We might say all these things, and perhaps we have gone too far in suggesting them.  After all we have no business with aught but the music of Bruckner, whatever may have been his musical politics, his vanity, his ill judgment, or even his deliberate partisanship against his betters.  But the ideas themselves are unsubstantial; on shadowy foundation they give an illusion by modern touches of harmony and rhythm that are not novel in themselves.  The melodic idea is usually divided in two, as by a clever juggler.  There is really no one thought, but a plenty of small ones to hide the greater absence.

We have merely to compare this artificial manner with the poetic reaches of Brahms to understand the insolence of extreme Wagnerians and the indignation of a Hanslick.  As against the pedantry of Bruckner the style of Strauss is almost welcome in its frank pursuit of effects which are at least grateful in themselves.  Strauss makes hardly a pretence at having melodic ideas.  They serve but as pawns or puppets for his harmonic and orchestral mise-en-scene.  He is like a play-wright constructing his plot around a scenic design.

Just a little common sense is needed,—­an unpremeditated attitude.  Thus the familiar grouping, “Bach, Beethoven and Brahms” is at least not unnatural.  Think of the absurdity of “Bach, Beethoven and Bruckner"![A]

[Footnote A:  A festival was held in Munich in the summer of 1911, in celebration of “Bach, Beethoven and Bruckner.”]

The truth is, the Bruckner cult is a striking symptom of a certain decadence in German music; an incapacity to tell the sincere quality of feeling in the dense, brilliant growth of technical virtuosity.  In the worship at the Bayreuth shrine, somehow reinforced by a modern national self-importance, has been lost a heed for all but a certain vein of exotic romanticism, long ago run to riotous seed, a blending of hedonism and fatalism.  No other poetic message gets a hearing and the former may be rung in endless repetition and reminiscence, provided, to be sure, it be framed with brilliant cunning of workmanship.

Here we feel driven defiantly to enounce the truth:  that the highest art, even in a narrow sense, comes only with a true poetic message.  Of this Bruckner is a proof; for, if any man by pure knowledge could make a symphony, it was he.  But, with almost superhuman skill, there is something wanting in the inner connection, where the main ideas are weak, forced or borrowed.  It is only the true poetic rapture that ensures the continuous absorption that drives in perfect sequence to irresistible conclusion.

SYMPHONY NO. 9

I.—­Solenne. Solemn mystery is the mood, amid trembling strings on hollow unison, before the eight

[Music:  Misterioso (Eight horns with tremolo strings on D in three octaves)]

horns strike a phrase in the minor chord that in higher echoes breaks into a strange harmony and descends into a turn of melodic cadence.  In answer is another chain of brief phrases, each beginning