his music is a mistake and a misunderstanding to the extent of injustice; Schumann, with his taste, which was fundamentally a taste (that is to say, a dangerous propensity doubly dangerous among Germans for quiet lyricism and intoxication of the feelings), going constantly apart, timidly withdrawing and retiring, a noble weakling who revelled in nothing but anonymous joy and sorrow, from the beginning a sort of girl and this Schumann was already merely a event in music, and no longer a European event, as Beethoven had been, as in a still greater degree Mozart had been; with Schumann German music was threatened with its greatest danger, that of and sinking into a merely national affair.