The composer Brahms was a prodiguous, forbidding fellow. His huge Teutonic whiskers used to sweep over his whole waistcoat as he remarked: "For the shallow delights of matrimony and opera I have no courage." This spirit runs through his music, which makes no compromises with the sugary "lollypop-school." There are but few exceptions to this: His Hungarian Dances are played, with excessive abandon, by every vaudeville violinist and every cafe-orchestra in Paris, and his Wiegenlied is listed in the catalog of every gramo-phone-record mannfacturer. But the bulk of Brahms remains "musicians'...
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