254 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



tives) alone truly understand the past. Nor is this opinion a mere theory: 

 its truth is estabhshed by no less authority than the attitude of some of 

 the greatest of modern composers. Wagner, that commanding force in 

 the revolutionary spirit of modern music, worshiped Beethoyen as a god, 

 refusing to write a symphony because Beethoven had written the last 

 great symphony. Only recently it is said of one of the greatest modern 

 composers that after conducting Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, he turned 

 with tears in his eyes to one standing near and exclaimed: "If I could 

 only compose such music !" 



While it is true that no one claims that the creative power of the present 

 is as wonderful as that of the past, it is also true that an understanding of 

 what constituted the real greatness of the past is far from being generally 

 understood. The musical world today is intoxicated with technique — 

 the technique of soloists, of orchestras and of composers. It is indeed 

 truly wonderful to what heights virtuosity has reached, but alas, it is the 

 universal history of art that the beginning of its ultimate decline is marked 

 by the worship of technique. The gravest danger seems unquestionably 

 to be that the virtuoso technique in orchestral composition is demanded 

 of the modern composer. It is difficult to conceal poverty of musical ideas 

 on the keyboard of the piano, but in the orchestra it is far aifferent, and 

 especially in the modern orchestra with its unlimited resources in tone — 

 color and technical possibiUties. The impressionist in music can give to 

 the world impressions, moods stated in gorgeous masses of tone-color, 

 and by "wandering through all the knoMTi and unknown keys," over- 

 whelm a listening public, unable as it is to contradict such a composer's 

 methods. 



C. Hubert H. Parry, in his valuable work on The Art of Music, has 

 most clearly stated this relation of the modern orchestral composer to the 

 public in the following criticism on Berlioz, who so strongly influenced 

 modern orchestration by his compositions and theories. "The kernel of 

 the GaUic view of things is, moreover, persistently theatrical, and all the 

 music in which they have been successful has had either direct or second- 

 ary connection with the stage. Berlioz was so typical a Frenchman in 

 this respect that he could hardly see even the events of his own life as they 

 actually were ; but generally in the light of a sort of fevered frenzy, which 



