BIRMINGHAM MUSICAL FESTIVAL. 221 



the greatest musical inventors — men who have explored paths 

 previously unknown or untrodden — Bach, Haydn, and IMozart. 

 Bach's early compositions for the clavichord were formed on the mo- 

 del of those of Couperin, a fashionahle French composer of that 

 day, whose works have long since perished, and whose name would 

 probably have fallen into similar oblivion but for the accidental 

 honour of having assisted in calling forth the latent energies of the 

 mighty master. The first symphonias of Haydn are scarcely to be 

 distinguished from the writings of Emanuel Bach, and Mozart's 

 two first operas were mere essays in the prevailing Italian style of 

 that period. We may, indeed, safely lay down the general rule, 

 that before any man can worthily give utterance to original concep- 

 tions, he must first be able to do well what others have done before 

 him. From such ])reliminary training the highest powers afford no 

 exemption. 



To form a perfectly just estimate of a cotemporary production 

 professing to be a candidate for immortality, is, of all the labours of 

 the critic, the most difficult properly to fulfil. Hard, indeed, and 

 requiring no ordinary discernment, is the task of determining how 

 far a work of art is indebted for present popularity to its conformity 

 with existing tastes and prevailing modes of thinking, and how 

 much to the forcible appeal which it makes to the eternal feelings 

 and passions of the soul, in contradistinction to their temporary and 

 accidental modifications. In criticising a recent work, we may avail 

 ourselves of our acquaintance with the master-pieces of former times, 

 and compare the means by which they attained to excellence with 

 those employed in the present instance : it is evident, however, 

 that this mode of judging must (from the nature of the fine arts, 

 and more especially of Music) be extremely defective, and become 

 liable, in the hands of the bigoted and pedantic, to act as a drag on 

 further progress. Genius spurns the shackles of precedent ; it pursues 

 its course, heedless and independent of other men's ideas ; it dwells 

 not on the memory of the past, but penetrates into the mysteries of 

 futurity, and is, therefore, beyond the comprehension of ordinary 

 minds, ever prone to cling to the trivial forms and conventionalities 

 of the petty sphere in which they move. In forming, then, an opi- 

 nion of cotemporary works, we should eschew with equal care an 

 over-reverence for the past and that narrow-mindedness which 

 dwells only with complacency on the productions of the present ; 

 and should endeavour to hold the scales with impartial hands, attri- 

 buting merit where merit is due. 



All great composers — all who, in their ideas and their manner of 



