d Beethoven is not
accorded any other musician. Consciously or not, when he talks about
other musicians (except Bach) he, for the most part, assumes the role of
censor. But Beethoven comes in for unstinted praise. "It is impossible,"
he says, "to discuss the essential nature of Beethoven's music without
at once falling into the tone of rhapsody."

Wagner seems hardly to have been able, when writing about music, to
refrain from mention of Beethoven, he is so full of the subject. It has
a bearing on every important event in his life. At the ceremonies
attending the laying of the foundation-stone of the Festival Play House
at Bayreuth, the Ninth Symphony was performed, and in a little speech he
says: "I wish to see the Ninth Symphony regarded as the foundation-stone
of my own artistic structure." In "Religion and Art" we find these
words: "to whom the unspeakable bliss has been vouchsafed of taking one
of the last four symphonies of Beethoven into his heart and soul."

Many enthusiasts have worked in Wagner's cause from Liszt down, but none
have equalled Wagner in this respect--in enthusiasm for _his_ master. He
pays tribute to Beethoven in all conceivable places. He first heard of
him when told of his death. His first acquaintance with Beethoven's
music was a year after the master's death, on his arrival at Leipzig at
the Gewandhaus concerts. Wagner was then in his sixteenth year. "Its
impression on me was overpowering," he says. "The music to his Egmont so
inspired me that I determined not to allow my own completed tragedy to
be launched until provided with such like music. Without the slightest
diffidence I believed that I could write this needful music." He had up
to this time no special leaning toward music. He had not previously
entertained a thought of it as a career, but his first hearing of
Beethoven's music decided him to adopt it, such was the kinship between
these two minds. Through Beethoven he discovered that "music," to use
his own words, "is a new language in which that which is boundless can
express itself with a certainty impossible to be misunderstood."[G]

[G] Thoreau, in 1840, expressed himself similarly. We quote from the
recently published Service. "Music is a language, a mother tongue, a
more mellifluous and articulate language than words, in comparison with
which speech is recent and temporary. There is as much music in the
world as virtue. In a world of peace and love music would be the
universa