He has been displaced. A new music has come into being, and drawn near.
Forms as solid and wondrous and compelling as his are about us. Little
by little, during the last years, so gradually that it has been almost
unbeknown to us, our relationship to him has been changing. Something
within us has moved. Other musicians have been working their way in upon
our attention. Other works have come to seem as vivid and deep of hue,
as wondrous and compelling as his once did. Gradually the musical
firmament has been reconstellating itself. For long, we were unaware of
the change, thought ourselves still opposite Wagner, thought the rays of
his genius still as direct upon us as ever they were. But of late so
wide has the distance become that we have awakened sharply to the
change. Of a sudden, we seem to ourselves like travelers who, having
boarded by night a liner fast to her pier and fallen asleep amid
familiar objects, beneath the well-known beacons and towers of the port,
waken suddenly in broadest daylight scarcely aware the vessel has been
gotten under way, and find the scene completely transformed, find
themselves out on ocean and glimpse, dwindling behind them, the harbor
and the city in which apparently but a moment since they had lain
enclosed.
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