New Wine

Beethoven was neither the old nor the new. He put his wares up in the old bottles of classicism but filled them with the new wine of romantism. He was at the same time both classical and romantic in his music, and as such being the genius he was, he [unclear: did] music its greatest service by preparing the way for the new spirit in music, romanticism unfettered by the old traditions. Consequently Beethoven has a double appeal. He pleases those who like the classical formalism but to whom the classical themes were too distant and unexciting and at the same time those romantics who like some form in their romanticism.

Beethoven as a great composer then is a myth, he expresses only an impure form of man's musical desire. He is the expression of neither the purely emotional nor the intellectual aspects of man's concept of the beautiful. He is the link between the two and as such is very important, but as a distiller of sheer beauty he is not one of the great.