SOME PHASES OF MUSICAL AESTHETICS 



By George M. Ch.^dwick 



In an age when scientific methods are so universally employed in 

 searching the records of the past that supposed truths may be verified 

 as such or exposed as errors, it is unreasonable to expect that the 

 arts can escape this critical examination; nor is this to be regretted, 

 even though it destroy many a beautiful theory extending even to the 

 myths of the ancients. '" What is truth ?' said jesting Pilate, and would 

 not stay for an answer." May it not be asked, Who by staying has 

 received an answer ? The greatest historians have but outhned their 

 subjects, and no philosopher has yet found the center or measured the 

 extent of the human universe. Of modern science it may be said 

 that one of its most impressive lessons to the world is its rebuke to 

 past ignorance and its reminder of present limitations. What is, 

 and what ought to be, are possibly two questions of paramount 

 importance to a certain class, involving as they do the questions, 

 what was, and what ought to have been. To this class of moralizing 

 theorists it is well to give a timely warning. 



Through the centuries runs a thread which we call Art — or shall 

 we say there blooms a lovely flower from the hopes, the dreams and 

 the sufferings of humanity which is Art ? The definition is immaterial, 

 for, after all, its meaning is beyond our comprehension. The passing 

 years bring to the artist at least a partial transference of interest in 

 the question of "What is art ?" to that of What is the attitude of the 

 world toward art, and what is the relation of art to the fife of the 

 world ? If art be the flower, how shall one define the flower, not being 

 able to explain the nature of the plant from which it blossomed? 

 It is art in some form, define it as you will, that for ages has been 

 inseparable from individual and national life ; and after all the attempts 

 to explain this or that art of any given period or nation, the vital 

 question remains, What was the attitude of that period or that nation 

 toward art? Was it a phenomenon which appeared from time to 



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