1905.] on Personal Recollections of Johannes Brahms. 147 



" L'Attach6." After the usual coffee at a coffee-house on the beach, 

 we went for a long stroll in the Park, near Crampas, the nearest 

 village. We spoke, among other things, of Carl Loewe. Brahms 

 thinks highly of his ballads and Servian songs. " However, with 

 us in Vienna," he said, " Loewe is, to my regret, much overrated. 

 One places him, in his songs, side by side with, in his ballads above, 

 Schubert, and overlooks the fact that what with one is genius, with 

 the other is simply talented craft. . . . " 



" In writing songs," he cautioned me, " you must endeavour to 

 invent, simultaneously with the melody, a healthy, powerful bass. 

 You stick a little too much to middle parts. In that song in E flat, 

 for instance (he again referred to ' Where Angels hover '), you have 

 hit upon a very charming middle part, and the melody is very nice, 

 too, but that isn't all, is it ? And then, my dear friend, no heavy 

 dissonances on the unaccentuated parts of the bar, please. That is 

 weak. I am very fond of dissonances, you'll agree, but on the 

 heavy, accentuated parts of the bar, and then resolve them easily 

 and gently." 



Speaking of Schubert's setting of Goethe's songs, he said, 

 " Schubert's Suleika songs are to me the only instances where the 

 power and beauty of Goethe's words have been enhanced by the 

 music. All other of Goethe's poems seem so perfect in themselves 

 that no music can improve them." (An opinion, by the way, which I 

 could not share ; to me there is no sentiment expressed in words 

 which music, i.e., the right music, may not enhance.) 



Passing from music to literature, he remarked : " Paul Heyse 

 used to be one of the most charming men imaginable. He was 

 beautiful and exceptionally amiable, and I hardly know of any one, 

 who, suddenly entering a room, would illuminate it, so to speak, by 

 his personality, as did Heyse. 



"Bodenstedt is greatly overrated : his poetry is my special aversion. 

 Geibel, on the other hand, seems to me not appreciated enough." 



Perhaps I may be allowed here to interrupt the reading of the 

 diary for a moment, and to draw your attention to the discretion and 

 judiciousness with which Brahms selected the words for his songs. 



If we look at the texts to his vocal music, of which there exists a 

 vast mass, we shaU find that the sources — individual or national — 

 from which he drew his inspiration, have in themselves been inspired. 

 All his vocal compositions — from the "Requiem" down to the simplest 

 song — are set to beautiful, significant, worthy poems, truly a wonder- 

 ful lesson to young composers. 



For if one of the chief aims of art be to elevate, i.e. to raise man- 

 kind for the time being above the commonplace routine of hf e, above 

 paltry, everyday thoughts and cares, in short, from things earthy to 

 things celestial, surely such aim should be discernible even in the 

 smallest form of the expression of art. 



Just as the incomprehensible greatness of the divine power, and 



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