Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/107

Rh need of nourishment, of fuel to feed the machine. It was not fuel that was lacking in German music, but air. It certainly was not poor in the eighteenth century; it was rather too rich, embarrassed by its wealth; the chimney was choked, and the fire might well have died out, but for the great current of air which Telemann, Hasse, Stamitz and their like, let in through the door—or all the doors open upon France, Poland, Italy and Bohemia. South Germany and the Rhineland, Mannheim, Stuttgart and Vienna were the centres in which the new art was elaborated; we see this plainly enough from the jealousy of North Germany, which was for a long time hostile to the new movement. It is not with the paltry idea of belittling the greatness of the classic German art of the close of the eighteenth century that I am pointing out what it owes to foreign influences and elements. It was necessary that this should be so, in order that this art should quickly become universal, as it did. A narrow and self-regarding sense of nationalism has never brought an art to supremacy. Quite on the contrary, it would very soon result in its dying of consumption. If an art is to be strong and vital it must not timorously take refuge in a sect; it must not seek shelter in a hothouse, like those wretched trees which are grown in tubs; it must grow in a free soil and extend its roots unhindered wherever they can drink in life. The soul must absorb all the substance of the world. It will nevertheless retain its racial characteristics; but its race will not waste away and become exhausted,