For in you the disease was aggravated by the presence of another
powerful incentive to strut and posture and externalize and inflate your
art. For you were the virtuoso. You were the man whose entire being was
pointed to achieve an effect. You were the man whose life is lived on
the concert-platform, whose values are those of the concert-room, who
finds his highest good in the instantaneous effect achieved by his
performance. From childhood you were the idolized piano-virtuoso. All
your days you were smothered in the adulation showered upon you in very
tangible form by the great ladies of every capital of Europe. And a
virtuoso you remained all your existence. You never developed out of
that early situation into something more salutary to the artist. On the
contrary, you came to require the atmosphere of the performance, the
exhibition, about you continually, to find the rose leaves and the
clouds of perfume absolutely necessary. Most of your composition seems
but the effort to perpetuate about you the admiration and the adulation,
the glowing eyes and half-parted lips and heaving bosoms. Everything in
your piano-music is keyed for that effect. The shameless
sentimentalities, the voluptuous lingerings over sweet chords and
incisive notes, the ostentatious recitatives, the moist, sensual
climaxes, the titillating figuration, the over-draperies, were called
into existence for the immediate, the overwhelming effect at first
hearing.
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