IMPERFECTIONS OF MODERN HARMONY. 515 



known, and the intonation is made as perfect as may be, according to 

 the nature of the instruments employed. 



The method of tuning the piano-forte may be stigmatized as reduc- 

 ing music to a mere game of permutations and combinations of twelve 

 tones, but no better method is offered by mathematicians and physi- 

 cists, whose schemes for music prove them more visionary than mu- 

 sicians themselves, who within the limits of their art must be acknowl- 

 edged to be practical. They are art-workers as a rule, not talkers. 

 Writers on music are generally amateui-s, occupied with some one 

 principle, apparently forgetful of the fact that many principles have 

 to be regarded in the production of an art-work — sometimes one, some- 

 times another having the ascendancy. Therefore, false ideas readily 

 gain currency, for the public can more easily comprehend one or two 

 ideas, put forth with literary skill, than a multiplicity of considerations 

 requiring technical definition, and only correctly estimated by persons 

 practically acquainted with their relative value. Well-written trea- 

 tises on the plastic arts are frequently found suited to the use of the 

 public, engraved illustrations being more immediately understood than 

 musical quotations, for comparatively few persons can read, and im- 

 agine in silence, written harmonies. And, besides, the foi'ms being 

 original, neither geometrical nor taken from nature, no appeal to expe- 

 rience can be made. 



Music appears as something quite apart, as though it held aloof 

 from the realities of daily life. Yet, on closer inspection, it is seen to 

 be connected so closely with art and life as to make its classification 

 difficult. 



Its rhythmic forms transcend any found in poetry and dancing. Its 

 melodies are not merely grammatically correct constructions, but are 

 felicitous expressions of the highest kind of rhetorical eloquence, which 

 spring up as happy thoughts, and may endure from age to age with 

 wonderful vitality as the national songs of a whole people. It is not 

 merely dramatic, it is preeminently dramatic, many parts being em- 

 ployed not only consecutively but simultaneously. It simulates the 

 gestures indicated in sculptured groups, not as fixed, but in motion, 

 and with such ability as to create in some persons an almost irresistible 

 desire to make corresponding movements. Its forms are original and 

 independent of words, and are not copied like those of painting, which 

 is still dependent on drawing. 



It not only resembles Gothic architecture, in the sense of parts de- 

 pending upon parts for the stability of the whole, so that a cathedral 

 may be aptly spoken of as " petrified music," ; but is more like celes- 

 tial architecture, in which the base is not an immovable foundation, 

 but moves itself ; and, in the due observance of distances (intervals) 

 and speeds (time), the balance is preserved — as, for instance, in the 

 choruses of Bach and Handel. 



Its science of acoustics allies it with optics. It can be expressed in 



