8/72 Of the moderns, Wagner he worshipped, Tchaikovsky deeply moved him, Grieg he loved--Grieg, who was his artistic inferior in almost every respect. Yet none of these so seduced his imagination that his independence was overcome--he was always, throughout his maturity, himself; not arrogantly or insistently, but of necessity; he could not be otherwise. His music is characterised by great buoyancy and freshness, by an abounding vitality, by a constantly juxtaposed tenderness and strength, by a pervading nobility of tone and feeling. It is charged with emotion, yet it is not brooding or hectic, and it is seldom intricate or recondite in its psychology. It is music curiously free from the fevers of sex. |