But that music of Mendelssohn!--like it I cannot. Say
not that Mendelssohn is a great composer. He _is_ so. But here he was
voluntarily abandoning the resources of his own genius, and the support of
his divine art, in quest of a chimera: that is, in quest of a thing called
Greek music, which for _us_ seems far more irrecoverable than the 'Greek
fire.' I myself, from an early date, was a student of this subject. I read
book after book upon it; and each successive book sank me lower into
darkness, until I had so vastly improved in ignorance, that I could myself
have written a quarto upon it, which all the world should not have found
it possible to understand. It should have taken three men to construe one
sentence. I confess, however, to not having yet seen the writings upon
this impracticable theme of Colonel Perronet Thompson. To write
experimental music for choruses that are to support the else meagre
outline of a Greek tragedy, will not do. Let experiments be tried upon
worthless subjects; and if this of Mendelssohn's be Greek music, the
sooner it takes itself off the better. Sophocles will be delivered from an
incubus, and we from an affliction of the auditory nerves.
It strikes me that I see the source of this music. We, that were learning
German some thirty years ago, must remember the noise made at that time
about Mendelssohn, the Platonic philosopher.
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