The Works For Which I Openly Confess My Admiration And Predilection Are For The Most Part Amongst Those Which Conductors

More or less renowned (especially the so-called "tuchtigen Capellmeister" [ Qualified conductors.]) have honored but little, or not at all,

With their personal sympathies, so much so that it has rarely happened that they have performed them. These works, reckoning from those which are commonly described nowadays as belonging to Beethoven's last style (and which were, not long ago, with lack of reverence, explained by Beethoven's deafness and mental derangement!) - these works, to my thinking, exact from executants and orchestras a progress which is being accomplished at this moment - but which is far from being realized in all places - in accentuation, in rhythm, in the manner of phrasing and declaiming certain passages, and, of distributing light and shade - in a word, progress in the style of the execution itself. They establish, between the musicians of the desks and the musician chief who directs them, a link of a nature other than that which is cemented by an imperturbable beating of the time. In many cases even the rough, literal maintenance of the time and of each continuous bar |1,2,3,4,|1,2,3,4,| clashes with the sense and expression. There, as elsewhere, the letter killeth the spirit, a thing to which I will never subscribe, however specious in their hypocritical impartiality may be the attacks to which I am exposed.

For the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner, etc., I see less than elsewhere what advantage there could be (which by-the-bye I shall contest pretty knowingly elsewhere) in a conductor trying to go through his work like a sort of windmill, and to get into a great perspiration in order to give warmth to the others.

Especially where it is a question of understanding and feeling, of impressing oneself with intelligence, of kindling hearts with a sort of communion of the beautiful, the grand, and the true in Art and Poetry, the sufficiency and the old routine of usual conductors no longer suffice, and are even contrary to the dignity and the sublime liberty of the art. Thus, with all due deference to my complaisant critics, I shall hold myself on every occasion ulterior to my "insufficiency" on principle and by conviction, for I will never accommodate myself to the role of a "Profoss" [Overseer or gaoler.] of time, for which my twenty-five years of experience, study, and sincere passion for Art would not at all fit me.

Whatever esteem therefore I may profess for many of my colleagues, and however gladly I may recognize the good services they have rendered and continue to render to Art, I do not think myself on that account obliged to follow their example in every particular - neither in the choice of works to be performed, nor in the manner of conceiving and conducting them. I think I have already said to you that the real task of a conductor, according to my opinion, consists in making himself ostensibly quasi- useless.

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