The E-minor Symphony, for all its
competence and smoothness, is full of the color and quality and
atmosphere of Tchaikowsky. It is Tchaikowsky without the hysteria,
perhaps, but also without the energy. In all the music of M.
Rachmaninoff there is something strangely twice-told. From it there
flows the sadness distilled by all things that are a little useless.
There are to be found in every picture gallery canvases attributed, not
to any single painter, but to an atelier, to the school of some great
master. One finds charming pieces among them. Nor are they invariably
the work of pupils who painted under the direction of some famous man.
Quite as often they are the handiwork of artists who appeared
independent enough to their patrons and to themselves. Their names and
their persons were familiar to those who ordered pictures from them. It
is only that in the course of time their names have come to be
forgotten. For there is in their canvases little trace of the substance
that causes people to cherish an individuality, and makes a name to be
remembered. Other personalities have transpired through their
brush-strokes, and have made it evident that behind the man who held the
brush in his hand there was another who directed the strokes--the man
upon whom the artist had modeled himself, the personality he preferred
to his own.
Pages:
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178