Criticisms of contemporary composition continued to be couched in strongly ethical terms (see below, pp. 193–200). The music of Tchaikovsky remained hugely popular, much to the dismay of critics for whom displays of excessive emotion were to be deplored on ethical grounds. Some critics denounced the ‘Pathétique’ and by implication the taste of audiences. The Musical Times described it as ‘Mr [Robert] Newman’s hobby-horse’ which was ‘once more ridden to the admiration of a crowded house’. The critic stayed away on this occasion: ‘We cannot endure this nerve-shattering music any more.’ Tchaikovsky’s sensationalism was also deprecated by Charles Maclean in a paper given to the Musical Association in 1898; however, his opinion was by no means endorsed in the discussion that followed. C. Fred Kenyon held that Tchaikovsky showed most clearly how the objectivity found in Bach and Beethoven had given way to extreme subjectivity, which he attributed to ‘selfishness, or the cultivation of self pity’. Kenyon feared that subjectivity would eventually displace objectivity and result in ‘the annihilation of all that is most noble and most pure in the noblest and purest of all arts’. This view was strongly contested by Ernest Newman, who defended Tchaikovsky against English critics who peddled an ignorant caricature of Russian semi-barbarity and had scant knowledge of the range of the composer’s works.

However, another ethical denunciation, similar to Kenyon’s, came from Arthur Symons, who was known mainly as a literary critic and poet. Symons found savagery in the ‘Pathétique’: ‘Tchaikovsky is a debauch, not so much passionate as feverish.’

Symons also found a ‘touch of unmanliness’ that he believed to be characteristic of modern art: ‘There is a vehement and mighty sorrow in the Passion Music of Bach, by the side of which the grief of Tchaikovsky is like the whimpering of a child. He is unconscious of reticence, unconscious of self-control.’ (The charge of unmanliness is discussed further in Chapter 9 below.)

In earlier times, Wagner’s music had been the target of ethical condemnation. Symons thought that Tchaikovsky’s blatant self-obsession eclipsed any reservations about Wagner, whose expression of emotion had an elemental and universal dimension, whereas Tchaikovsky was entirely focused on self-pity. In unmistakably ethical terms Symons contrasted the attitude of ‘loving obedience’ that he attributed to composers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the excessive emotion and ‘selfishness of desire’ found in modern music.