STYLE IN MUSICAL AET 673 



ering of the intention and faculty of composers. English people seem 

 to have less quickness in perception of style than many other nations, 

 especially in things musical. Hence the question of style in light 

 things becomes of the more importance, since, having this predisposi- 

 tion for farcical and irresponsible music, lack of style will the more 

 surely leave them wallowing in sheer unalloyed stupidity. 



While insisting that style is a desirable and possible quality in 

 every standard of art, it must be admitted that it is no positive cri- 

 terion of the quality of the thoughts expressed in the style. The style 

 can be no more than a criterion whether the thing is good of its kind 

 or no. Yet style is so closely interwoven with every moment jf 

 art's existence that a great thought is hardly separable from the 

 style in which it is expressed; and a great thought which comes from 

 a full heart is almost sure to be expressed in a style which is con- 

 sistently noble and dignified. Whereas a thought that a man is only 

 trying to make appear great is often betrayed by some triviality of 

 detail, some glaring inconsistency of phraseology which betrays the 

 mountebank or the charlatan. 



The greatest achievement in point of style is to convey the idea 

 which belongs to the artist or the speaker in its widest significance in 

 the exact terms no more and no less which will make it take the 

 most complete' hold of the human mind. The perfect style does not 

 weary with superfluous explanations, nor leave in doubt by lack of 

 decisiveness. It anticipates how far a suggestive word will carry the 

 mind, and how much can be left out. It plays with associations, with 

 relations of terms to one another, with the lilt of rhythm and the 

 infinite variety of tone. The resources of artistic appeal to men's sen- 

 sibilities and intelligence seem almost inexhaustible. But there is a 

 very important qualification, which restricts the range of what is 

 available, and that is consistency. All things are neither lawful nor 

 expedient. It is the misuse of resources which is mainly responsible 

 for vulgarity: the hodge-podge of phraseology belonging to the pulpit 

 and the street; the jumble of symphonic style and the histrionic. Some 

 methods of art are capable of absorbing far greater variety of traits 

 drawn from many different quarters than others. The greater some- 

 what easily absorbs the less. And yet the greater easily drops and its 

 nobility is tarnished by the deliberate utterance of a triviality. An 

 inconsistency of style may be an accident. But if the accidents recur 

 what seemed to be an accident becomes an essential. Many gifted com- 

 posers have gone so far as to give the world a noble phrase which 

 seems to have the qualities of fine music. But the impulse does not 

 last. Lack of fibre, lack of the power of persistence, prevents the 

 maintenance of the high level of thought, and then comes the inevit- 

 able make-up mere phrases decked in futile and superfluous orna- 

 ment ; tricks of art which have no real relation to the mood at first 



