The strolling musician plays on his clarinet; peasants sit
at tables covered with red cloths and drink beer; Hans and Gretel dance;
evening falls; the brooks run silvered; from the barracks resound the
Austrian bugle calls; old soldier songs, that may have been sung in the
Seven Years' War, arise; the watchman makes his sleepy rounds.
But, for the most part, it is precisely the personal tone that his music
completely lacks. For he was never himself. He was everybody and nobody.
He was forever seeking to be one composer or another, save only not
Gustav Mahler. The fatal assimilative power of the Jew is revealed
nowhere in music more sheerly than in the style of Mahler. Romain
Rolland discovers alone in the Fifth Symphony reminiscences of Beethoven
and Mendelssohn, Bach and Chabrier. Schubert flits persistently through
Mahler's scores, particularly through that of the Third Symphony, whose
introductory theme for eight horns recalls almost pointedly the opening
of the C-major of Schubert, without, however, in the least recapturing
its effectiveness. Bruckner, Mahler's teacher, is also incessantly
reflected by these works, by the choral themes which Mahler is so fond
of embodying in his compositions, and, more particularly, by the length
and involutions of so many of the themes of his later symphonies.
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