We can, in fact, relive the history of taste in our own lives, the way embryos are supposed to go through the history of the evolution of a species. - Charles Rosen

For Mendelssohn, Beethoven was the new point of departure, and a German composer could not afford to ignore him, as Chopin and Verdi were able to do.

The eventual survival of the tradition is ultimately not at stake.

I have never believed that the historian should seek to perpetuate the misapprehensions of the past, and it is true that we understand Beethoven today better than his contemporaries did, better, above all, than the generation that immediately followed him, including his own most important pupil, Karl Czerny.