666 MUSIC 



Differences of style are the outcome of the instinct for adaptation. 

 In art the most perfect style is that which is most perfectly adapted to 

 the conditions of presentment. Many different factors minister to 

 its development. For instance, material counts for a great deal. If 

 a work has to be executed in stone the particular qualities of the 

 material necessitate a style of art different from that of works 

 executed in iron. The effects which can aptly be produced in one 

 material are quite different from those which can be produced in 

 another. The result of trying to imitate effects which can be 

 produced in one kind of material in another which has quite different 

 properties is either stupid or vulgar in proportion to the dexterity 

 of the worker; and style is either gratifying or repulsive in propor- 

 tion to its just relation to its conditions. It is the same in life 

 as in art. To take an extreme case : the style of an untutored savage 

 in a very hot climate might be quite picturesque and appropriate in 

 his own country, but if any ill-regulated being were to adopt it in 

 the streets of a cool and civilized city he would probably have to be 

 suppressed. There is a technique of life as well as of art, and the 

 style of every section of society varies in accordance with its condi- 

 tions; and the outcome of attempts to adopt a style belonging to 

 one branch of society in a branch of society whose conditions of life 

 are altogether different is vulgarity. "When we come to apply these 

 considerations to music we find circumstances of the same nature. 

 In music the simplest parallel to the differences of material in plastic 

 arts lies in the varieties of means by which music is to be performed 

 and made appreciable to sense. All music which is worthy of the name 

 must in the nature of things be written to be performed by instru- 

 ments or voices. And they all have their particular idiosyncrasies. 

 Organs have their special aptitudes and their special inaptitudes; 

 and the music which is written for them, if it is to attain to any 

 degree of artistic perfection, must be based upon the recognition of 

 them. Violins have their special powers of expression and effect, 

 and their limitations ; horns have theirs, and trombones theirs. Voices 

 can do certain things that instruments cannot do, and all instruments 

 can do things which voices cannot do. There is, as it were, a dialect 

 appropriate to each instrument and each class of voice; and there 

 are even ideas which can be better expressed in one dialect than an- 

 other; and the employment of any particular means of utterance, 

 whether violins, pianofortes, organs, hautboys, bassoons, voices, harps 

 or trumpets is only justified when they are used for passages which 

 can exactly be given with fullest effect by them. 



If there is a style for each individual member of the orchestra, even 

 more essentially is there a style for the orchestra as a whole. It is 

 capable of almost unlimited complexities of rhythm and figure, of 

 varieties of color which are countless. In power of tone it is tre- 



