THE RELATION OF THE COMPOSER TO MUSICAL FORM 21 
tragically brief, when we consider all the lessons to be given and the 
duties attended to in order that the man of genius may be allowed to 
dwell on this earth and at last be buried, possibly, as was Mozart—in a 
pauper’s grave. Suchaman may feel that had a less unkind fate ruled 
the outward destiny of his life he could have composed more and possibly 
greater works; but he also knows that no misfortune could injure the 
purity of what he has created, and that because he has struggled his 
creative work has been nobler, truer art: he at least has remained true 
to himself. 
In the matter of his musical personality every great composer has 
remained true to himself. In the sense that the great current of world . 
energy is far too powerful to be resisted by any individual, however great, 
have all men of genius been children of their own age. Especially is 
this true of the composer, for his art can only become known to the world 
through the co-operation of others, executive musicians (soloists or in 
orchestras). The Beethoven symphony would have been impossible 
even less than a century earlier, and the genius of Wagner, in spite of its 
power to assert itself, could not have expressed itself in the eighteenth 
century. But neither Beethoven nor Wagner could have been like 
Meyerbeer or Rossini. The “heaven storming genius” of Beethoven 
would under any circumstances have defied any power that opposed its 
approach to its high ideal. 
Were I asked to name one serious menace to art at the present time, 
I would say, that it is the cowardly attitude of the composer toward his 
art and the public, as paradoxical as such a statement would seem in an 
age when, were we to judge by the seemingly heroic attempts of musicians 
to be original, to defy all the art of the past, we must consider this an 
age of gods rather than men. But is this striving for originality really 
heroic? Is it not in truth more often a confession of weakness, of the 
lack of creative power and the desire to conceal poverty of musical 
thought beneath the glorious power and tone color of the modern orches- 
tra? Fora time this may deceive the general public but it cannot deceive 
the musician acquainted with that wealth of composition inherited from 
a wonderful past. New forms have developed today, some of which began 
in the period of pure romanticism, while others are yet more modern, but 
