STYLE IN MUSICAL ART 667 



mendous, in depth of expression infinite. To venture to put such an 

 engine of power into motion at all seems to be courting responsibility. 

 And to put it into motion to utter things which would be quite ade- 

 quately expressed by a pianoforte or a set of voices is like calling the 

 House of Lords together to cook a homely omelet. People do not 

 hear orchestral music often enough to realize what the highest instru- 

 mental style is. But any one who has a sense of the adequate adapta- 

 tion of technique to material or means of performance revolts at 

 choral music written in the style of a brass band, organ music which 

 is mere pianoforte music, or orchestral music in disguise. But the 

 hurry and lack of concentration of modern life, and the habit of 

 producing for a public which has neither discrimination nor education, 

 and the habit of playing such a vast amount of arrangements all tend 

 to dull people's sense of the essential meaning of style, and to make 

 composers miss the higher artistic opportunities in the urgent desire 

 to gratify ephemeral whims. 



But style is far from being regulated only by the essen- 

 tial peculiarities of the instruments by which the music is to 

 be performed. Every detail in the situation for which the 

 music is intended, the attitude of mind to which it is to appeal, 

 and the circumstances under which it is to be performed have 

 bearing upon the methods suitable to be employed, and therefore upon 

 the style. When music is intended for domestic consumption it 

 entails a totally different style from that which would be suited to 

 some great public function. It entails its being pure enough to live 

 with, and rich enough to sustain constant interest, and a level of 

 thought more near to the contemplative than the active. While the 

 music of the public function must be stirring and brilliant, direct and 

 forcible, and it attains its highest standard when it is elevating and 

 noble in diction. Even in characteristic deteriorations the difference 

 of style peeps out. The risks of the domestic style are sentimentality 

 and languorous and unhealthy sensuosity, and the risk of the public- 

 rejoicing style is blatant vulgarity. Of style in relation to attitude of 

 mind and mood that of the old Church music is probably most char- 

 acteristic. Its contemplative and devotional character, its quietude 

 and inwardness, were partly owing to the limited development of 

 artistic technique before the latter part of the sixteenth century, and 

 to the fact that no other style was sufficiently developed to distract the 

 minds of composers. The effect of the circumstances and the atti- 

 tude of submission to the authority of the Church was to produce a 

 style so subtly consistent and so perfectly regulated that hardly any- 

 thing in the range of modern art can compare with it. The instant 

 true secular music came into being it was doomed. The secular 

 phraseology could not be kept out of it, and in no great space of time 

 submerged the devotional element, and the hybrid which resulted was 



