The Case of Wagner Complete Works, Volume 8 · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
2.
What? would it really be the first virtue of a performance (as performing musical artists now seem to believe), under all circumstances to attain to a _haut-relief_ which cannot be surpassed? If this were applied to Mozart, for instance, would it not be a real sin against Mozart's spirit,--Mozart's cheerful, enthusiastic, delightful and loving spirit? He who fortunately was no German, and whose seriousness is a charming and golden seriousness and not by any means that of a German clodhopper.... Not to speak of the earnestness of the "marble statue." ... But you seem to think that all music is the music of the "marble statue"? --that all music should, so to speak, spring out of the wall and shake the listener to his very bowels? ... Only thus could music have any effect! But on whom would the effect be made? Upon something on which a noble artist ought never to deign to act,--upon the mob, upon the immature! upon the blasts! upon the diseased! upon idiots! upon _Wagnerites_!...
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