400 The Evolution of Music. 



phony, with their centrality of idea, though demanding all 

 the resources of musical invention for their complete expo- 

 sition. A modern musical composition is comparable to an 

 organism in fact, is such. The principle underlying the 

 growth of an organism is interdependence of essential parts 

 to the life of the whole. Thus elaborate compositions de- 

 mand such a close relation in the concerted movement of 

 different parts that no one part can be taken away without 

 destroying the unity of presentation ; and the composer of 

 highest merit is he who can bring to his service the most 

 varied resources, and yet subordinate the whole to the work- 

 ing out of his subject without giving undue prominence to 

 special effects, a conclusion to which we were previously led 

 from other considerations. 



If music is not the first of the arts, it is yet " primus inter 

 pares." It is pre-eminently the emotional art, and yet, for 

 that reason, more likely to be misrepresented in its true 

 function by a weak sentimentalism. All true lovers of 

 music should rejoice that music and musical criticism are 

 coming to be placed upon the same basis of legitimate, 

 rational, and philosophical study with the other arts ; that 

 it is steadily rising in the appreciation of the public as an 

 art, not as an amusement ; and they should be thankful for 

 that intellectual and emotional expansion of our later civili- 

 zation which will enable us more and more to reap the full 

 benefit of the highest modern musical culture. 



