palaces of
Vicenza, which, designed by the pompous and classicizing Palladio, are
executed in stucco and other cheap materials.

And yet, the many works in which you do not show yourself the artist
reveal the plenitude of your powers almost as much as the few in which
you do. The most empty of your many ostentatious orchestral soliloquies,
the most feeble of your many piano-pyrotechnics, the iciest of your
bouquets of icy, exploding stars, the brassiest of your blatant
perorations, the very falsest of your innumerable paste jewels, declare
that you were born to sit among the great ones of your craft. For they
reveal you the indubitable virtuosic genius. The very cleverness of the
imitation of the precious stone betrays how deep a sense of the beauty
of the real gem you had, how expert you were in the trade of diamond
cutter. Into the shaping of your bad works of art there went a
temperament, a playfulness, a fecundity, a capriciousness, a genius that
many better artists have not possessed.

You were indeed profusely endowed, showered with musical gifts as some
cradled prince might be showered with presents and honors. Everything in
your personality was grand, seigneurial, immense in scale. You were born
musical King of Cyprus and Jerusalem and Armenia, titular sovereign of
vast, unclaimed realms. Few composers have been more inventive. No
composer has ever scattered abroad ideas with more liberal hand.
Compositions like the B-minor piano-sonata, the tone-poem "Mazeppa," the
"Dante" symphony, whatever their artistic value, fairly teem with
original themes of a high order, are like treasure houses in which gold
ornaments lie negligently strewn in piles. Indeed, your inventive power
supplied not only your own compositions with material, but those of your
son-in-law, Richard Wagner, as well. As James Huneker once so brightly
put it, "Wagner was indebted to you for much besides money, sympathy,
and a wife." For Siegmund and Sieglinde existed a long while in your
"Dante" symphony before Wagner transferred them to "Die Walkuere";
Parsifal and Kundry a long while in your piano-sonata before he
introduced them into his "Buehnenweihfestspiel."

You were equipped for piano-composition as was no other of your time.
For you the instrument was a newer, stranger, more virgin thing than it
was for either Schumann or Chopin. You knew even better than they how to
listen for its proper voice. You were more deeply aware than they of its