Without Being Surprised At This I Am
Extremely Pleased About It.
To make a firm footing in Vienna as a
pianoforte player is no small task, especially under present
circumstances!
If one succeeds in this, one can, with the utmost
confidence, make a name throughout Europe. It is very important
for you, dear friend, to appear often in public, so as to make
yourself feel at home with them. In production the public have
far more to care about the artist than he has to care about them,
or indeed to let himself be embarrassed by them. At home, our
whole life through, we have to study and to devise how to mature
our work and to attain as near as possible to our ideal of Art.
But when we enter the concert-room the feeling ought not to leave
us, that, just by our conscientious and persevering striving, we
stand somewhat higher than the public, and that we have to
represent our portion of "Menschheits-Wurde," [Manhood's dignity]
as Schiller says. Let us not err through false modesty, and let
us hold fast to the true, which is much more difficult to
practice and much more rare to find. The artist - in our sense -
should be neither the servant nor the master of the public. He
remains the bearer of the Beautiful in the inexhaustible variety
which is appointed to human thought and perception - and this
inviolable consciousness alone assures his authority.
Through your father I learn that you are thinking of going to
Munich in the course of the spring.
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