Stirling S. Newberry wrote:

>I'm afraid I can't take this description seriously, it does not match the
>evidence of how either Brahms composed his four symphonies or Beethoven
>composed his symphonies.

It is interesting that Mr.  Newberry brings up Brahms first, as Brahms is
a composer who makes my point exactly, that of a composer who often tried
to write music greater than he felt e.g. the First Symphony.  The very
fact Brahms put off writing a symphony for so many years attests to the
fact that he didn't really have it in him to write a symphony but then
took the plunge anyway.  But don't take my word for it:  listen to what
Tchaikovsky said about Brahms, that he heard in Brahms' music "the
conscious aspiration to something for which there is no poetic impulse,
the striving for something that must be unstriven for, the conscious
attempt at Beethoven's profundity and power (speaking of Beethoven)
that results in a caricature of Beethoven, and the operation, for these
purposes, of the technical mastery that produces so many preparations and
circumlocutions for something which ought to come and charm us at once."

Further, in Mr.Newberry's own "preparations and circumlocutions" about
what constitutes greatness, he falls into the common trap of thinking every
age and every era, including our own, necessarily has to produce greatness,
when in fact, to borrow from Mr.  Newberry's prose style, there are "many,
many, many" periods in history when nothing great was produced.

John Dalmas
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