MOZART AND BEETHOVEN

Hokitika Guardian, 5 August 1927, Page 4

MOZART AND BEETHOVEN

" Only in a chronological ami formal seimc is !Inivcn I lie successor of .Moran . Mozart left no successors. . . All tlml. Mozart conceived lie could deliver perfectly. Beethoven heard more than he could set down, as Make saw more than lie could set down. His com opt ions seem at times to belong to a world not i'ike this, and to reveal a stale ol being unknown to man. In that world hpyoinl, lleethoven is at home. That is why lie stands alone in niiisie, and that is why he seems dillie'llt. At times he falters in delivering his message, as Wagner, for instance, never did. There is no faltering in the Illicit l. religiosity lII' ‘Parsifal’; hot, taller as he may. lleethoven leaves no douhl that his message is divine. . . (It lleethoven the man. this at least can he said, that his worst faults have a singular resembalnec to virtues; and of Beethoven the musician this, that though faults and failings in his writings can he adduced, there cannot he found in the whole mighty range of his work a single page tlmt is vulgar, morbid, sentimental, gross, perverse, abject, or selT-pit ving. In him. to a measure unmatched in anv other musician. can he found health, strength, geniality, joy. peace, understanding, faith, hope and love—all the strains that make the everlasting Yen of life its structure.”—George Sampson in the Edinburgh Review.”