Wherever careworn Philistines and slothful materialists occupy the seats from which art should raise her voice, advancement, progress born of sacrificial application, is out of the question: the most it is reasonable to expect is a bourgeois fulfilment of inescapable duties. In such, cases the flower droops; the dream vanishes; the free-born spirit has the choice of fighting day in and day out against the collective demons of pettiness and mediocrity, or of going down in admitted defeat.
“Stuff the people can easily digest, my dear boy, that is the idea,” said the director.
“What are you so excited about? Don’t you know these people haven’t a musical muscle in their whole soul?” said Lebrecht.
“For nine consecutive years I have been singing F sharp at this opera house, and now here comes a musicien from the backwoods and demands all of a sudden that I sing F!” This was the commentary of Fräulein Varini, the prima donna whose outstanding bosom had long been a source of human merriment to pit, stall, and gallery.
“Ah, he is a greasy grind determined to arrive,” said the first violinist.
“He’s a spit-fire,” said the lad who beat the big drum, when Daniel threatened to box his ears for a false intonation.
The Baroness had secured a publisher in Leipzig for his cycle of sixteen songs; the compositions were to be brought out at her expense. That did not have the right effect: it was not something, Daniel felt, that he had fought for and won; it was not a case where merit had made rejection impossible. He had the feeling that he was selling his soul and was being paid to do it. Moreover, and worst of all, he had to express his gratitude for this act. The Baroness loved to have somebody thank her for what she had done. She never once suspected that what Daniel wanted was not benefactors, but people who were stirred to the depths of their souls by his creations. The rich cannot sense the feelings of the poor; the higher classes remain out of contact with the lower.
His excitability saved him. In his magnificent solicitude for the mission that is at once the token and the curse of those who are really called, he shut himself off from a world from which the one thing he wanted was bread; bread and nothing else.
After the publication of the songs a review appeared in the Phœnix which had a remarkably realistic ring to the ear of the layman. As a matter of fact it was merely an underhanded attempt at assassination. The thing was signed with a big, isolated “W.” Wurzelmann, the little slave, had shot from his ambush.
Other musical journals copied this review. A half dozen people bought the songs; then they were forgotten.