TENDENCIES IN MODERN MUSICAL COMPOSITION 25 1 



vital. The attitude of a lesser composer of the classic period must neces- 

 sarily have been right. If he failed it was no contradiction to the princi- 

 ples of his art ; but the romanticist has the dangerous privilege of being 

 looked upon as not understood, as having penetrated the mystery of life 

 either beyond the power of his art to express, or else as having attained to 

 a statement in his art beyond the power of the world at large to compre- 

 hend; and this constitutes a most powerful and at the same time most 

 dangerous factor influencing modern composition. 



Someone has said: "There are words that have been in love with each 

 other from the beginm'ng of language, and when they meet, that is poe- 

 try." Another has added to these lines: "There are notes in the realm of 

 harmony which are seeking their complement; when found, that is music." 

 Music from Bach to Schumann was in its inner nature lyric. It was 

 the song of the heart, and true music will ever be the song of the heart 

 whether as the simple folk song or as the outpouring of a world 

 of musical feehng in the symphony. The final test, as in poetry, 

 is that music be inevitable. The folk songs of the people have endured 

 through the centuries : the compositions of many a profound thcDrist of the 

 past, marvels of technical skill and learning, are now almost forgotten. 

 Living as we do in the present age we cannot pass final judgment upon it ; 

 but is it not possible to say at least this, that much, very much of modern 

 composition lacks the inevitable ? Is it not too often the product of musi- 

 cal scholarship rather than the inspiration of genius ? It is impossible to 

 measure these vast tidal waves of art which have swept over the cen- 

 turies. Their ebb and flow is all-powerful and can be neither hastened 

 nor retarded. Kant confessed that he was overwhelmed with awe by two 

 things : one, the star deep of space, without hmit, and without end ; and 

 the other, right and wrong. And so he to whom the deeper meaning of 

 art has been revealed, has learned that greatest of lessons — humihty in 

 the presence of the unknowable. 



Let us now take a more definite view of the several forms as treated by 

 modern composers. In modern songs we meet with much that is unin- 

 spired. A glance at the history of song reveals in Schubert that wonder- 

 ful union of music and words, and if at times his heaven-born music lifts to 

 a higher plane poems in themselves commonplace, it only proves that in 



