ACCENT AND REGNANT HARMONY 175 



record of music's first great wave of development as 

 an art. The classic form is not only to be regarded 

 as the necessary culmination of a wave of psychical 

 development, but is an ideal and spiritual achievement, 

 an eternal glory, which no extravagance of language 

 can overestimate. In it, all that has followed is 

 rooted, for music-art is a continuous evolution, the old 

 and the new being one in kind and links of one chain. 

 In music, as in all the arts, the classic constitutes the 

 firm rock of its school, it is the basic school of music- 

 culture for composers, performers and listeners. 

 Composers and performers thus schooled are quickly 

 detected. "Learning to know the best that has been 

 thought, said and done," this, Matthew Arnold tells 

 us, is culture. For music-culture we should therefore 

 turn first of all to the old masters whose works 

 clearly reveal the fundamental principles of tone-art. 

 We may then turn to the modern masters not for the 

 purpose of learning as some think how they have 

 violated laws, but to continue our culture. Genius 

 enforces, does not violate, laws. Its ideal and spiritual 

 content, the potency and universality of its message, 

 not its specific form, constitute its justification and 

 greatness before the tribunal of beauty, the art-deity. 

 This message and greatness like beauty itself are 

 mysteries, yet in the presence of a great work of art 

 they are realities: the beauty of the work is unmis- 

 takable, es packt 



