Page 189 - beyond-good-and-evil

that is to say, to a movement which, historically considered,
was still shorter, more fleeting, and more superficial than
that great interlude, the transition of Europe from Rous-
seau to Napoleon, and to the rise of democracy. Weber—but
what do WE care nowadays for ‘Freischutz’ and ‘Oberon’!
Or Marschner’s ‘Hans Heiling’ and ‘Vampyre’! Or even
Wagner’s ‘Tannhauser’! That is extinct, although not yet
forgotten music. This whole music of Romanticism, besides,
was not noble enough, was not musical enough, to main-
tain its position anywhere but in the theatre and before the
masses; from the beginning it was second-rate music, which
was little thought of by genuine musicians. It was different
with Felix Mendelssohn, that halcyon master, who, on ac-
count of his lighter, purer, happier soul, quickly acquired
admiration, and was equally quickly forgotten: as the beau-
tiful EPISODE of German music. But with regard to Robert
Schumann, who took things seriously, and has been tak-
en seriously from the first—he was the last that founded a
school,—do we not now regard it as a satisfaction, a relief,
a deliverance, that this very Romanticism of Schumann’s
has been surmounted? Schumann, fleeing into the ‘Saxon
Switzerland’ of his soul, with a half Werther-like, half Jean-
Paul-like nature (assuredly not like Beethoven! assuredly
not like Byron!)—his MANFRED music is a mistake and
a misunderstanding to the extent of injustice; Schumann,
with his taste, which was fundamentally a PETTY taste
(that is to say, a dangerous propensity—doubly danger-
ous among Germans—for quiet lyricism and intoxication
of the feelings), going constantly apart, timidly withdraw-

1 Beyond Good and Evil