The Good Old Time Is Past, It Sings It Out in Beethoven

The good old time is past, it sang itself out in Mozart. How strangely does the language of Rousseau, Shiller, Shelley, and Byron sound to our ear? Whatever German music came afterwards belongs to romanticism. From the beginning it was second-rate music which was little thought of by genuine musicians. We should do honour to our name, we are not called the Tuchyvolk, deceptive people for nothing.