He appears familiar with the plainsong, and has based a
symphony and portions of a quartet on Gregorian modes. Even at a period
when the sophisticated and cultivated composer is becoming somewhat less
a rarity, his culture is remarkable, his knowledge of literature
eclectic. Gogol as well as Virgil has moved him to orchestral works.
Above all, he is one of the company of composers, to which a good number
of more gifted musicians do not belong, who are ever respectful of their
medium, and infinitely curious concerning it.
It is only that, in seeking to compensate himself for his infecundity,
he has fallen into the deep sea of preciosity. In seeking by main force
to be expressive, to remedy his cardinal defect, to eschew whatever is
trite and outworn in the line of the melody, the sequence of the
harmonies, to rid himself of whatever is derivative and impersonal and
undistinguished in his style, he has become over-anxious,
over-meticulous of his diction. Because his phraseology was colorless,
he has become a stainer of phrases, a sort of musical euphuist. All his
energy, one senses, has gone into the cutting and polishing and shining
up and setting of little brightly colored bits of music, little sharp,
intense moments. One feels that they have been caressed and stroked and
smoothed and regarded a thousand times; that Loeffler has dwelt upon
them and touched them with a sort of narcissistic love.
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