto is announced on the 'cellos and horns. And
the andante of the same symphony derives from both the allegretto of
Beethoven's Eighth and the andante of his "Pastoral Symphony"; might,
indeed, figure as a sort of "Szene am Bach" through which there flow the
yellowish tides of the Danube. Beethoven is recalled by some of Mahler's
triumphant finales, particularly by those of the Fifth and Seventh
Symphonies, and by many of Mahler's adagio passages. "Es sucht der
Bruder seinen Bruder," oh, how often and at what length through
Mahler's symphonies, and with what persistency on the tenor trumpet! And
how often in them does not the German family man take his children
walking in the woods of a Sunday afternoon and bid them worship their
Creator for having implanted the Love of Virtue in the Human Heart!

Just as it was inevitable that Mahler, instead of developing his own
artistic individuality, should seek all his life to identify himself
with certain other composers, so, too, it was inevitable that it should
be Beethoven whom he would most sedulously emulate. For not only was
Beethoven the great classic presence of the German concert hall, and
deemed, in the words of Lanier, the "dear living lord of tone," the
"sole hymner of the whole of life." He was also, of all the masters, the
one spiritually most akin to Mahler. For Beethoven was also one of those
who wish to endow their art with moral grandeur, give it power to rouse
the noblest human traits, to make it communicate ethical and
philosophical conceptions. He, too, came to his art with a magnanimous
hope of invigorating and consoling and redeeming his brothers, of
healing the wounds of life and binding all men in the bonds of
fraternity. Torn between desire of self-expression, and fear of
self-revelation, Mahler found the solution of his conflict in this
particular piece of self-identification.

And had Mahler been able really to be himself alone, to develop his