18 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 
and too important to be consigned to such incompetency. The relation 
of the artist to the art-patronizing spirit of society reminds one of Carlyle’s 
reference to the lion invited to the feast of chick-weed—either the lion 
ate nothing or else devoured the chickens. 
What is art? Is it a something to amuse, to entertain merely, to be 
purchased by those who cannot comprehend the sacrifices, the hard- 
ships, the heroic sincerity of genius? Genius might well exclaim with 
Hamlet: 
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, 
Absent thee from felicity a while, 
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, 
To tell my story— 
In music “the style is the man,” being neither accidental nor self- 
chosen. The lark was not taught its song—being a lark it sang ever 
thus. Plato’s saying that “he who is his own master knocks in vain at 
the doors of poetry,” is too deep for those who would according to fixed 
rules make respectable citizens of all mankind; but to those to whom 
the meaning of these words has been revealed, the relation of creative 
genius to art appears no longer as a matter of the mere intellect in its 
choice of a form of expression. Mere talent listens to the voice of those 
in authority, to the dictates of publishers and public, even boasting of 
its diplomacy; but genius knows but one command, and that command 
is its own conscience. 
Musical form is not in its true sense the process of shaping a composi- 
tion from without according to established rules, but is an inner force 
self-contained within the music itself, inseparable from the spirit of 
music; and therefore the relation of the composer to form is one of the 
heart rather than the head; an unconscious recognition of all that is 
included in a perfect work of art; a recognition due to an intuitive poetic 
insight rather than to reason. If we trace its development historically 
we find that it is as impossible to separate it from the outer influence of 
the social, political and musical condition of any particular period, as 
to isolate genius itself from the forces of heredity, nationality and the 
spirit of its time. But great genius becomes more and more isolated as 
it penetrates yet deeper the mystery of art, and form, that objective phase 
of the subjectivity of music, at last seemingly transcends itself, so that 
