1905.] on Personal Recollections of Johannes Brahms. 145 



July 12. — I went to Brahms' rooms last night. He had been 

 reading, but, putting away his book, gave me a cordial welcome and 

 began looking through my new manuscript songs. He took up the 

 one in E flat, " Where Angels hover," and said, " Now there is a 

 charming song. In some of the others you seem to me too easily 

 satisfied. One ought never to forget that by actually perfecting 

 one piece, one gains and learns more than by commencing or half- 

 finishing a dozen. Let it rest, let it rest, and keep going back to it 

 and working at it over and over again, until it is completed as a 

 finished work of art, until there is not a note too much or too little, 

 not a bar you could improve upon. Whether it is beautiful also is 

 an entirely different matter, but perfect it must be. You see, I am 

 lazy, but I never cool down over a work, once begun, until it is 

 perfected, unassailable." 



Thus he continued speaking, drawing, in the most amiable way, 

 my attention to little defects here and there, so that I sat happy and 

 silent, careful not to interrupt this to me so precious lesson. 



July 13. — I asked him yesterday if he had thought of going to 

 the inauguration performance of " The Xibelungs' Ring " at Bayreuth 

 in August. "I am afraid," he said, " it's too expensive. I have 

 repeatedly heard ' Rheingold ' and ' Walkure ' at Munich, and confess 

 it would greatly interest me, but — well, we'll think of it." Then, 

 taking up the volume of Hauptmann's letters I had lent him, and 

 pointing to one of them, he said : " Just look ; do you see these 

 -asterisks instead of a name ? " I did, and read the whole sentence, 

 which described a certain composer, indicated by the asterisks, as a 

 rather haughty young man. " That's me," said Brahms. " When I 

 was a very young man I remember playing, at Gottingen, my ' Sonata 

 in C ' to Hauptmann. He was not very complimentary about it ; in 

 fact, had much fault to find in it, which I, a very modest youth at 

 that time, accepted in perfect silence. I afterwards heard that this 

 silence had been interpreted and complained of, as haughtiness. I 

 confess, the more I read of these letters, the clearer it becomes to me 

 that they were T\Titten with a certain consciousness of importance. 

 Beethoven would have laughed if any one, seeing in one of his letters 

 a remark on any subject whatever, had taken this as an absolute 

 proof of the justice of such a remark. But there are people — take 

 for instance, Yarnhagen — who, never having accomplished anything 

 reaUy great themselves, sit down at their writing desks in a peevish, 

 sulky temper, pulling to pieces — even when praising — everything 

 they can lay hold of. To twaddle about Bach or Beethoven, as is 

 done in the letters to Hauser, in a feuilletonistic way is wholly 

 unnecessary : they stand too firm for that kind of thing." 



July 14. — Last evening we sat downstairs in the coffee room, 



having supper, when suddenly someone in the adjoining dining-hall 



began to play Chopin's Study in A flat on the piano. I sprang 



up, intending to put a stop to it, and exclaiming " Oh, these women ! " 



YOL. XYIII. (No. 99) L 



