One
may say only that each is perfect in its kind, a supreme expression of
the human spirit.
Of the art of music I must speak with the diffidence becoming to the
ignorant; but it seems to me to consist of two elements and to contain
an inspirational art as direct and as simple as that of poetry, and a
science so difficult that its fullest mastery is of very recent
achievement. In melodic invention it is so far from progressive that its
most brilliant masters are often content to elaborate and to decorate a
theme old enough to have no history--a theme the inventor of which has
been so entirely forgotten that we think of it as sprung not from the
mind of one man, but from that of a whole people, and call it a
folk-song. The song is almost as old as the race, but the symphony has
had to wait for the invention of many instruments and for a mastery of
the laws of harmony, and so symphonic music is a modern art. We are
still adding new instruments to the orchestra and admitting to our
compositions new combinations of sounds, but have we in a hundred years
made any essential progress even in this part of the art? Have we
produced anything, I will not say greater, but anything as great as the
noblest works of Bach and Beethoven?
Already, and before considering the arts of painting and sculpture, we
are coming within sight of our general law.
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