Aufführung des Tantum ergo in Es-Dur (WAB 41/3) in der Kirche Maria vom Siege (*).

 

Ein Artikel in The New York Herald Nr. 167 auf S. 38 (= S. 8 des 3. Teils) stellt Mahler auch Bruckner gegenüber:

"       Obstinate Conductors Play Music Progressives Do Not Like Hoping to Make Them Like It

THERE is a very old story which from time to time has to be retold because of its peculiar aptness. [... Carl Bergmann auf die  Bemerkung:] the people do not like Wagner." "Oh," retorted the conductor, "they don't like Wagner? Then they must hear him till they do."

      The people did hear Wagner till they learned to like him. [... Erklärungen dazu ... Künstler schaffen oft ohne Rücksicht auf das Publikum ... Rolle der Dirigenten beim Gewöhnungsprozess ... keine Rücksicht auf Publikums- und Kritikermeinungen ... Mahler-Kult der Dirigenten ...].

     The present writer has never lost an opportunity to hear a performance of a Mahler symphony and to his dismay he finds no more in them now than he did years ago. It is far easier for him now to sit through a performance of a Bruckner symphony than through one of Mahler's, for at times Bruckner reaches the heights toward which most of his time he is laboriously struggling. And any candid music lover, perhaps, will confess that it requires a certain amount of devotion to endure the cloudy prolixities of a Bruckner symphony for the sake of the occasional moment of light.

     The Mahler symphonies sometimes achieve beauty and eloquence, but very rarely. Bruckner is ponderous, introspective, discursive, but he is always serious. Mahler, to be frank, is often merely childish–to the dull mind of the layman. These conductors who continue to play him at us to make us like him must see great things which are hidden from us. We are entirely willing to confess that.

     But what is the ultimate aim of any art? To create things which only its own professors can appreciate? It must be confessed that this seems to be the belief of many artists. But if all the creative artists in the world devoted themselves to making things for one another, art would miss what seems to the lay mind to be its true purpose, namely, to embody universal conceptions of the beautiful

          ———

     The readers of this department will pardon me if for the moment I write personally. A man whom I greatly loved has been taken away and for me the world is less beautiful than it was. James Huneker was my close friend for more than thirty-five years. [... ausführliche und liebevolle Würdigung des Musikschriftstellers ...]." (**).