For Beethoven was also one of those
who wish to endow their art with moral grandeur, give it power to rouse
the noblest human traits, to make it communicate ethical and
philosophical conceptions. He, too, came to his art with a magnanimous
hope of invigorating and consoling and redeeming his brothers, of
healing the wounds of life and binding all men in the bonds of
fraternity. Torn between desire of self-expression, and fear of
self-revelation, Mahler found the solution of his conflict in this
particular piece of self-identification.
And had Mahler been able really to be himself alone, to develop his own
individuality, he would no doubt have been the thing he most desired to
be, and given the world a new Beethoven. But, as imitator, he is far
from being Beethoven! Whatever Beethoven's limitations (and they were
many, for all that the worshiping crowd may say), he nevertheless had in
extraordinary degree two things which Mahler eminently lacked--inventive
genius and a giant peasant strength. He was able to cope vigorously with
the gigantic programs he set for himself. At moments, no doubt, as in
the C-minor Symphony and so many of his piano-sonatas, one is repelled
by a certain indefinable pompousness and self-righteousness and
exasperated by the obviousness and dullness and heaviness of his art.
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