mmK' 
 
 liMiSl^jiitKiic^tiiVAiVJ!- <^S*^Ji>iWm
 
 yur ^ ^ 
 
 '"?ANCH, 
 
 ^"VLMOii I ,, UALIFORMA 
 LIBRARY, 
 
 "UDS ANGELES. CALIF.
 
 BOOKS BY EDWAKD DICKINSON 
 
 Pcau.N.P .T CHARLIW HrBIDNKR-g 80N9 
 
 Matle In !»»• Mtelorjr of tb* WmIotii 
 
 Church. Cr 8vo "•< WW 
 
 Th« S«uil> of lh« Hlttory of Muik. Cr. 
 
 H.o -' •=» «) 
 
 Th« lUJucatlon of « Mu»lc I o»»r. 12mo 
 
 MutU and th« HtfJicr Iducatlon. I'-'mo 
 
 ntl 11 :>o
 
 MLSiC AND THE 
 MIGHKR KDICATION
 
 MUSIC y\M) II IF. 
 IIIGIIKR KOUCATiON 
 
 BY 
 EDWARD DICKINSON 
 
 or mt attToat ahd cmmcuM or mvuc. 
 
 1 I " 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLl S SCRIBNKRS SONS 
 
 I9»5
 
 Copyright, igis. by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published April, igis
 
 TO 
 
 nt aoNoaco uuioct 
 or 
 
 FENELON H. KICE 
 
 Di (SATTrtn •KCOGMrnoN or llt^ s<>i<i.r <>tivics 
 
 TO HUtlCAL ROttATIos IS AMUIICA 
 
 THIS Book
 
 I conceive art to be not an applied science, or a branch 
 of industrial t raining, or yet an extreme refinement of 
 culture study, but simply an in(li5|)cnsablc means toward 
 the achie%'cment of that which is the end and object of 
 education — namely, the building of character. 
 
 — Ralpu Ai>ams Cram.
 
 CONTKNTS 
 
 TRELUDE 
 In a Colleuk MiMi Room i 
 
 PART I 
 Tm College and tue Fine Abts 9 
 
 PART II 
 
 Music IN THE CoLLK.r.f 76 
 
 PART III 
 
 Tkaoieh AND Critic : His Preparahon and His 
 MCTUOD 134
 
 PRELUDE 
 
 IN A COLLKC.K MUSIC ROOM 
 
 In his (lc5crtc<l classroom the "Professor of the 
 HLstt)ry ami Criticism of Music" (to use hLs pon- 
 derous and inadequate ofTicial title) was sitting, 
 opprr-isctl !)>• the half-melancholy that comes over 
 one who realizes that the year's task has suddenly 
 ended. Nine happy months had flown by "on 
 pinions of st^ng." The recollections of the year, 
 floating in the atmosphere of an art which sup- 
 plants the world of sha|>c and action with an inner 
 world of gathering ami dissolving forms, secmetl 
 hardly more actual than the phantasms of dreams. 
 The silence of the building scr\'cd to confirm this 
 impression of the insubstantiality of the past. 
 During the hours of the institution's activity thb 
 lecturer had lx*en dimly conscious of a weird con- 
 fusion of sounds from pianos, violins, and voices 
 which, in spite of deafened walls and fl(X)rs, made 
 a hoarse, muflletl tumult as they issuetl from the 
 crevices of the dtK)rs, reverberated in the corri- 
 dors, and, escaping through ojx'n windows, l)csieged 
 him from the space outside. By \nrtuc of a merci- 
 ful provision of nature, his hearing had become 
 
 I
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 indifferent to these incoherent vibrations, and they 
 were no more to him than the murmur of the wind 
 and the clamor of the distant streets. But now 
 he was more aware of silence than he had been of 
 noise, and the withdrawal of what had been a 
 part of the very air he breathed gave an impres- 
 sion of something unnatural and ominous. He 
 caught himself listening almost anxiously for foot- 
 steps that did not come; he fancied that to look 
 into the dim, deserted corridors would start a 
 sense of fear, for a sort of ghostly presence seemed 
 to lurk in them, as in a deserted house after a 
 funeral. 
 
 As the moments passed the occupant of this soli- 
 tude slowly awoke to a consciousness of the exist- 
 ence of another world than the ideal one in which 
 so much of his daily existence had been absorbed. 
 The clatter of hoofs and wheels upon the pave- 
 ment, which had often been an irritating distrac- 
 tion, seemed now to have lost its harshness. He 
 distinguished human voices, mingled with the 
 warble of birds; and as they were borne to him 
 upon the soft June breeze they lay lightly upon his 
 spirit, in soothing contrast to the stress of those 
 tones which fatigue the mind when it strains to 
 grasp the principle of order in their whirling forms. 
 For art — music even more, it would seem, than 
 literary or plastic expression — demands of her 
 votaries a putting forth of energies of which they 
 are commonly unaware until she withdraws and 
 relinquishes the jaded nerves to the gentler ma-
 
 IN A COLLEGE MUSIC ROOM 
 
 nipuhitions of nature. Then reaction comes, an 
 apathy m«>rf or lev* prolongitl, until in place of 
 one life lost another life Is gainctl. 
 
 It takes time, however, to effect the reconcilia- 
 tion. an<i henre the closing of the college year, so 
 lon>?eil for by the weariol brain, brought with it 
 that depression which often accompanies a slack- 
 ening of wontetl energies. With the removal of 
 the former tension there came a stirt of mental 
 numbness, so that even the anticipation of rest 
 was not (ILstinrt enough t») give positive pleasure. 
 'ITierc w;us a confusion in his mind in the jostling 
 of vague recollections and equally vague premoni- 
 tions. He felt a nec<l of readjustment, but his 
 faculties were too relaxc<l to spring at once to the 
 seizure of the new occasion. Habit suggestctl 
 continuc<l labor, but the silence of the building, 
 the glare of the June sun, the flutter of the lilac 
 leaves which beckoned to him over the window- 
 Ictige. the revulsion of mood after the good-by 
 wortls to the class, the sadness with which he 
 watched those year-long companions, most of 
 whom he would never sec again, pass out and dis- 
 appear all these sensations gathcrc<l upon him 
 like a spell and dulled his brain as with the hov- 
 ering of invisible, hx-pnoti/.ing hands. The year 
 had gone, indeetl, and the dark cavern of the past 
 had swallowed it up forever. 
 
 At last the lecturer - a lecturer no longer, but 
 just a pl.iin human Ixring — roused himself, went 
 to the window, and looked out into the great, open 
 
 3
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 world. The radiant, opulent summer seemed to 
 meet him with joyous invitations. The dazzling 
 sunshine, the quivering masses of green, the glis- 
 tening clouds soaring like happy winged creatures 
 in the expanse of blue, the warm tide of the wind 
 flowing with rhythmic rise and fall from immeas- 
 urable spaces, all the seductions of the season of 
 unspeakable glory took quick possession of his 
 soul. The world of the classroom seemed to slip 
 away and merge with the infinite existence, and 
 he awoke to perceive that there is somehow a 
 vital relation of the one to the other. All our 
 acts, he said to himself, are bound by invisible 
 fibres to every other act under the universal sun. 
 He truly lives who recognizes the unity of all life. 
 We try to isolate our vocation and develop it 
 along its own special lines, but nature knows no 
 such exclusion. Rightly to specialize means to 
 emphasize, not to detach. Every activity of ours 
 is like a part in a complex web of counterpoint — 
 it goes its own way and has its own individual 
 rhythm, but finds its full significance only in its 
 union with other activities which combine to form 
 a living whole. 
 
 The thoughts of maturity, like the thoughts of 
 youth, are ''long, long thoughts." Not merely 
 are they unbounded by conditions of space, but 
 they outrun the speed of time. And so the weary 
 lecturer, refreshed by the splendor of the exhaust- 
 less sun and the touch of the tireless wind, was 
 aroused to fresh mental activity, and as his mind
 
 IN A COLLEGE MUSIC ROOM 
 
 swept over the past year the classroom events 
 seemed to leap back an<l gather into a focus 
 where he could view them from a new |x)int of 
 vantage. There is no question that the annual 
 release which the professional teacher enjoys is a 
 benefit in more ways than one, not the least being 
 the opportunity it gives him to hold his subject 
 at arm's length and measure it against the back- 
 ground of general human interests. Under tliis 
 scrutiny his special task need not shrink; rather 
 should it dilate, as it is seen in relations long un- 
 sus|>ecte<i, making its own unique contribution to 
 the larger life that surrounds it by means of affilia- 
 tions it fm<ls there, which in turn give back to it 
 the sustenance necessary for its own wholesome 
 development. 
 
 "All arc needed by each one; 
 Nothing is fair or good alone." 
 
 Fortunate is the specialist who learns this lesson. 
 It is a lesson of tolerance and true estimate of 
 obligation. He will know how to reach outside 
 of his main interest for richer sources of supply, 
 and his work will receive a revitalizalion that will 
 give assurance of finer Issues. He will not lower 
 his respect for his own peculiar business; rather 
 will he enhance it, since the honor he jxiys to other 
 tasks he will feel he has a right to demand for his 
 own. Strictly speaking, there is no less nor more 
 in human service, provided that each man's labor 
 
 5
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 be suited to his talent and performed with sin- 
 cerity and reverence. Nothing that is good can 
 be spared; the thing that seemed trivial may be 
 the very thing that was needed to make the whole 
 complete. We must only see to it that there 
 shall be no collisions or cross-purposes, each task 
 in a clear field playing its own free part in the 
 furtherance of the common weal. 
 
 It is often surprising to see how quickly sanity 
 of spirit is recovered when one looks beyond the 
 fact in quest of its relations. As this promoter of 
 the love of music saw his beloved employment re- 
 treating into the background and taking its place 
 among other interests as great or greater, he re- 
 alized that he was not isolated — as one often 
 feels that one is when the whole energy is thrown 
 into the single work in hand — but, as a member 
 of the large board of college administration, re- 
 sponsible with his colleagues for the well-being of 
 the whole institution. His ambition had been to 
 develop his department to the utmost and win 
 for it a commanding position, but as a conscien- 
 tious and liberal person he must also consider 
 other claims, feeling, in the vision of the larger 
 life which had come to him, that he must justify 
 to himself, on the highest grounds, the effort 
 which he had been somewhat aggressively mak- 
 ing to establish art as a necessity in the college 
 world. 
 
 Brooding over the problem in the stillness of 
 his deserted lecture-room, this devotee of music, 
 
 6
 
 IN A COLLKGE MUSIC ROOM 
 
 grateful for what his t)cIove<l art had done for 
 him, ami als«) cordially rccopni/inn the deference 
 due to other min«ls of diflcrcnl cxiHrionce from 
 his own, iK'gan t«) formulaic his convictions of the 
 true relationship l>elwcen his own <lcpartment and 
 the whole mechanism of collej»e life. For he felt 
 that his duty re<iuiretl not only that he cultivate 
 the love of music in his pupils, but that he also 
 adjust the results of his teaching to other disci- 
 plines, so that out of his effort, in corresjxindencc 
 with the efforts of other guides, a unity of intel- 
 lectual life shcmld pr(X-ee<l. He l)elieve<l that this 
 unity could he achieve<l, hut under what condi- 
 tions and by what methfxls? Like the French 
 philost>phcr, he must be allowcti to say, "I culti- 
 vate my garden"; but at the same time he must 
 look over the lx»unds of the little estate that is 
 given him to till, and fmd insi)irati<)n and direc- 
 tion for his lalxirs in the adaptation of his hus- 
 bandry to the issues of the greater harvest. 
 
 Thus there oi)cne<l to this student of musical 
 values a task worthy of his leisure in the golden 
 summer-time. What more profitable employment 
 in hours of me<litation among the hills or by the 
 ocean shore than to review the discoveries which 
 the years had brought him, and make his course 
 of life clearer thereafter by studying out the real 
 function of his jxirticular wheel in the big machine? 
 Even at the very moment of insight a multitude 
 of ideas lK*gan to press upon him, and in the 
 thoughtful weeks that ensued they drew to them- 
 
 7
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 selves many winged companions, and all at last 
 shaped themselves into the conclusions which are 
 set down in the Lines that follow.
 
 PART I 
 THE CULLKGK AND TIIK FIXF ARTS 
 
 Ip the college could Ix? considered an epitome 
 of the world, a micnxosm in which the activities 
 of human life ojxrrale in duplicate upon a reduced 
 scale, then the assignment of a place to the fine 
 arts would not Ik* dinicult, since the part played 
 by art in civilization is [)lainly shown by history. 
 But the college is not that. Life moves there 
 under certain jKculiar conditions, in which the 
 organization is more rigid, the aims more meth- 
 odically formulated, the problem, on the whole, 
 more simple than in the world outside, because 
 administered by a permanent uniftetl body whose 
 authority is unquestioned and whose decrees fol- 
 low a very distinct line of time-honored precedent. 
 The moral conditions within the academic walls 
 arc plainly differentiated from those without in 
 this respect, that while the procctlure of nature, 
 where she acts freely, is to devise obstructions 
 that shall m;ike the path to spirilu:U and intellec- 
 tual attainment as ditlicult as jwssible. with the 
 expectation of multitudinous failures, the cflort of
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 the college is to remove all moral obstructions, 
 and if it rears intellectual impediments it makes 
 haste to show the most efficient and speedy way 
 by which they may be surmounted. The method 
 of the world is to discipline, and also to eliminate, 
 by temptation; the method of the college, like that 
 of the family, is to keep evil enticement far away, 
 and to estabhsh certain wholesome tastes and 
 habits, so that when the assaults of temptation 
 come the soul may be provided with armor that 
 is proof against them. The college, indeed, is 
 often in doubt concerning the amount of freedom 
 to be allowed, but that there is a sharp limit to 
 freedom there is never any question. At the same 
 time the college strives to give its young disciples 
 heart for the coming struggle, and to touch their 
 eyes with the magic ointment that shall make 
 clear their vision of ultimate values. Protection, 
 instruction, inspiration — these are the benefits 
 which the college is organized to oflfer. The world 
 offers two of them, and these it does not enforce 
 by any external compulsion, but simply provides 
 them for him who builds his own castle, assigns 
 his own lessons, and courts his own muse. 
 
 The broadest conception of the function of a 
 college takes no account of the everlasting dispute 
 over the "cultural" vs. the "vocational" aim of 
 college training. There is one vocation, appointed 
 to all men if they will accept it, with which the 
 college is supremely concerned — that vocation, 
 embracing all others, which is found in the constant 
 
 lO
 
 THE COLLEGK AND THK FINE ARTS 
 
 appropriation of whatever will promote the full 
 life of the st^ul. The cultivation of any siK'cial 
 aptitude draws its sanction ultimately from that; 
 its highest worth consists in the contribution it 
 moke^ to that. The development of the noblest 
 powers of intellect and spirit is not one thing and 
 the "vocation" another thing. "Resolutely to 
 live in the goo<l. the l)eautiful, and the complete" 
 is culture, and the implicit if not verbally expressc*! 
 purjx>se of every college, no matter how much its 
 courses may be shajKd for "practical" ends, is to 
 enable the vocational training, through the clTi- 
 ciency it induces, to minister to this fulness of 
 life, not merely in the individual, but also in the 
 society to which he Ix'longs. The most ardent 
 advocates of courses that "prepare directly for 
 success in life" are undoubtetlly more lilx-ral than 
 the common inteqiretation of their dogma which 
 they often seem to encourage, and in their hearts 
 would not object to President Nicholas Murray 
 Butler's assertion that "what science and prac- 
 tical life alike need is not narrow men but broad 
 men sharpened to a point." Neither could they 
 well take exception to William E. Clladstone's 
 protest against that theory of education "which 
 gloats upon success in life instead of studying to 
 secure that the man shall always be greater than 
 his work." The enormous opiH>rt unities afforded 
 by the present age, emphasizing the idea of work 
 for the conquest of the material world, have re- 
 acted against the old itlcalism and have greatly 
 
 II
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 altered the traditional conception of academic edu- 
 cation; but still another reaction toward a new 
 idealism, which will not renounce these conquests 
 but will use them to higher ends, if not already 
 present, will surely appear when the base results 
 of selfish material aggrandizement are made evi- 
 dent. Then comes the problem of the union of 
 two motives which are often held at variance — 
 the development of individual efficiency in order 
 to avoid waste of energy, and the culture of the 
 fuU, free personality for the sake of the highest 
 satisfaction and the completest service. It may 
 be gladly admitted that no institution of learning, 
 not even the most technical of technical schools, 
 ever wishes its graduates to become detached ma- 
 chines, grinding out a product that has no rela- 
 tion to the producer's real life, and be content 
 with that; but rather that they shall merge their 
 trade in the one great business of society, whose 
 highest aim lies not in the mastery of the earth's 
 resources for the increase of wealth and physical 
 comfort, but in granting encouragement and op- 
 portunity to all its members who crave an indi- 
 vidual life that is rich, various, and in harmony 
 with its best instincts. To contribute to the 
 working out of this destiny for the individual and 
 the state involves and requires culture. 
 
 This culture — which, it need hardly be said, 
 has nothing to do with any kind of dilettante 
 exclusiveness, but recognizes every human aspira- 
 tion — this culture, the development of something 
 
 12
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FINE ARTS 
 
 which is to act an a driving force upon the ma- 
 chinery of ihc special discipline, is the aim, even 
 though sometimes unconscious, not only of the 
 collective college establishment but of every scjxi- 
 ratc course of sluily. In our loose phraseology 
 wc discriminate between "practical" and "cul- 
 tural" courses, or, as the latter arc sometimes 
 called, "courses in appreciation." But every col- 
 lege study, if the instructor is really alive to its 
 relations, is a course in appreciation. Strange, is 
 it not, that this phrase should be commonly con- 
 fined to lectures uixm art ! The value of any col- 
 lege course is not in the meagre quantity of facts 
 gathereil in a semester or two; neither is it in the 
 sharpening of certain acquisitive faculties, but 
 rather in the Nision it creates, the imagination it 
 kindles, the mental and moral bracing it aflords 
 through the presentation of stimulating ideals. 
 Nothing is isolated; nothing is known except in 
 its relations; every physical and mental activity, 
 however slender, plays its part in feeding the uni- 
 versal stream of tendency. The scientific courses 
 are often considered as jx-culiarly, even e.xclu.sivcly, 
 practical; but one who pos.sesses the view of sci- 
 ence presented by John Tyndall, in his famous 
 address on "The Scientific Use of the Imagina- 
 tion," knows that science is poetic, that every 
 single discovery leads to a new mystery and a 
 l.irger gcnerali/.alion. that the true study of sci- 
 ence enhances the joy of living and kindles a sort 
 of cosmic emotion in the ardor of research. And 
 
 13
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 so we might go through the list: philosophy, his- 
 tory, economics, languages, and all the rest — 
 every one of them is a course in appreciation, and 
 even the teacher who is most imbued with the voca- 
 tional idea cannot, unless he is the paltriest kind 
 of a pedant, prevent his course from being a cul- 
 ture course. Stevenson must have had some such 
 thought as this behind his words when he said: 
 "So far from its being difficult to instruct while 
 you amuse, it is difficult to do the one thoroughly 
 without the other." Here the word "amuse" is 
 to be interpreted in the largest sense, as implying 
 first the dehght that springs from the normal exer- 
 cise of any faculty and the gratification of curi- 
 osity (the scholar's ever-present motive), and in 
 the second place the exultation that comes when 
 a new fact opens a wider vista in the outlook upon 
 Ufe. "To miss the joy is to miss all." 
 
 II 
 
 The result above described, although inevitable 
 in study that is really worth the name, has not 
 usually been considered the primary aim in the 
 traditional college scheme. Indeed, there is an 
 impression in many college faculties that any course 
 that distinctly gives pleasure to those who elect 
 it is, on the whole, to be looked upon with dis- 
 trust. The traditional college standard is, in a 
 word, austere. But, behold, in these latter days, 
 a novel order of subjects is applying for entrance 
 
 14
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FINE ARTS 
 
 into the college domain — coming not with trum- 
 pets and iKinnrrs, but .stealthily, as claimants not 
 quite sure of their indorsement by the college im- 
 migration commission, which admits or excludes 
 according to its view of the antecedents and 
 promise of the solicitor. What assurance do music 
 and the drama and the reprc*sentalive arts ofler 
 of co-o|xrralive harmony with the college ideal ? 
 They are certainly (juite unlike. e.xternally at least, 
 those intellectual pursuits demanding research and 
 memory, in which strenuous di.sciplinc for tan- 
 gible results is the |>aramount puqx)sc and joy 
 in the immediate presentation a secondary and 
 hardly recognized consideration. F"or the fine arts 
 ofler pleasure as their guerdon: they are crowneti 
 wth beauty and delight is their apparel, and the 
 smile ujx)n their faces seems to promise rewards 
 that have nothing in common with that mental 
 and mor;U toughening which the conventional 
 disciplines assure to those who faithfully undergo 
 their ordeal. Even the most serious advocate of 
 the arts is obliged to admit that the enjo^-ment of 
 them is. or seems to Ix*. involvetl in an attitude 
 of passive contemplation instead of an active ex- 
 ercise of volition; that if they afford discipline the 
 word must Ik* use<l not in its customary sense; 
 that the object which in the scientific courses is 
 primary is with them secondary, if it appears at 
 all; that the development of txste, discrimination, 
 and artistic ftrling, in which their value lies, is 
 purely on inward personal matter and cannot 
 
 15
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 be discovered by the current academic tests or 
 measured by the ordinary marking system. For 
 in respect to things of beauty love is the preliminary 
 condition, and more love the constant aim, and 
 how can the student prove to an examiner's satis- 
 faction the possession of a thing that can only be 
 spiritually discerned? Examinations may be suc- 
 cessfully passed upon form, technique, history, and 
 biography, but those matters are merely accessory; 
 they may assist in appreciation to a certain extent, 
 but a student may have them all at his tongue's 
 end and at the same time be bankrupt so far as 
 any real aesthetic asset is concerned. It is plain 
 that courses that appeal to an innate capacity for 
 feeling, and exact comparatively httle in the way 
 of investigation and memory, must stand in a class 
 by themselves, and that they call upon the aus- 
 tere college preceptors to do what they are most 
 reluctant to do — that is, take the results on trust. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In their claim for recognition the fine arts ap- 
 peal to the faith — now become ancient and or- 
 thodox — in the trinity of the Good, the True, 
 and the Beautiful, "friends to man, who never can 
 be sundered without tears." Has not the college 
 often seemed to sunder them, misunderstanding 
 their mutual dependence because of imperfect defi- 
 nition of terms, misconceiving especially the real 
 essence and office of beauty? At last, however, 
 
 i6
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FINE ARTS 
 
 a palpable change is coming over our American 
 institutions of learning, and it is most interesting 
 to see how the desire of beauty is growing within 
 them. In comp>aring the early college buildings 
 with those of later date, the difTercncc in costliness 
 is indeed enormous, but that is not the important 
 diflerencc. Beauty was often absent from the old 
 dormitories and recitation halls, not Ixrcausc it was 
 expensive (although the limited financial resources 
 must be taken into account), but because it was 
 not deemed necessary. There sur\'ived the tradi- 
 tion of asceticism, the dim association of learning 
 with a metli.Tval ideal of self-mortification, with 
 the monk's cell, which for many generations was 
 its only home, with the vow of poverty, the coarse 
 robe, the wooden l>owl. In bter years there has 
 been a notable change in this conception as the 
 scholar has cease<l to be looked upon as a member 
 of an exclusive and privileged class. This transi- 
 tion from the scholar as clerk to the scholar as 
 man of the world, involved "in the tide of life, in 
 action's storm." has strikingly altered the whole 
 ideal and method of the collegiate establishment. 
 There can be no doubt that the process of bring- 
 ing the college into closer touch with the outer 
 life, one of whose tokens is the increase of luxury 
 and the pride of adornment — coinciding with the 
 tendency which has gone so far to break down 
 the old scparatencss of collegiate training and 
 force it into the stream that makes for increased 
 social comfort and material acquisitions — has 
 
 17
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 worked parallel to the decline of emphasis upon 
 the things of the mind, of which many of our cen- 
 sors within and without the college so bitterly 
 complain, even if the two phenomena are not 
 actually connected as cause and effect. 
 
 It follows that in many opinions the increasing 
 devotion that is paid to the arts, with their primary 
 appeal to the senses and the unchastened emotion, 
 should be resisted as an influence that is still fur- 
 ther debilitating. For, while Tennyson may have 
 been right in saying that the triune sisterhood 
 cannot be sundered without tears, the fact re- 
 mains that while goodness and truth bear inevita- 
 ble connotations of beauty, beauty does not in- 
 evitably bear connotations of goodness and truth. 
 Beauty is not altogether ''its own excuse for being," 
 as Emerson declared, since she may lend her allure- 
 ments to unworthy ends, while to attribute any 
 such infirmity to goodness and truth would be to 
 indulge in a contradiction in terms. The rancor- 
 ous sensualist of Browning's fancy, who ordered 
 his tomb in St. Praxed's Church, might have found 
 a counterpart in the humanist of his day whose 
 mind was bent on the acquisition of learning, but 
 not in one who sought for truth. Goodness and 
 truth are sufficient ends in themselves; beauty 
 not necessarily so. She is also a means, and 
 we must look beyond her. Beauty, therefore, is 
 rightly required to justify herself, for we find in 
 the brilliant periods of art that beauty, while often 
 the handmaid of good, has also lent herself to serv-
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FLNE ARTS 
 
 ice* not noble; that in aflfortling her powerful 
 aid to the stimulation and the gratifuation of dc- 
 aires she has often held herself indilTerent to the 
 ethical consetjuences of her action. And yet, in 
 the fact that we involuntarily attribute loveliness 
 to truth and goodness, wc implicitly ascril>e a 
 divine sanction to the spirit of beauty. These a|>- 
 parent contradictions bewilder us. and in our con- 
 fusion we seem almost driven to the paradox of 
 the Irish |xK*t in his judgment upon love, and, chal- 
 lenging the lollfgr altitude toward beauty, we arc 
 temptcxl to e.xclaim: 
 
 " How wi-sc wt-rc \ ..-n not I — and yet 
 
 Huw {xKjf if yu.. am her from the doorl" 
 
 IV 
 
 This hesitation arises from certain imperfect 
 preconceptions concerning the nature of beauty 
 which are inhcritctl from an ancestry in whose 
 eyes the charms of art secmc<i to conflict with the 
 stern claims of the moral law. Wc may escape 
 from the difTiculty by enlarging our defmitions. 
 If beauty and art mean to us only what they mean 
 to voluptuaries who cherish art as an exclusive 
 gratilicalion which releases them from their right- 
 ful share in the struggle and pain of life, then is 
 art, indeeil, a dangerous setlucer or at best a means 
 of cowardly estaj>e from the realities which call 
 upon us to sacrilice our private comfort for the 
 
 «9
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 sake of the common good. But if art and beauty- 
 are to us what they have been to the sages — the 
 Platos, the Goethes, the Emersons — who saw that 
 some of the highest aspirations of human life can- 
 not be fulfilled without their aid; if we try to con- 
 ceive how much less would be our knowledge of our- 
 selves and our copartners of the ages if heart and 
 soul had never found utterance in the symbols cre- 
 ated by the Dantes, the Michelangelos, the Shake- 
 speares, the Rembrandts, and the Beethovens; or 
 if the temple and cathedral builders had never 
 been moved to put their visions into form; if, 
 most of all, we apprehend the nature of the minis- 
 try which art, wisely fashioned and patriotically 
 administered, may perform in the service of an 
 ideal commonwealth — then are we relieved of our 
 distrust and we see how we have been misled by 
 the purblind guides who would restrict art to func- 
 tions which touch only the surface of things. Art, 
 like any agency constituted for the common bene- 
 fit, may easily be perverted to special and selfish 
 ends. It has been seized upon as a sort of private 
 booty for the further stimulation of those desires 
 which find in money the sole condition of satisfac- 
 tion. It has been appropriated by the privileged 
 classes, made expressive of aristocratic ideas, as in 
 the later French Renaissance, so that aesthetic re- 
 finement and the extreme of decorative splendor 
 have coincided with utter debasement of the larg- 
 est section of the community — Versailles, in its 
 pompous grandeur and delicate softness of man- 
 
 20
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FL\E ARTS 
 
 ners, looking out upon a surrounding squalor and 
 brutishncss like that of the Stone Age. It is these 
 contrasts, not so much the sensuous allurements 
 of the art itself, that have producc<I those reactions 
 upon character which have excited so much icono- 
 clastic ra^c and moral denunciation. The separa- 
 tion of art from the common life does not come from 
 inherent necessity, as though beauty and useful 
 lalxjr were mutually repellent. The powerful and 
 grxsping have seized ujwn the means by which 
 l)cauty is made operative, as they have seized upon 
 the natural products of the earth, and have ap- 
 propriatetl them for their own exclusive behoof. 
 Again and aj;;un has the spirit of art rel>cllcd 
 against this monopoly — temporarily and incom- 
 pletely, but at times with sufficient success to 
 prove that beauty is a universal desire, and that 
 with freedom of opportunity every phase of human 
 activity may lake possession of it and find not 
 only pleasure but actual co-operation in the part- 
 nership. For beauty, when rightly understood, 
 is recognizeii as an inevitable accompaniment of 
 all healthful growth. We have only to open our 
 eyes upon a May morning to sec that beauty is 
 the token of expanding life, that nothing is ugly 
 except abortivcness and decay. When we turn 
 to history we learn that every culminating period 
 of art coincided with a manifestation of national 
 energy in some other direction, as in commerce, 
 discover)', internal development, or conquest; that 
 there is no such thing as decadent art except as 
 
 ai
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 certain technical agencies of expression have loos- 
 ened themselves from the progressive tendencies 
 of the time, and have been feebly used to main- 
 tain a momentary semblance of life when real 
 vitality had been exhausted. 
 
 There is no human need, individual or collect- 
 ive, that cannot be expressed in beautiful form. 
 And it is in the very truth and freedom of the ex- 
 pression, its fitness to the sincere impulse, that 
 its essential beauty lies. It is inevitable, there- 
 fore, that art should be demanded by democracy 
 just as soon as it is reahzed that art is not, in very 
 nature, the special prerogative of any class or in- 
 stitution. Democracy, when properly instructed, 
 or evQn when left to the free exercise of its instincts, 
 soon learns that the play of those social forces of 
 which democracy is the outcome and the efficient 
 agent naturally issues in manifestations which re- 
 act upon the spiritual element in man. More life, 
 richer life, higher life is spontaneously demanded 
 as soon as poUtical and social repressions are re- 
 moved. Beauty is sought because life does not 
 seem complete without it. Just as soon as democ- 
 racy acquires self-consciousness and becomes aware 
 that its attainment is not complete just because 
 certain institutional and legal machinery has been 
 put in operation, then democracy sets itself to 
 solve the unavoidable question — how shall the 
 new conditions promote those ends in which alone 
 the higher capacities of man can find their lasting 
 satisfaction? The instant the problem is clearly 
 
 22
 
 THE COLLEGE AXD THE FINE ARTS 
 
 perceived to be insistently present art Ixrpns to 
 lend its hand, for art, however it may Ik* perversely 
 employed for pride and vainglory, is, nevertheless, 
 everywhere and at all times, a testimony to the 
 spirit th;it cn-ate<l it, and finds its final value to 
 the beholder as a revelation of a spiritual power. 
 If in a democracy the controlling forces make for 
 the general welfare, as in a true democracy they 
 must, then there will ai)[x-ar a demtKratic art 
 which will rise to a higher term than art has here- 
 tofore known in its historic evolution. Ixrcausc it 
 will spring from the popular consciousness and 
 exalt the life of the whole. 
 
 V 
 
 Signs of a rebirth of art in this countr>' have 
 been caught by many observers who at the same 
 time profess their faith in an im{K>nding forward 
 movement toward the attiinment of a nobler de- 
 mocracy. Emerson, writing in 1870. felt the need 
 but saw little ground for confidence. The great 
 historic works of art, the cathedrals, the Madon- 
 nas of Raphael and Titian, tragedy, "the mir- 
 acles of music." "all sprang out of some genu- 
 ine enthusiasm and never out of dilettanteism and 
 holidays. .\.)w ihey languish Ix'causc their pur- 
 pose is merely exhibition." " In this country other 
 interests than religion and patriotism are predomi- 
 nant, and the arts, the daughters of enthusiasm. 
 do not flourish." Our wants "arc superficial 
 
 «3
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 wants and their fruits are superficial institutions." 
 But, as the seer asserts himself again, he exclaims: 
 "Yet, as far as they accelerate the end of poHtical 
 freedom and national education, they are prepar- 
 ing the soil of man for fairer flowers and fruits in 
 another age. For beauty, truth, and goodness 
 are not obsolete; they spring eternal in the breast 
 of man," The time which Emerson foresaw, guar- 
 anteed by his faith in human nature, is perhaps 
 nearer than he dreamed. Mr. John Galsworthy 
 has lately written: '*I cannot help thinking that 
 historians, looking back from the far future, will 
 record this age as the Third Renaissance. Just as 
 in the Greek Renaissance worn-out Pagan ortho- 
 doxy was penetrated by a new philosophy; just 
 as in the Italian Renaissance Pagan philosophy, 
 reasserting itself, fertilized again an already too 
 inbred Christian creed; so now Orthodoxy, ferti- 
 Hzed by Science, is producing a fresh and fuller 
 conception of Hfe — a love of Perfection, not for 
 hope of reward, not for fear of punishment, but 
 for Perfection's sake. Slowly, under our feet, 
 beneath our consciousness, is forming that new 
 philosophy, and it is in times of nev/ philosophies 
 that Art, itself in essence always a discovery, 
 must flourish." 
 
 Mr. W. B. Worsfold finds in the very evolution 
 of an industrialism which has been hitherto con- 
 sidered inevitably repressive of art and culture 
 the assurance of a new sphere for their action 
 among the masses. "The demand for the Umi- 
 
 24
 
 THE COLLEGK ASD THE KLNE ARTS 
 
 tation of the hours of labor and for the provi- 
 sion of cxlcndcti opportunities for mcnlaJ culture, 
 which loL'rthcr form one of the foremost of the 
 idcaU «)f m^hlcrn democracy, receives a new sig- 
 nilicancc when wc recognize Uie biological ba-sis 
 for the connrclion between art and leisure. For 
 scientific analysis makes it phiin that iXv>lhetic en- 
 joyment, whether in the individual or in the com- 
 munity, is only {mssiblc when there is *an organiza- 
 tion so suiK-rior that the energies have not to be 
 wholly expended in the fullilmcnt of material re- 
 (1 ts from hour to hour.' — (Herbert Spencrr). 
 
 A. iclivily, therefore, depends directly upon 
 
 the economic management of the physical and men- 
 tal faculties; and, since iK)lilical, social, and bi- 
 ological dtvilopmcnt alike tends to produce this 
 result, it is clear that, with the progress of human- 
 ity, art and literature will occupy an increasingly 
 im}>ortant place in the life of man. Democracy, 
 therefore, instead of destroying must tend to fos- 
 ter Art." "The time has come," he goes on to 
 say, "when art and literature arc no longer the 
 property of the few, but when, in fact, they are as 
 intimately a part of the life of civilized p)coplcs as 
 they wore in the age of Pericles; and therefore the 
 identity of their spirit u-ith the spirit of the truest 
 thought and the hight^st conduct — wliich Plato 
 asserted to l>e the true relation between them and 
 the life of man — seems no longer impossible of 
 realization, but hxs. on the contrary, come to be 
 regarded as the natural goal of their development." 
 
 •5
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 "In America," said F. W. H. Myers, "the rule 
 has passed to the multitude, largely swayed in 
 subordinate matters by organized wealth, but in 
 the last resort supreme. The ideal of the new com- 
 munity at first was wealth; but, as its best litera- 
 ture and its best society plainly show, that ideal 
 is shifting in the direction of culture. The younger 
 cities, the coarser classes, still bow down undis- 
 guisedly to the god Dollar; but when this phiHs- 
 tine deity is rejected as shaming his worshippers, 
 aesthetic culture seems somehow the only power 
 ready to install itself in the vacant shrine." 
 
 To permeate a vast commonwealth like ours 
 with a desire for beauty in daily life, and to bring 
 to all the people forms of art suited to their capaci- 
 ties and needs, would seem an impossible task, 
 and the most hopeful vision could hardly claim to 
 foresee the time when all the dark places will be 
 illumined. And yet it is unsafe to set any metes 
 and bounds to progress when one considers what 
 has already been done. Every one of the multi- 
 farious endeavors to ameliorate the lot of the toil- 
 ers and bring to them higher motives and oppor- 
 tunities awakes in them a new sense of the value 
 of life, and whatever stimulates life in a whole- 
 some fashion involves the expression of life, and 
 this expression either takes artistic form or else 
 creates dispositions out of which come natural 
 issues of comeliness and order. In fact, whatever 
 makes for physical and spiritual health, answering 
 to an inherent need of expansion, is beautiful, and 
 
 26
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE IINE ARTS 
 
 when it realizes itself in permanent form that form 
 is arsthetic. 
 
 It d«K*s not follow, h«)wevir. lii.it tin-, more or 
 leas blind impulse amonn massts t>f |K*oplc will 
 produce what is refmctl and profitable without aid 
 from more Icarnetl sources. The jxroplc at large 
 do not comiK)SC or paint or buiKl or |Kxrtize. 
 Democratic art docs not mean an art that takes 
 fi)rni as the spontaneous result of a difTused and 
 unri-^ulate«l instinit. Such an art diH*s, indtx<l, 
 appear in the folk-sonR and folk -festival, but only 
 ill i»rimilive social conditions and in a homojjcncous 
 group, ami Ixyond this early stage the impulse is 
 either arrested or it develops along specialized lines 
 under the management of individual talents. This 
 si>eciali/ed art rapidly lx*comes aristocratic, and, 
 except in such exceptional conditions as those of 
 the perio<l of the Gothic cathedral builders, the 
 mass of the iK'oi)le withdraw from any participa- 
 tion in art proiluction and, in a multitude of in- 
 stances, from any share in its benefits. In a com- 
 mercial age like ours, when at the same time vast 
 numbers of people seek relief from lalwr in the 
 most accessible means for entertainment, the ad- 
 vantage is taken by sjK'Culators, who, under the 
 pretense of giving the people what they want, 
 i their patrons by making them iK'lievc 
 
 I . want just what their e.xploiiers can fur- 
 
 nish at the greatest fK-cuniary protU to themselves. 
 There is not and there never wxs a community 
 so degraded lliat its taste could not be raised 
 
 a?
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 whenever an honest attempt was made in that 
 direction. It follows that improvement of public 
 taste, which goes along with improvement in health 
 and morals, can always be effected where wise and 
 unselfish efforts are made toward that end. There 
 is one species of organized benevolence which has 
 already found the true method and begun to put 
 it into practice, and that is the work of the Social 
 Settlements. These establishments are bringing 
 music, the drama, and many forms of art practice 
 directly to those who have been deprived of this 
 their birthright — showing the way to the democ- 
 ratization of art in the only way it can be democ- 
 ratized, viz., by bringing the contributions of the 
 aristocracy of intellect and genius to the people 
 in a form and upon terms which procure a general 
 acceptance. For intellect and genius, although it 
 constitutes a class, reaches over the boundaries of 
 class whenever it finds a qualified order of media- 
 tors. Its messages prove to be not exclusive but 
 universal when the proper interpretation is secured, 
 and the third estate proves by its response, when 
 the experiment is fairly tried, that the enjoyment 
 of beautiful things is not a boon which nature has 
 restricted, and that special privilege in the gratifi- 
 cation of intellectual taste, as well as in the ac- 
 quisition of wealth, is inconsistent with the demo- 
 cratic ideal. 
 
 Provision for the popular need must be made, 
 in the first instance, by those to whom has been 
 given the insight and the opportunity. Develop- 
 
 28
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FL\E ARTS 
 
 mcnl of the love of beauty in art must be made — 
 as it ii bcinj; made - an essential element in fjopu- 
 lar c<iucalion. It is the function of the variom 
 agencies that exist for the benefit of the masses - 
 social settlements, women's clubs, municipal de- 
 partments concerned with public recreation, above 
 all, {X'rhaps, colleges and schools. The latter have 
 this advantage, that they arc conccrne<l with edu- 
 cation alone and are never comjK'lled to compro- 
 mise. Not only that, but out of their halls come 
 the teachers who must be leaders in the cause of 
 culture — men and women whose taste must it- 
 self be rightly groundctl and who arc instructed 
 in the meth(xls by which art in its purity may be 
 disseminated. The college is required by its very 
 relation to the community to be both a beacon 
 tower of culture and a training-ground for those 
 who are to carry the light into the dark places. 
 
 VI 
 
 In the inevitable process of adaptation to the 
 changing demands of the age the colleges arc 
 compelled, from time to time, to add new dejxirt- 
 menLs to the curriculum, and a comparison of 
 their present catalogues with those of twenty or 
 thirty years ago will show that, while they have 
 been conservative, they have not been ultra- 
 conservative. In view of their responsibilities as 
 guardians as well as discoverers of truth, their 
 caution must, on the whole, be held a virtue. But 
 
 2g
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 that they should have so conspicuously lagged be- 
 hind in the advancement of art culture that even 
 now many of them give little or no opportunity 
 to their students to acquire knowledge of the won- 
 derful history of art or its significance, to develop 
 appreciation and judgment in respect to the achieve- 
 ments of fine art that are accumulating around 
 them, or to contribute intelligently to those cul- 
 tural movements which are already giving a new 
 aspect to the national life — all this seems to call 
 for explanation. The most evident reason for the 
 neglect of interests which have been universal in 
 history, and which have a vital relationship to 
 essential elements in human character and its so- 
 cial development, is that until recently there has 
 been no understanding on the part of the people, 
 or even on the part of those who have been most 
 influential in determining the direction of national 
 effort, that aesthetic interests are universal and 
 have a vital relation to essential elements in indi- 
 vidual and collective progress. The early colonists 
 had no such conviction — the most aggressive fac- 
 tor, the Puritans, least of all; and later the con- 
 flicts of the Revolutionary and constitutional peri- 
 ods, the bitter political struggles accompanying the 
 period of territorial expansion, and after the Civil 
 War the absorption of the most militant energies 
 in the organization of vast industrial enterprises 
 and the accumulation of wealth — these circum- 
 stances were distinctly unfavorable to the culture 
 of art. Not only that, but these events and tend- 
 
 30
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FLVE ARTS 
 
 cndcs prcxlucwl a national tyjK' of min<l that was 
 unreteplivc to the delicate, esoteric culture of art. 
 A&j»txiati«)ns of feebleness were attached to the 
 words icsthclic, iileal, connoi.vseur, Inxausc these 
 terms stotxl for an idea which was not associated 
 with anything that was inherent in the nationaJ 
 character or the national history. The only art 
 that w;ls in any way known to the people was for- 
 eign, not iniliKcnous. It had no root in the sub- 
 soil of national consciousness and tradition. It 
 was imiKjrtetl. artificial, not consecrated by asso- 
 ciations with tlu* growth of national ideals. Hence 
 the cullivalion of art was confincil to a few who 
 looketl abroad rather than at home for models and 
 inspiration. Their work, for lack of [x^pular sym- 
 luthy and ct>-<)peration. retained for many deca<les 
 a restricted, dilettante character, chiefly, in spite 
 of notable exceptions, imitative, narrow, and timid. 
 It Ls only very recently that we see signs of the 
 growth of an art that can arouse the interest of 
 the people at large and be accepted by them as 
 an cxpressitin of a need which they feel as Ameri- 
 cans who have a destiny that is peculiarly their 
 own. 
 
 The great awakening has come — the advance 
 in the appreciation of art. its production by na- 
 tive genius, its application to the [): ' i of 
 civic and industrial progress. Ls pr in 
 America with a rapidity unparalleled in history, 
 and yet the colleges as a whole still hesitate and 
 demur. The current swee|>s around them, pro- 
 
 3»
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 ducing wonderful changes in the national life, and 
 they give but little more heed to it than they did 
 to the doctrine of evolution forty years ago. It 
 cannot be that they are ignorant of the place that 
 art has held in the great civilizations of the past, 
 but they are not yet under strong conviction in 
 regard to the place it is to hold in the near future. 
 More than all else as a cause of delay — there is 
 still a disposition among the leaders in the higher 
 education to underrate the importance of those 
 factors in human consciousness to which the fine 
 arts appeal. They do not realize how large a part 
 the faculties of aesthetic appreciation and imagina- 
 tion, and the capacities for emotional enjoyment 
 play in human welfare. The service of art, it is 
 well understood, is to give delight, and the average 
 college educator cannot rid himself of the notion 
 that anything that gives delight must come easily, 
 and therefore ought to be excluded from the rigid 
 college scheme, or else relegated to a subordinate 
 position. Hence the neglect of the imagination 
 and the feeling, and the almost exclusive weight 
 thrown upon observation, reasoning, and memory, 
 especially the latter. To use Mr. Frederic Har- 
 rison's phrases : the college government cannot 
 ** purge education from its purely intellectual con- 
 notation" and take it to mean "the training of the 
 heart, of the emotion, of character, as well as the 
 training of the understanding." 
 
 There is no plainer illustration of this tendency 
 to sacrifice the inculcation of spirit to form than 
 
 32
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FINE ARTS 
 
 the mcthcxis of dealing with poetry which have 
 prcvailetl in many colleges, universities, and sec- 
 ondary sch<K)ls: the ' vice of poetry — to 
 arouse the spiritual p« is, reveal the funda- 
 mentals of life antl quicken the sense of l>eauty — 
 being ignore*! in behalf of grammar, philology, 
 metrics, literary and historic allusions -- things 
 that can Ik* made the subjects of examinations. 
 PiK'try. being a fme art. is the result of the union 
 of a stHii with somctliing that it contemplates, and 
 it is hard for a teacher to fmd any way of getting 
 at the subjective factor in the case and drawing 
 it out for scrutiny. And st). if the primary element 
 in poetr>' is sufficient unto itself in making its ap- 
 peal, if the deep things of {XK-lry must be intui- 
 tively disct-rnetl if discernetl at all, what Ls there 
 for the professor to do ercept to add some elocu- 
 tionary skill, which he may fortunately possess, 
 to the rcaling of poetry to his class and then 
 leave it to work its own way? Of course there is 
 much more for him to do than that, but he must 
 be a good deal of a jxiet himself to do it, even if 
 "wanting the faculty of verse," and hence the 
 sufficient teacher of i)oetr>' is a rare phenomenon. 
 Here is the centre of the problem - the first 
 necessity and the tantalizing difficulty. A com- 
 plete education includes the nurture of the in- 
 tuitive [Kiwers, the cultivation of the instincts 
 which spring to meet those spiritual communica- 
 tions which cannot be analyzed or weighed or 
 measured, cannot even be demonstrated by one
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 who feels them to one who feels them not — intu- 
 itions and latent capacities which blend with the 
 active faculties to compose the full life of the rea- 
 son. No serious thinker will disregard the needs 
 of the emotional nature. "What sort of science 
 is that," exclaimed Thoreau, "which enriches the 
 understanding but robs the imagination?" The 
 real man is found not in what he does, not even 
 in what he thinks, but in what he feels. "As for 
 a thought," says Maeterlinck, "it may be decep- 
 tive, but the love wherewith we have loved it will 
 surely return to our soul. ... It is the feelings 
 awakened in us by thought that ennoble and 
 brighten our life." Feeling is the very essence of 
 self-consciousness; it tests the worth of every ex- 
 perience; it is the organ that apprehends the reality 
 that underlies all external phenomena. Emotion 
 is inseparably allied with that power which enables 
 the subject to co-ordinate perceptions and create 
 out of isolated experiences an actuaUty which cor- 
 responds to certain innate demands of his spiritual 
 nature. This power, when it perceives new rela- 
 tionships and shapes them into the embodiment of 
 an idea, becomes creative imagination; and when 
 it perceives the significance of another's creation 
 and appropriates that to the satisfaction of its 
 own spiritual needs it becomes sympathetic imag- 
 ination. In either case the imagination forbids 
 the mind to remain content with analysis; it con- 
 stantly seeks a synthesis, and the warrant of the 
 value of this synthesis is found in terms of the 
 
 34
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FINE ARTS 
 
 emotional reaction. Imagination constantly en- 
 larges life by sulTusing it with emotion, leading 
 from the ex|H.Tience of a single faculty to the ex- 
 perience of the whole nature. This consciousness, 
 to which one's whole being vil)rates, Is inevitably 
 attemled by joy, and hence it is that the function 
 of art is universally antl rightly held to Ik* to give 
 delight. There is the delight of the artist — of 
 him wh(^ exercises creative imagination; and there 
 is the ililight of the art-lover — of him who exer- 
 cises sympathetic imagination. The delight of the 
 latter may \)c even more wholesome and unselfish 
 than that of the former, for in his contemplation 
 he escajK's from his own native limitations into 
 another and fK>ssibly higher cxjK'riencc, finding 
 fellowship not only with the artist's mind but also 
 with all minds that receive the same communica- 
 tion and share the same uplift. The service of 
 works of art is. therefore, a liberating scr\'ice. 
 This healthful stimulus is most completely afTorde<i 
 by those works of art which embody truths that 
 He nearest to the basis of a common human nature. 
 Their etiucativc jxiwer lies in the fact that they 
 give us truth in distinct concrete form, so adapted 
 to our natural [KTceplions that they not only con- 
 vince but also |)ersuade and comjx^l the allegiance 
 of our sympathy. ' The concrete is always more 
 efficient as a stimulating influence than the ab- 
 stract. Generali/eii apixrals, description of right 
 feelings, and exhortations to feel in a certain way 
 because it b right su to feel have little cflc*ct upon 
 
 35
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 us. "Art and literature," says President Henry 
 C. King, "make an appeal that no abstract prin- 
 ciple or ideal can make. We can never speak in 
 general. We can never act in general. We can 
 never be good in general. It is all in particulars. 
 We have no way of expressing a general principle 
 but by putting it into some definite, concrete, in- 
 dividual action. Now art and literature give us 
 always such a concrete embodiment of an ideal, 
 and so approach the strongest of all influences — 
 the influence of a person." 
 
 We are educated by experiences that attach to 
 previous experiences, and not by mere assertions 
 that may be true for him who makes them but 
 have no meaning for us unless they find a coun- 
 terpart in our minds. Through the sympathetic 
 imagination we enter into the thing brought before 
 us and take possession. Everything that thus 
 awakens the sympathetic imagination has an edu- 
 [ cational potency. Its permanence depends upon 
 \ the feeling it excites. Feelings are the material of 
 \ character. It is of supreme importance, therefore, 
 ] that the chosen objects which exercise an emotional 
 ■ power over us should be such as stimulate the emo- 
 tion to healthful activity — an activity that does 
 \ not merely turn back upon itself but desires to go 
 "", forward into some profitable deed. Such objects 
 arouse a love of that which elevates and refines 
 and seeks a channel outward into life. Works of 
 art are not isolated from the lives of their creators 
 or from our own life. They are experiences. A 
 
 I 36
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FL\E ARTS 
 
 love for one of them, whether it l>c a work that is 
 gooti or l>a<I, draws it into ourselves; it hecomrn 
 forever a |>art o{ us, it is an ilt-m in the formation 
 of character. What more serious factor in edu- 
 cation can Ix; found than in tht>sf works of litera- 
 ture and art in which great artists have incoqxjratcd 
 their visions, their longings, their great human 
 sympathies? And is it not an advantage that 
 students have a right to demand, that these mes- 
 sages from the most gifted, the most representative, 
 minds of the race shall Ik* hroui^ht Ix'forc them and 
 enabled, by the help of wist- intnKluclion, to act 
 the humanizing part for which they were designed ? 
 
 VII 
 
 If the young men and women of the college were 
 rcceinng no aesthetic impressions at all outside 
 their prescribed studies the question would be 
 somewhat different from what it Ls. But they 
 are constantly receiving them from a multitude 
 of sources, not only >*'ithin the college circle, but 
 still more the moment they step lx*yond it. These 
 external impre»ions are derived from the amuse- 
 ments which have taken so large a place in Ameri- 
 can life, and from the outdoor objects which the 
 dtics and towns olTer the obserNcr at every turn — 
 tome beautiful, the vast majority ugly. In addi- 
 tion to the unde>ir.il)le influeti ' iverywherc 
 lie in wail, there are, happily. > . plays, and 
 art exhibitions, besides fmc buildings and monu- 
 
 37
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 merits, whose impressions are capable of exerting 
 the best service if one knew how to apply a dis- 
 criminating judgment. The college should recog- 
 nize the fact that a process of aesthetic change is 
 constantly going on in the minds of its young 
 people for better or worse, and if the regulation of 
 these preferences is of any importance in education 
 it is the plain duty of the college to afford some 
 guidance, in order that the higher tendencies may 
 be reinforced in their conflict with the lower. 
 
 It is undeniable that the baser attractions are 
 more powerful than ever before in the sphere in 
 which the youth of this country habitually dwell. 
 To say nothing of other causes — certain mechan- 
 ical inventions, such as the electric motor, the cine- 
 matograph, the phonograph, have made places of 
 amusement and the least intellectual kinds of en- 
 tertainment cheap and easily accessible to prac- 
 tically the entire population. In this age, when 
 almost everything of general use is syndicated, 
 irresponsible exploiters have grasped the business 
 of public amusement, and, having no motive except 
 the making of money, their method consists in 
 engaging the senses before reflection has had a 
 chance to effect a delay in the acceptance of the 
 lure, and in taking advantage of the passion for 
 novelty which grows by what it feeds on. It is 
 of the greatest importance, therefore, that while 
 large masses of people are demanding aesthetic 
 gratification, and will have it, good or bad, organi- 
 zations that are free from the commercial tempta- 
 
 38
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FINE ARTS 
 
 tion should bestir themselves to make head against 
 the influences that work for the degradation of 
 intelligence. That thry arc doing so is one of the 
 most cheering signs of the times. Wc sec the 
 cities, one after another, organizing Independence 
 Day and Christmas pageants, municipal art mu- 
 seums springing up everywhere, one of them, 
 the Toletlo Mu.seum, setting the magnificent ex- 
 ample of an art gallery built by jwpular subscrii>- 
 tion, the children and factory lal)orers having a 
 share. Wc see women's clubs entering into public 
 activities, socdaJ settlements bringing the blessings 
 of beauty to the poorest, public schools adorning 
 their waJls with works of art and establishing cho- 
 ruses, orchestras, and dramatic companies. All 
 this and more is a token of the growth of a con- 
 ception that the popular taste and wholesome rec- 
 reation are as much an affair of the whole social 
 group as hygiene or physical comfort. 
 
 In spite of these marks of progress, discordant 
 notes till the air, and even a slight amount of ol>- 
 scrvation vnU show that the condition of afTairs, 
 even in the so-calletl higher circles, is still deplora- 
 ble. Mr. William M. Rce<ly writes: "I know that 
 the stage and the novel are getting to be coarse 
 and vulgar, but they only reflect life. Our s>^tcm 
 of home training, our system of education, our 
 system of commercial procedure, even much of 
 our professional development — all is lacking in 
 a foundation of taste and culture." Thi>sc who 
 know the character of the music and verse most 
 
 39
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 sung by our young people in their homes, the pic- 
 tures they see in the newspapers (the only pictures 
 that multitudes of them ever see), the kind of 
 books they read, are aware that Mr. Reedy has 
 much reason for his gloomy diagnosis. And the 
 home and the school are primarily responsible. 
 
 , h'The defect in our school life, as in our social 
 
 I life," says Mr. Percival Chubb, "that it communi- 
 
 ,1 cates no quickening sense of the poetry of life, is 
 
 ' I inseparably bound up with its neglect of the emo- 
 tions. Our education runs to brain and starves 
 the feelings." 
 
 The antidote for the evil Hes not in preaching 
 or censorship but in offering better examples. 
 *'The only thing that can kill an idea," some one 
 has said, ''is another idea." The college exerts 
 wholesome powder over youth not merely by verbal 
 teaching but by providing illustrations. "A spirit 
 communicated," said Stevenson, "is a perpetual 
 possession." In the presence of works of beauty 
 there is constant hope: a virtue goes out from them 
 that will win many hearts. It is a part of the 
 mission of the college to bring to its students things 
 that are pure and strong in literature, music, plastic 
 art, and the drama, trusting to the power of sug- 
 gestion to awaken a taste for what is lovely and 
 of good report by means of direct contact with 
 works that embody those qualities. 
 
 "There is [in our colleges]," says Mr. Percival 
 Chubb again, "a great poverty of cultural resource, 
 a lack of interest in the fmc arts, in the best drama 
 
 40
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FLVE ARTS 
 
 and muruc and the graphic arts. The university 
 cannot consider its life and its |)I;int complete 
 without those agencies out of wljich the ftslival 
 spirit and impulse would naturally grow a the- 
 atre where the In'st plays may Ik* stx-n and the 
 best dramatic talent of the university utilize<l; a 
 hall of mu5uc where the great classics of the art 
 may Ix? continually heard and the musical aliility 
 of the college students cultivated; a picture-gal- 
 lery where some examples of the best art and copies 
 of the great masters may be shown; a museum akin 
 to the great museums of Germany, in which the 
 finest and most interesting products of past dv-ili- 
 zation, products of all the arts and crafts, may 
 be preserveil. Only in this way may wc standard- 
 ize the taste and enrich the culture of our college 
 students and develop that many-si ' ' of in- 
 
 terest in life on the ba.si^ of which >i i must 
 
 achieve its best results. ' 
 
 The one thinR needful i.s liial the real sij;niricance 
 of art, its necessity as demonstrale<l in history and 
 modem life, should be revealed to college students 
 in a convincing manner. They must l>e led to 
 aec that it is not a mere decoration and emlx-llish- 
 rocnt of life on the one side, nor on the other an in- 
 ferior copy of somethiii -cil to l>e greater, 
 viz., Nature. They mu ' n op{X)rt unities to 
 discover that art is a revelation of the human soul 
 and in turn pr ;he Ufe of the st)ul by the 
 suggestive inco^ i of the ideal. They must 
 be helped to believe that art furnishes them an 
 
 41
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 instruction and a training that unite with the 
 agencies of knowledge which they have accepted 
 from childhood up, to form with these a unity of 
 thought and experience. 
 
 There is no doubt that such lessons are learned 
 with more difl5culty by college men than by col- 
 lege women, and in such discussions as this college 
 men are especially held in view. The recent prog- 
 ress of interests commonly called cultural has 
 been greatly accelerated by the entrance of young 
 women into the academic sphere; but even this 
 fact, at first glance so conclusive as to the position 
 of art in the college, may conceivably act, in many 
 instances, unfavorably upon the masculine mind 
 so far as the acceptance of higher aesthetic influ- 
 ences is concerned. For the young man of college 
 age is naturally inclined to consider the superior 
 sensitiveness to art and poetry on the part of his 
 sisters as a further proof of the essential effeminacy 
 of such tastes, and even be hardened in his phihs- 
 tine ways by the softer presence near which he 
 dwells. This is a real obstacle and not to be de- 
 spised. Whatever remedies there may be (and un- 
 questionably a wise instruction in the history of 
 art is the most efifective), the art that is offered 
 must be an art that manifestly reveals the strength 
 and nobiUty of humanity. Let the young man 
 find in painting, in poetry, in music something that 
 is palpably akin to his own virile nature and he 
 will give to it the pledge of brotherhood. It must 
 appeal to him as having character and substance; 
 
 42
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FINE ARTS 
 
 daintiness, dilcttantcism, preciosity arc not in the 
 line of the American college man. He must be 
 made to sec that a really earnest art is not the 
 expression of anythinR that is inherently contrary 
 to the gootl that he finds in his manly exercises. 
 He must learn that beauty has very wide connota- 
 tions — that it is to be sought in the g>'mnasium 
 and the athletic field as well as in the picture- 
 galler>'; that health implies beauty and beauty 
 health. Among the Greeks art was a national ex- 
 pression because it was the natural cfllorescencc 
 of that physical and mental vigor and i>oisc which 
 had become the ideal of the race. There is no 
 reason why the even balance of faculty, which is 
 becoming the aim in American academic culture, 
 should not involve an increasing desire for forms 
 that arc gratifying to the senses and emotions as 
 well as to the understanding. 
 
 VIII 
 
 By bringing the fine arts into the college and 
 university system these institutions will inevitably 
 exert an influence ujx^n the general course of art 
 protluction by means of the standards of judgment 
 which they will help to establish. Whether or no 
 the art schools ever become allied with tlic colleges, 
 the attitude of the college, from the very fact that 
 it is the home of learning, its habit research and 
 reflection, will l)c a critical, conservative attitude. 
 Revolutionary tendencies often appear in the col- 
 
 43
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 lege, but among the students rather than the fac- 
 ulty. The college almost invariably stands as an 
 ally of the estabHshed order — this position be- 
 ing often reactionary and obstructive, but on the 
 whole, no doubt, salutary. Its aim, through the 
 methods of scholarship, is to make reason prevail, 
 its temper one of caution and dehberation. In 
 view of its responsibility to the young minds under 
 its charge, it prefers to err, if at all, on the side 
 of conserv^atism. What has been accomphshed in 
 any field of thought can be tested by its results; 
 and in those branches of study in which opinion, 
 as distinct from demonstration, holds sway (as, 
 for instance, social science and ethics, where final 
 solutions are as yet unattained and perhaps un- 
 attainable) the effort of instruction will be to im- 
 part ideas which experience deems sound, rather 
 than to turn the mind loose upon an uncharted 
 sea, exposed to all the \vinds of speculation. The 
 new problems must, of course, be faced, but 
 decision should be postponed until the mind is 
 trained to perceive relations and weigh evidence. 
 To achieve this result the method must be one 
 that may be called, in general terms, the com- 
 parative method, and this impHes a submission to 
 prudent deliberation rather than surrender to pas- 
 sionate impulse. Hence, the tendency of college 
 teaching is to seek authority and to defer to it. 
 
 To induce deference to this principle in the mind 
 of ardent youth is becoming more and more diffi- 
 cult. The colleges have long ago ceased to be 
 
 44
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FLVE ARTS 
 
 doLstcrctl folds of meditation, if they ever were so 
 in this country, and have l>oc<)me f«Ki of many 
 agitations that had thi-ir birthplace outside. No 
 ideas, however hetenxlox. can be cxcludctl. If the 
 faculty do not furnish them the students will 
 snatch tlicm from the atmosphere, and often give 
 them an application which the faculty would not en- 
 courage if they knew. This situation has impostxJ 
 a new rcsjxjnsibility ujwn the college professor. 
 He cannot remain an expounder of traditional 
 conceptions to tractable and deferential youth. 
 Authority, challengeil in the church, sits some- 
 what insecurely u[x)n iLs herctiitary college throne. 
 The professor must bo alive to the movements of 
 the age which do not emanate from the learncxl 
 order to which he belongs. His business is to keep 
 his own head steady and help his pupils to acquire 
 habits of cautious scrutiny which, if they do not 
 guarantee correct conclusion, arc yet its primary 
 condition. 
 
 One advantage at least the professor holds in his 
 grasp — he can choose his text-U>ok and his illus- 
 trations and he can assign readings that accord 
 with his own opinions. His students, in their 
 vcr>' criticism of his i>osition, are to a large extent 
 dqxrndenl upon the material which their would-be 
 director furnishes. The use which the preceptor 
 makes of this op|)ortunity for leading his tlock in 
 his own chosen way is a test of his conscience and 
 his wisdom. It depends up>on whether he chooses 
 to leave them free to seek the truth that hides, or 
 
 45
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 to assume that truth is found and his disciples 
 have only to feed upon it. The determination 
 will rest upon certain conditions, such as the nature 
 of the subject and the age and composition of the 
 class. It is a fruitful subject for debate and need 
 not be dwelt upon here. But in those depart- 
 ments in which aesthetic taste is in question a 
 large amount of authority may be exercised with- 
 out challenge. Certainly the instructor must not 
 attempt to domineer over the individual prefer- 
 ences of his pupils — declaring, for instance, that 
 Raphael or Bach must be admired and Monet or 
 Debussy must not be — for love Hes outside of 
 law; but he has the right to stand on guard against 
 the intrusion of whatever he honestly deems de- 
 moralizing aesthetically or ethically. The question 
 comes near to that of ethics; dogmatism is safer 
 than unprincipled Hcense. Especial circumspec- 
 tion, perhaps, is needed in aesthetics, for most 
 young people are safely grounded on fundamental 
 moral principles, while their notions concerning 
 art are usually chaotic. As the college does not 
 allow the students any choice in regard to the 
 books that are to be added to the library or the 
 pictures that are to hang in its art gallery, neither 
 does it, or should it, leave wholly to them the de- 
 termination of the dramas to be performed, the 
 singers and players to be engaged, or the composi- 
 tions to be heard in the concert hall. The under- 
 graduates may seek the moving-picture show, the 
 vaudeville, and the musical comedy, if such be 
 
 46
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FIN'E ARTS 
 
 their inclination, but within the college control 
 there is to be found t)nly that which is authentic 
 and a|)i>rovcd. This implicit censorship has |)os- 
 aibly been overstriclly enforced, but it must be 
 rememlK'retl that the college art world is not one 
 in which works of art are protluceti, for if it were 
 80 then the secessionists, the futurists, and all 
 other species of revolutionaries would have their 
 rights to a free field there; but the college, the 
 place where "the best that has been thought and 
 done in the world " is the prime object of study, 
 is eminently concerneil with that which has been 
 delil>erately tested and by common consent found 
 gcKxl - at the same time, be it observetl, under 
 b«ind to truth to acknowledge that in art as in 
 science discoveries are still to be made, and that 
 everything that art has done is but an earnest of 
 the things that it shall do. 
 
 In art, therefore, as in all things, the college, 
 while it ofTers what it believes to be the best, 
 will wisely leave the judgment untrammelled. Its 
 duty b to offer to the neophyte an acquaintance 
 with whatsoever things give warrant of excellence, 
 to exjKJund their place in history and their p>crsonal 
 use. and then leave them to do their perfect work. 
 While it is unjust to attempt to tie the young 
 mind up to any single standard, there can be no 
 question that the first condition of safe judgment 
 is found in intelligent contact with the masters 
 that have ruled preceding generations. Bernard 
 Shaw and Richard Strauss and the jx)st-impres- 
 
 47
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 sionists may be the prophets of a riper age than 
 ours, and it is well to understand their teaching, 
 yet one who has not tried the spirits of Shake- 
 speare, Beethoven, and Rembrandt has not yet 
 gained the experience that assures a calm, broad, 
 and liberal opinion concerning the new as well as 
 the old. The opportunities for the acquisition of 
 such enlightenment the college is in a position to 
 provide, and as the college is not prone to be 
 swayed by shifting winds of doctrine either in art 
 or philosophy, its co-operation will be with those 
 tendencies that lead to the discovery and main- 
 tenance of safe standards. 
 
 Bitter reproaches are often hurled against such 
 establishments as the French Institute, the British 
 and American Academies, and even the national 
 art museums, on the ground that they refuse to 
 recognize new tendencies and that every progress- 
 ive movement is obliged to fight for its Hfe against 
 their powerful subsidized opposition. These com- 
 plaints often seem just — the official censure of 
 such men as Delacroix, Millet, and Rousseau ap- 
 pears to us to-day almost as a crime; but even the 
 most impatient radical must confess in his sober 
 moments that on the whole it is better so. Let 
 those institutions whose province is, directly or 
 indirectly, to teach yield at once to every clamor- 
 ous applicant for admission, and artistic chaos 
 must ensue. Those who store up and preserve 
 for coming generations incur a serious responsi- 
 bility, and they must have a standard of measure. 
 
 48
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FLNE ARTS 
 
 All things must be proved before the good that is 
 tt) Ik." held fast can l>o found, ami. althouRh ihc de- 
 serving will often sufTcT, yet it is Ix-^il that this 
 proving-ground should be in the wide arena of 
 I' ;l and not in the sheltered nurseries of 
 
 TX 
 
 In accepting only that which has already been 
 verifjctl antl niriking it the jxiint of departure for 
 further investigation, the colleges can i)crform a 
 8cmcc never more needed than at the present 
 (lay. This is an age which, being impatient of the 
 n^i fictions of old authority, is inclined to deny 
 that any such thing as authority exists. The art 
 schools cannot be wholly trusted to nuiintain that 
 wise balance of forces u[)on which right progress 
 depends — to enforce the technical discipline and 
 respect for prectnlent which was one source of the 
 creative achievement of Greece, Italy, Hollaml, 
 and France. In many art schools the watchwords 
 arc th«)!io of revolt. There Ls revolt against train- 
 ing, against the acquisition of broad knowledge, 
 against deference to the masters of old times. The 
 : t student is eager to attack new problems, 
 that the new problems are often super- 
 ficial, and that there are certain intrinsic and last- 
 ing' pr .M. :ns that are involvctl in all art work 
 \i"::\ t... i.. .^inning ami have been mightily solvetl 
 by the giants of past days. No artist b in a posi- 
 
 49
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 tion to meet the demands of expression which the 
 new age affords until he is firmly grounded in 
 the fundamentals of art which persist amid all 
 the changes of ideal and fashion. "An untrained 
 and not naturally sensitive mind," says Professor 
 George Santayana, "cannot distinguish or produce 
 anything good. This critical incapacity has always 
 been a cause of failure and a just ground for ridi- 
 cule; but it remained for some thinkers of our time 
 — a time of little art and much undisciplined pro- 
 duction — to erect this abuse into a principle and 
 declare that the essence of beauty is to express 
 the artist and not to delight the world." One 
 proof of this wise maxim is that none of the great 
 artists whom the world loves to honor began by 
 being revolutionary. The supreme ages of art 
 were ages of discipline and reverence. 
 
 The novice in the art school often refuses to 
 (3 believe that the essence of beauty is to delight the 
 world rather than to express the artist. To be 
 sure, those whose work has been a constant delight 
 to the world did also express themselves; but what 
 if the youthful radical has nothing to express — 
 no knowledge, no experience, no ideas? Neither 
 the public nor the connoisseurs care a whit for an 
 artist's soul just because it is his soul, but only 
 as he has the ability to add something of beauty 
 and inspiration to the world's life. How shall the 
 young student obtain knowledge, experience, ideas, 
 and how shall he learn to project them in forms 
 that will delight the world ? Certainly one means, 
 
 50
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE KLNE ARIS 
 
 not to be ncglcctwl, U in the study of those who 
 have dcmonst ratal thb twofold mastery. He 
 need not nccivsarily co|)y their processes, but he 
 must imbibe their spirit. He can learn from them 
 that seeing is not with the lenses of the eye 
 alone, and that gixxl work is not producetl merely 
 by thinking, or merely by instinct, but instinct, 
 thought, and technical drill united make the con- 
 summate arti-st. 
 
 The unrest of the time has scizeil upon art, and, 
 as production was never l>efore so abundant, the 
 spectacle prescntetl by the art world Ls one of 
 confusion and discord. One of the tendencies of 
 the age is to exaggerate every mental e.\|K*rience; 
 the condition of mind most in favor is not reflec- 
 tion but an intense craving for sensation of a visid, 
 exciting kind; and whereas in early periods, such 
 as those of the Crusades, the Renaissance, and the 
 sixteenth-century merchant adventurers, an out- 
 let for ner\'ous energy was foun<l in war, discovery, 
 and in the sudilen opening of new areas for enter- 
 prise, a similar restlessness at the present day ex- 
 pends itself in vagaries of imagination, in discon- 
 tent with s<Kial repressions, in rebellion against 
 limitations that are not clearly realized, in cravings 
 that turn inward and prey upon themselves, pro- 
 ducing a turmoil of the spirit whose curse is that 
 it cannot fmd the relief that comes with external 
 action. Everything that is morbid anil sensational 
 is welcomed, the ner\'ous s>-stem is irritated into 
 an excessive delicacy, a thirst for emotional cx- 
 
 5»
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 citement seeks to gratify itself in sources which 
 do not appease but further stimulate. Every idea 
 thrown out by a feverish brain is caught up and 
 made the fad of the hour, until some other, equally 
 ephemeral, takes its place. Life seems to lose 
 unity and continuity, since ideas that are not based 
 upon true observation and experience have no 
 power of mutual support. Here and there the 
 hopelessness of any stable result becomes appar- 
 ent, and a despairmg apathy becomes the note in 
 literature. 
 
 These tendencies seem serious enough to earnest 
 minds that are placed in close contact with them, 
 but it is well to remember that, as according to 
 Burke we may not draw an indictment against a 
 whole people, we must likewise be cautious in 
 passing judgment upon an epoch. The literature 
 and art in which these decadent tendencies are 
 manifest is a city art and literature, and we know 
 that urban life and thought in the present time 
 of swollen and congested municipalities, while 
 highly concentrated, are often narrow and partial, 
 the very conditions of a compact, furiously competi- 
 tive society interfering with steadiness and whole- 
 ness of vision. There is a sound undercurrent 
 flowing in the heart of the race which is not evi- 
 dent to the casual observer because it has so little 
 expression in those professional literary and art 
 circles which, for commercial and other motives, 
 are kept most persistently before the pubHc eye; 
 but even the casual observer may easily perceive 
 
 52
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FLN'E ARTS 
 
 that It h prowing in volume. It is easy to be dc- 
 cdvctl in this matter. Just as the type of French 
 novel lately most prevalent diK-s not represent 
 the large and dominant elements in the national 
 life, but rather the salon, theatre, and Ixjulevard 
 atmosphere of Paris, so the IkwIcs. I)lays, f)icturcs, 
 and operas that are trumpetal most noisily in the 
 market-place nee<i not hastily l>c taken as indica- 
 tive of the permanent trend of contemporary' ideas. 
 The claims made for the new fashions by their 
 advocates have, nevertheless, an unsettling influ- 
 ence, particularly u|>on susceptible and inquiring 
 minds. One who has seen the rise and fall of 
 many fashions, each pr(Klaime<i as the final truth 
 in art and letters; who has watche<I a long proces- 
 sion of painters, pla\'^vri^hts, novelists, and com- 
 posers move into the glare of publicity and out 
 into oblivion again; who has often looke<l in vain 
 for the work that was acclaimed a triumph of 
 genius a year or less ago; who has outlive<l many 
 illusions, including hLs own — such a one may 
 retain his calmness unpcrturbeil by the hostile 
 clamor rai.se<l around some of those principles 
 which he believes are basetl upon the ex|)erience of 
 mankind. He will not be shaken by the anarchism 
 of the recent scho^jls which would have him l>elievc 
 tliat progress consists in a repudiation of the mon- 
 umental achievements of the past, .\lthough in 
 the midst of a shower of illusions, to employ Em- 
 erson's figure, the air al*ove him is clear, and he 
 •ees the gods silling around him on Uieir thrones. 
 
 53
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 But the younger enthusiast does not easily see 
 the gods; he is not acquainted with them and he 
 does not know where to find them; neither would 
 he recognize them as immortal divinities, since 
 only the anointed eye can discern their attributes. 
 Here is the opportunity of the college for organizing, 
 in the midst of the intellectual confusions of the 
 day, habits of judgment that will enable their 
 possessors to keep their minds calmly poised amid 
 the whirl of conflicting appeals. Through its very 
 traditions and customs it is prepared for this serv- 
 ice. All over our land are these centres of in- 
 fluence, based upon scholarship, constitutionally 
 prone to insist upon what has been accepted by 
 the moderate thought of its time, scientific in their 
 methods, not ready to bend before the gusts of 
 fashion, following the dictates of caution, and not 
 greatly disturbed by accusations of timidity and 
 reaction. In such a country as ours, and admin- 
 istered as they are both from within and without, 
 there is little danger that they wiU be wholly irre- 
 sponsive to anything that tends to real progress. 
 But they will not accept a novelty just because it 
 is new; their professors, by their very training, 
 look sharply for an intellectual value in whatever 
 claims their interest, and in all that appeals to 
 the senses and the emotion their very instinct 
 leads them to compare it with those productions 
 that have endured the severest of all tests, the 
 test of time, and welcome it only as it discloses 
 qualities that relate it to the great models. 
 
 54
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FINE ARTS 
 
 Any apprehension that the tendency to excess- 
 ive conservatism — the exclusion of the new for 
 the sake of the preservation of the old — will be 
 sufTcrctl to prevail, and the college lose touch with 
 progressive movements, is disiH-llfd when one con- 
 siders certain currents which arc now flowing from 
 the art world toward the college. The time was, 
 not so very long ago, when the college glee and 
 mandoUn club supplied the local ncetl for musical 
 indulgence in the majority of our institutions of 
 learning, but in later days the concert agencies 
 have begun to look toward the colleges as profit- 
 able spheres of inllucnce. A condition very nearly 
 parallel in the plastic arts, and still more recent, 
 appears in the increasing number of itinerant ex- 
 hibitions of paintings, etchings, bronzes, textiles, 
 etc., which are bringing the output of the studios 
 to the college doors. Chiefly under the stimulus 
 of this new opportunity, art associations arc spring- 
 ing up in the colleges and universities, designed 
 not only for the benefit of the academic community 
 but also for the sake of a union of the college art 
 interests with those of the city or town, by this 
 co-operation working for a closer sympathy and 
 mutual aid in all that promotes a sense of fellow- 
 ship in the things of culture. 
 
 In the important field of the drama analogous 
 agencies arc at work. The college dramatic asso- 
 ciations wisely conclude that their scr\ice lies not 
 merely in aflording a channel for the histrionic 
 ambitions of their own members, but also for 
 
 55
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 bringing to the attention of the student body ex- 
 amples of excellence in the work of contemporary 
 playwrights as performed by those companies, 
 fortunately still existing, that make it their pri- 
 mary purpose to promote the higher interests of 
 their art. In connection with such organizations 
 as the Drama League, in hospitality to professional 
 assistance and the encouragement of those beau- 
 tiful adjuncts to the drama, the folk-dance and 
 the pageant, the college may not only exert an 
 invigorating influence upon its own family but 
 may also contribute mightily to the formation of 
 a public appreciation and demand for the best 
 things which is all that the theatre needs at the 
 present time to enable it to take the place that 
 naturally belongs to it as one of the forces that 
 work for the mental health of the people. 
 
 The strongest factors that are now active in 
 America in the domain of art are working not so 
 much toward the production of masterpieces as 
 for elevation of thought and brightening of life 
 among the masses. The humanitarian movement 
 of the day is using art as a means of social benefit. 
 Its aim is to beautify as well as ameliorate life. 
 The part of the colleges in this endeavor will be 
 to help it to become intelligent as well as generous, 
 to hold it to approved standards, and with their 
 wealth, culture, and opportunity, guided by the 
 experience of the past, to direct the present pur- 
 pose along the paths which lead to civic welfare. 
 Back into the ranks of the public, which is to be 
 
 56
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FLN'E ARTS 
 
 the patron of art for good or ill, the colleges every 
 year turn tens of thousands of alert young men and 
 women. If any considerable pro|)ortion of them 
 b inspireti, by the college teaching and example, 
 with right conceptions of the nature of fme art 
 and its place in the life of a vigorous community, 
 the effect will ere long be felt in a larger meas- 
 ure of {popular enlightenment than this nation, or 
 perhaps any nation, has exjx!riencc*d hitherto; and 
 also, we may hoj>e, in the preparation of condi- 
 tions out of which works of art of a unique and 
 nationally representative t\*]K* will grow. 
 
 It is CN-ident that the scr\'ice of the college to 
 education in fostering the appreciation of art is 
 not fultiUed when it builds and endows an art 
 museum, theatre, and concert hall, and supplies 
 its librar>' with critical books and reproductions. 
 Examples and illustrations do not suffice; art must 
 be interprcttnl. and the mind must always undergo 
 a discipline in order to receive it. This necessity 
 implies lectures, assigned readings, examinations, 
 and cretlits. At first sight these mechanical for- 
 malities seem foreign to the nature of art, for the 
 nearer one approaches to the spirit that dwells in 
 beautiful forms, and for which alone the forms 
 exist, the more completely the external framework 
 and trappings fall away, and the soul of the be- 
 holder and the idea of the artist Oow together to 
 
 57
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 blend in a mystical union. But can the college 
 assume that this happy result always follows when 
 its examples, even properly interpreted, and the 
 youthful mind are brought together; and even if 
 it could, is the creation of vague sentiments, how- 
 ever refined, consistent with the special purpose 
 for which the college by common consent exists? 
 Here is the dilemma which, no doubt, is one of the 
 chief impediments to the introduction of instruc- 
 tion in art into the higher education. Every col- 
 lege at the present day consents to the artistic 
 decoration of its grounds and buildings, to the in- 
 troduction of pictures and statuary, dramatic per- 
 formances and music — it is agreed that there 
 must be a constant presence of aesthetic influences, 
 because they form the mind insensibly, and com- 
 bine with everything in the academic atmosphere 
 that promotes taste, dignity, and propriety. But 
 to provide scholarly courses in art appreciation is 
 another matter, for classroom study impHes reci- 
 tation, examinations, and credits, and every one 
 who has gone below the surface knows that the 
 jesthetic consciousness, which is the object and 
 goal of these courses, evades all those tests upon 
 which the college depends for stimulating the 
 effort and measuring the attainment of its students. 
 On the other hand, it is not wilhng to forego the 
 use of its traditional means of determination, for 
 to do so would seem to be to lose its hold upon 
 those activities in the pupil's mind which are 
 working for the formation of character. The col- 
 
 58
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FLVE ARTS 
 
 lege auihorilics have no illusions on this subject. 
 They know that the finest result at which the 
 courses in art can aim consists in an increased 
 reverence for the productions of genius, in a flower- 
 ing of taste and sensibility, and a jxjwer of accurate 
 judgment in regard to the comparative merits of 
 works of art. Hut how shall the instructor know 
 if these qualities have been acquired as the result 
 of his teaching; and if he cannot know, with what 
 confidence shall he hand in to the registrar marks 
 which are to be averaged up with those of the 
 science and language teachers in the determination 
 of the student's standing and perhaps his fate? 
 
 In the first place it may be said that the art 
 courses are not wholly exceptional in the presen- 
 tation of this dilTiculty. The finest issues of any 
 college course cannot be mechanically gauged, for 
 who shall weigh in a registrar's balance the zeal 
 for things of the mind, the eager curiosity, the 
 joyous consciousness of growth, the recognition of 
 final values, which always come with conscientious 
 study, and without which any college course is 
 barren? Above all, who shall estimate the in- 
 spirations that arc kindle<l under the personal in- 
 fluence of a strong-brainctl and large-hcarteil teacher 
 — the love of truth for truth's sake, the desire for 
 wisdom, and the willingness to undergo toil and 
 privation in wisdom's cause, which such a teacher 
 may impart? In such a presence the finest gain 
 comes incidentally and by the way, kindling a 
 high-souled enthusiasm which makes life a better 
 
 59
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 and sweeter thing forever after. In very truth it 
 is only the more formal and superficial results 
 that are appraised by the professor's pencil; the 
 lasting issue in terms of character he cannot know. 
 "Truly speaking," says Emerson, "it is not in- 
 struction, but provocation, that I can receive 
 from another soul." Happy would the college be 
 if it could make these provocations so apparent 
 and winsome that the most careless would desire 
 them. Could it do so, it would often find them 
 proceeding from the laboratory as well as from 
 the chapel. 
 
 These subtle consequences, which at the same 
 time are of such far-reaching benefit that they 
 must be reckoned with, are especially involved in 
 the courses in literature and art and constitute 
 a very large factor in the problem which these 
 courses present. The college must acquiesce and 
 be willing to take these hidden values for granted, 
 unless it contends that the admission of these 
 subjects into the curriculum shall be conditioned 
 upon laying chief emphasis upon memory drill and 
 analysis of technicalities and accessories. The 
 accessories and technical details can be taught 
 and "mental discipline" be derived therefrom, 
 but this is not teaching art. If the reality of art 
 is to be imparted and a response to its varied 
 beauty awakened, the college must heed the ap- 
 peal made some time ago by Professor W. P. Trent 
 in behalf of a more genuine teaching of literature. 
 "I have begun," he said, "to doubt the value of 
 
 60
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FLNE ARTS 
 
 strenuous examinations, and to appreciate more 
 and more the necessity of trying to inculcate in 
 my students some of the high moral and si>irilua! 
 truths taught by great writers, and to impart to 
 them a taste for reading, a love for tlic best litera- 
 ture. I Ik-Hcvc that the time devoted to spiritual 
 inculcation and to a'sthetic training is of far more 
 importance than that devoteti to instruction in 
 the facts of literature, and I draw hence the con- 
 clusion that we teachers of literature ought bravely 
 to say to our fellow teachers somctliing Uke this: 
 'We can, if we please, make our examinations as 
 rigid as you tlo yours, but we do not believe that 
 our facts are as im|K)rtant as yours, or, at any rate, 
 can be acquiretl with so much advantage to our 
 pupils. We believe that the subject we teach and 
 the subjects you teach are necessary to a catholic 
 education, but that, while we arc contributing to 
 the same end as you, our means must be dillerent 
 from yours.* " 
 
 The acceptance of this conclusion does not, 
 however, preclude a large amount of detailed and 
 formal instruction, which has a part to play in 
 the preparation of those states of mind which are 
 the antecwlent condition of appreciation of liter- 
 ature anil art. Like every prtxluct of human im- 
 pcrfectit)n. art has its goo<l and its evil, its strength 
 and weakness, its truth and falsehood. These dis- 
 tinctions are not intuitively |)crceived by youthful 
 minds. To grasp the reality of art something 
 more is needed than the mere presence of the ob- 
 
 6i
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 ject. The beauty of art is not an abstract but a 
 relative beauty. The mental attitude changes in 
 going from one object to another; the same cri- 
 terion does not apply to all. The mind must be 
 active, not passive — at least until the essence of 
 the thing is comprehended. The understanding 
 must awake as well as the emotion. The novice 
 will probably ask why this or that example is se- 
 lected as a model, and he must be made to see. 
 Only by the recognition of principles and standards 
 and the employment of comparisons can any work 
 of art be known and felt for what it is. The very 
 essence of art in its relationship to nature and 
 human life is misconceived by the majority of 
 people who have not been instructed. The art 
 gallery without expounders is of little practical 
 utility; a concert course without commentary may 
 afford healthful recreation and an uplift for the 
 moment, but many of its educational possibilities 
 will be missed. The explanation of this fact is 
 found in the doctrine of relativity, which, as John 
 Tyndall expressed it, "affirms that the impression 
 made upon us by any circumstance, or combina- 
 tion of circumstances, depends upon our previous 
 state. Two travellers upon the same peak, the one 
 having ascended to it from the plain, the other 
 having descended to it from a higher elevation, will 
 be differently affected by the scene around them. 
 To the one, nature is expanding, to the other it 
 is contracting, and the feelings are sure to differ 
 which have two such different antecedent states." 
 
 62
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FL\E ARTS 
 
 "Wc accqjt," says Bourgct, "only the doctrines 
 whose principles we already carry in ourselves"; 
 and it may l>c added that we accept only those 
 works of art that find aft'dialion with certain pro- 
 pensities that have attained consciousness through 
 exercise. To arouse these faculties, to prepare the 
 preliminary state of mind, is the ofl'ice of the in- 
 structor, and he must work partly by analysis and 
 demonstration, partly by suggestion and indirec- 
 tion. It is a common error to supix)sc that appre- 
 ciation of art de|>ends simply ujwn the immediate 
 action of gixxi examples, that criticism and com- 
 mentary are impertinent intruders that should be 
 shoved aside and art be left free to prepare her way 
 before her. Art that has a vital energy* within her 
 will doubtless prepare her own way at last, but with 
 what sad loss of time, with what waste of that pre- 
 cious effort which might be creating new beauties 
 while struggling to overcome the dull obstruction of 
 the world ! Art comes before us and says: "Here 
 I am; I offer myself to you; you may take me or 
 leave me." Criticism says: "Y'ou must not leave 
 her, for without you she cannot thrive. I will 
 show you how to t:ikc her in the only way possible, 
 which is by moulding your spirit into conformity 
 with her spirit." 
 
 This moulding process is the ofTice of the college 
 instructor. His first business is to excite belief 
 and expectation. What the eye is prepared to sec 
 it will see; what the ear expects to hear it will hear. 
 The ^irit of art is not separable from the form, 
 
 63
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 and constant misjudgments will occur before the 
 laws of form are known. Hence arises the need of 
 the explanation of technicaHties. Only the igno- 
 rant disregard them, for they are art's language, 
 untranslatable; the features by whose interplay 
 the spirit comes to light; the element of sense 
 which cannot be divorced from expression, because 
 art is both a duality and a unity. *'Soul is form 
 and doth the body make." Such knowledge has 
 its place in the formation of right judgment in re- 
 spect to comparative artistic merits. Everything 
 that is wrong in art — wrong, that is, in being in 
 any way untrue — does a certain amount of harm 
 by standing in the way of an appreciation of what 
 is true and right. This applies to reproductive as 
 well as creative art: piano-playing, singing, acting, 
 any activity in which natural movements are regu- 
 lated to produce results that are not natural, can- 
 not be fully enjoyed by one who is not informed 
 concerning the principles by which the special art 
 "adds to nature." The real end of art is not com- 
 prehended except as there is a specific knowledge 
 of the means employed to effect it — a knowledge 
 by which the observer divines the creator's pur- 
 pose that guided him in the path he traversed to 
 his goal. Furthermore, a work of art cannot be 
 divorced from its setting without divesting it of 
 much of its significance — a setting historical, so- 
 cial, personal on the artist's side; associational, 
 experiential, and reactive on the receiver's. The 
 impression made by a work of art is not simple but 
 
 64
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FLNE ARTS 
 
 complex, because complex are the antecedent states 
 of consciousness that entail the appropriate reac- 
 tions in thf receiver's mind. Hence comes the cx- 
 t.rii>o of observation, memory, co-ordination, com- 
 parison, the application of ideas drawn from the 
 life without and the life within. The a-slhclic in- 
 tuitions require not Si) much an awakening as the 
 power of adjustment and adaptation; they spring 
 into action at the touch of cverj' beautiful thing, 
 but they enrich the cxiKricncc and coml)ine into 
 accurate judgments only when they shape them- 
 selves into harmony with all the elements that 
 make up tlie life of the work of art 
 
 XT 
 
 \Mien mention is made of the appreciation of 
 art, one may properly ask what form or phase of 
 art is meant. We shouKi more accurately speak 
 of appreciations, for in the house of art are many 
 mansions, each offering its own si>ccial kind of 
 entertainment to its guest. There arc schools and 
 styles so diverse that in the judgment of one we 
 must often lay aside certain predispositions nour- 
 ished by another. Gothic sculpture involves con- 
 siderations of ideal and style other than those of 
 H<ll<nic; one may admire Donatcllo and cavil at 
 K"«lin. The condemnation of the impressionist 
 painters was pronounced in the name of French 
 classic art. The attempt to crush Richard Wagner 
 was inspired by a supi>osed devotion to the older
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 masters whom he also revered. Those who would 
 escape similar errors must learn how to shift the 
 point of view to meet the artist's aim. The laws of 
 creation and of reception cannot be standardized by 
 the authority of a form that is suited to one place 
 or time, but they are now and then re-enacted to 
 meet the needs of the human spirit as it accom- 
 modates itself to changing epoch and experience. 
 Within the same period, also, difTerent phases of art 
 appeal to diverse standards of appreciation. The 
 main endeavor in portraiture is the expression of 
 character; in still life it is decorative charm. 
 The easel picture and the mural fresco must not 
 be measured by a common criterion of style. We 
 do not demand of Ibsen the phraseology and con- 
 struction of Shakespeare, and Maeterlinck's themes 
 require still another technique. Music is vocal 
 or instrumental; epic, dramatic, or lyric; religious 
 or secular. (How many gross perversions have 
 been heard in the churches, caused by inability to 
 discriminate between the proper ideal of ecclesi- 
 astical music and that of other forms !) Music 
 may strive to depict external activities, or sym- 
 bolize unbodied emotions, or is content with a 
 mere decorative play of tones. It may be homo- 
 phonic or contrapuntal; it takes a special char- 
 acter from the mechanism by which it is produced, 
 so that, for instance, organ music requires one 
 sort of mental adjustment, piano music another. 
 Music is colored by nationality, period, and school; 
 afifected by the nature of its patronage, by the 
 
 66
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE [ L\E ARTS 
 
 place antl occxslon of its performance, by the in- 
 terest — lilurf^ical. patriotic, or what-not — which 
 emplo)'s it; intlucnccd by all the intellectual nectls 
 which moke use of an agent so subtly powerful for 
 stimulus and su^estion. 
 
 All these dilTcrcntiations which art in its pro- 
 tean flexibility affords involve principles which 
 may be analyzed and taught. There arc processes 
 of comparison to be employed, a training of the 
 will to hear or see as the artist dcsirctl to be heard 
 or seen. How can these essentials to right under- 
 standing be known by young art-lovers except by 
 the help of an older head who has sought them out, 
 systematized them, ami made tliem constant fac- 
 tors in his own life of culture, and who prt»sents 
 them not only as generalizations but as embodied 
 in concrete examples? In this study is found the 
 safeguard against that unreasoning indulgence in 
 the excitements of sense and emotion which the 
 arts, especially music and the drama, arc prone to 
 encourage in the minds of those who are not 
 schooled to reflection. In order to realize the full 
 purpose of works of art, we should put our mental 
 action into correspondence with that of the artist, 
 whose priKctlure is deliberate, self-critical, directed 
 by knowledge laboriously acquirtxl. carefully ar- 
 rangetl in all its parts to gratify the intelligence 
 which vic-ws the parts in their relation to a logical 
 organized whole. 
 
 These intellectual processes, however, must not 
 be made an end in themselves. Art is indeed a 
 
 67
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 problem, but art that is nothing but a problem is 
 lifeless. As in the presence of a beloved friend all 
 details of garb and inventory of feature are for- 
 gotten, so in the painting, the poem, the music the 
 value rests in a communication of feeling which, 
 in the last resort, is simply the love of the artist 
 for his theme. And thus every explanation of 
 form and contrivance, every historic or biograph- 
 ical reinforcement which the lecturer brings to his 
 class, must help to attune the sensibiUty of the pu- 
 pil to the spirit of the work. The worth of art is 
 in the enhancement of our own life consciousness. 
 It is life we desire from the statue, the ballad, the 
 rhapsody, and not information about the mecha- 
 nism of life. The test of art is expression, the gain 
 of the receiver is a spiritual gain which can be 
 reproduced, if reproduced at all, only in terms of 
 the art in question, or in some verbal paraphrase, 
 or in some gesture or kindling of the eye, the im- 
 pulsive outward sign of inward joy. Dissection, 
 comparison, technical exposition — these have their 
 uses, but only as they clear away obstructions that 
 lie between us and the heart of the mystery. The 
 insight and enthusiasm of the interpreter, his elo- 
 quence, if such be his fortunate endowment, are 
 all needed in order that his hearers may be excited 
 to a suitable expectation; but the final event is 
 pleasure in the thing itself because it is alive and 
 beautiful. 
 
 Far too inclined are college teachers of art to 
 fail of the end through over-emphasis upon the 
 
 68
 
 THE COLLEGE .\ND THE FINE ARTS 
 
 means. Because form and technique involve a sci- 
 entific clement and an intclkxlual process they 
 often seem to believe that their businc*ss terminates 
 with those features that can be analyzetl and made 
 the subject of memory tests. There is also a pres- 
 sure more or less perceptible from the other college 
 departments, tending to bring results that arc 
 vague and undemonstrable into disrepute. Fur- 
 thermore, the lecturer him-self, if he \)c a "practical '' 
 artist, often finds his own interest taken up with 
 those processes which most nearly resemble the 
 more routine features of his own sjx'cial labor. 
 In more than one inslilutjon for higher education 
 music, for example, received its first welcome only 
 in the guise of hannony and countcqxjint — the 
 purely theoretical side of the art — since these 
 studies were more easily used as disciplinary (ac- 
 cording to the collej^e conception of that term), 
 like mathematics and lalwratory ex])criments. It 
 is a great comfort to the average college teacher to 
 be able to say that an answer is either right or 
 wrong, without any lx)lher over tlie f>crsonal equa- 
 tion. Courses in art history, even, have not escaped 
 the besetting sin of formalism, for when taught 
 without imagination they ea-sily relapse into an 
 examination of lists and dates and various mechan- 
 ical accessories, instead of bending their thought 
 upon the search for that quality in the soul of art 
 which gives to it its essential, vilali/.ing power. 
 All the settings and appliances — form, composi- 
 tion, technical device, historical conditions of race, 
 
 69
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 epoch, and milieu — are necessary for the proper 
 adjustment of the mind in order that it may re- 
 ceive the full lesson which art provides as an ex- 
 positor of human life. All these, however, may 
 be coolly learned by rote without effecting any real 
 appreciation of art whatever. They are prepara- 
 tory, not final. Archeology is not art, and masses 
 of information may be gathered without causing 
 a single genuine heart-throb. The rational proce- 
 dure, if art is to enjoy her rights in the culture of 
 youth, is to take her frankly for what she is — a 
 beautiful witness to the life of feeling, her appeal 
 an aesthetic appeal, her welcome intuitive, the re- 
 ception given by her devotees not a prosaic inven- 
 tory of her furnishings or a prying inquisition into 
 her heredity, but a glad surrender to her charm. 
 Understanding and intuition, reflection and emo- 
 tion, criticism and spontaneous acceptance must be 
 trained to act each according to its own laws and 
 then to blend in a unity spontaneous and complete. 
 Here is a discipHne that embraces many special 
 disciplines, and not slight are the pedagogical wis- 
 dom and skill that are capable of imparting it. 
 
 XII 
 
 Thus we are led to the simple conclusion that, 
 granted the responsibility of the college in paying 
 the honor to the fine arts to which their function 
 in the history of civilization entitles them, in using 
 them as a means of refining and liberalizing the 
 
 70
 
 THE COLLKCJi: AND THE FINE ARTS 
 
 minds of Its students, ami in exerting through them 
 an influence that will enlighten the community and 
 help to erect barriers against the swelling tide of 
 \'ulgarity and debasement — in thus fultilling its 
 plain obligation the college will not Ix* comjx-llcd 
 to sacrifice any |>rinciple or depart radically from 
 approved scholastic metho<ls. There is an analogy 
 here — in all reverence be it said — Ix'twecn teach- 
 ing art and teaching religion. In the strict inter- 
 pretation neither can Ix? taught, if we use the term 
 in the same sense as when we say that science can 
 be taught. For the prime purpose of instruction 
 in religion and art is not to impart information, or 
 strictly to promote a certain line of action, but to 
 create a state of mind. In both cases there is in- 
 volved a perception of truth - but this truth is 
 not one obtaincil by e.X|x*rinicntation or observation 
 upon objective phenomena, but a truth intuitively 
 discerned, a truth recognize<i and appropriated Ix- 
 causc it answers a cra\-ing of the deejxst instincts 
 and most cherished aspirations. And the finest 
 result of the teaching lies in the development of 
 these instincts and aspirations. While in these 
 respects aesthetic and religious culture may be said 
 to differ from sdentific. yet the disdpline of the 
 former is aide<l. even necessitated. l)y the applica- 
 tion of prcxi'dures akin to those of science, by which 
 the forms in which religion and art have manifested 
 them.selves, the exjxrience of those who have con- 
 formetl their lives to them, the means by which 
 error is sifted from truth, and the confusions and 
 
 71
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 opacities which hinder clear vision swept away — 
 all may be made the subject of study whose out- 
 come is the preparation of a mental receptiveness 
 without which the spiritual influence has no chan- 
 nel by which it may enter the soul. 
 
 It is indeed a discipHne, like any other, and there 
 are few tasks given to a college instructor where 
 so much freedom and initiative are allowed as in 
 the work of the lecturer on art, since he is so Ht- 
 tle supported by precedent or restricted by con- 
 ventional routine. High must be his enthusiasm, 
 affluent his knowledge, ripe his experience, and per- 
 suasive his tongue, who would draw into the feUow- 
 ship of art a body of tyros ignorant of the values 
 of art, and so often in their ignorance contemp- 
 tuous of those delicate susceptibiUtics to which 
 aesthetic influences appeal. In all our higher insti- 
 tutions of learning there is a prejudice to be over- 
 come, not only among the undergraduates but also 
 among the faculty, and hence the promoter of 
 aesthetic culture meets a resistance at the outset 
 which none of his colleagues is compelled to face. 
 His safeguard lies in bringing prominently forward 
 those intellectual elements which are the prelimina- 
 ries and conditions of artistic production and right 
 appreciation. By an abundance of comparisons 
 he may show the correspondence that exists be- 
 tween art and other fields of human acti\ity; he 
 may prove by many evidences the vital relation of 
 art to the larger Ufe which envelops and fertilizes 
 it; and so, by wise applications and the contagion 
 
 72
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE FL\E ARTS 
 
 of his own conviction, persuade the institution 
 which he serves that beauty dwells in partnership 
 with kn<>wlnli:;i', ami that ihr lovr she inspires, 
 when it is once j;;uncd by the double exercise of re- 
 search and spontaneous feeling, is no superficial or 
 selfish indulgence, but combines by natural affinity 
 with cvcr\' agency of good. 
 
 XIII 
 
 The signs multiply that the colleges are at last 
 iK'cominK hirdful of the call. They have reached 
 the encoura^inj; jxjint when they begin to consider 
 not merely the constant presence of art in museums, 
 halls, and theatres, but the organizetl use of them 
 by methods of refined scholarship. The nature of 
 these methods must be determined by the peculiar 
 ' )gical problems involvctl in a subject in 
 ifi awakening process is the first movement 
 of attack. When everything is said, the method. 
 after all, is the man. According to the mental 
 situation of his pupils, as well as to the means af- 
 forded him. will the instructor act. He must com- 
 bine the gifts of the preacher and the man of sci- 
 ence — the insight, fervor, and consecration of the 
 preacher, the clear-cut, rational treatment of facts 
 which marks the savant. A lecturer on art. a 
 French writer has said, should be an artist, a his- 
 torian, a philosopher, and a ix>et. But. alas ! where 
 are such paragons to Ix? found? The colleges 
 themselves must train them. The supreme dilii-
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 culty that will always confront the college will not 
 be to determine the place of art instruction, or 
 even the method, but to find the man. 
 
 When the man is found he will be presented 
 with an opportunity not easily circumscribed. He 
 will have the responsibility, and at the same time 
 the privilege, of showing that art commends itself 
 not only in its works, but also in the lives of those 
 who teach and practise it. Art and aesthetic cul- 
 ture are still on the defensive in this country. 
 They still need the belief and the example of strong 
 men and women. The college youth will not re- 
 frain from applying the argumentum ad hominem. 
 His intellectual leaders must convince him by some- 
 thing besides precept of the worth of what they 
 teach. So is it especially in regard to art and 
 beauty; a sentimental trifler will have difficulty 
 in imparting faith in these to healthfully sceptical 
 minds. Not less important than art galleries and 
 concert courses is the presence of men in the chairs 
 of literature and art who offer in themselves worthy 
 models in manners, in conversation, in character, 
 as well as in cordial sympathy with the manifold 
 interests of life. ''Let me see," the student will 
 ask, "what a life devoted to art and beauty has 
 done for you." 
 
 The limit of this field of action also will not easily 
 be defined, for while the professional work of the 
 average instructor is bounded by his classroom, 
 that of the teacher of art is in the nature of the 
 case coextensive with the entire college circle. 
 
 74
 
 lilt COLLllGE AND THE IINE ARTS 
 
 For beauty of environment, and the re-creation of 
 spirit that comes from wholesome emotion;il stim- 
 ulus, constitute a general interest, and they also 
 furnish a unifying principle among the divergencies 
 of college life. Tastefully contrive<l lawns, groves, 
 and ganlens, noble decoration in architecture and 
 sculpture, art collections, concerts, dramas, and 
 festivals - all these act mightily, not only by 
 wcaNing a glamour of joy and exhilaration around 
 scholxslic lalxjr. but also for co-operation, inspira- 
 tion, and fellowship. Over these ministries the 
 care of the art instructor is extended, and all his 
 classroom work is deepened by his consciousness 
 of his more public service. He advances the ends 
 of scholarship by his research and his systematized 
 teaching, while at the same time he employs his 
 knowledge, his taste, and his enthusiasm as advo- 
 cates of a common cause. 
 
 75
 
 PART II 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 The presence of art in the college, in acknowl- 
 edged companionship with the sciences and phi- 
 losophies, is no longer a doubtful question. Al- 
 though the American institutions for the higher 
 education for a long time renounced the privilege 
 within their grasp, by which they might have been 
 pioneers in that development which was destined 
 to become a leading factor in a country peopled by 
 the offspring of nations whose glory is in their 
 literature and art, this neglect must sooner or later 
 give way to cordial acceptance. Placed in the 
 centre of the intellectual activities of the age, they 
 would inevitably be swept by the overflow of the 
 rising tide of art development. For the need of 
 beauty is becoming evident to an ever-increasing 
 multitude. It is an inseparable element in the 
 movements for social uplift and the amelioration 
 of life's hard conditions. The most encouraging 
 sign of the healthful growth of this desire is not in 
 the collections of works of art which every million- 
 aire considers necessary to his dignity, nor in the 
 
 76
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGK 
 
 Immcn'^' improvi'mcnt in taste in thr ;ui(»rnmrnt 
 of public and private establishments. It is not 
 even in the endowment of art museums, or in pri- 
 vate ' 'lion to the supi>ort of oi>era-houses 
 and " ^^, for such institutions may flourish 
 
 and still minister only to the gratification of a 
 limitetl class. The real significance of the aesthetic 
 revival in this country lies in its dilTusion outside 
 the aristocracies of wealth, in the discovery among 
 the masses of the jK'ople that there is no cxclusive- 
 ncas in IxMuty, that without it even industry is 
 hamperetl and material prosperity unsatisfying. 
 C ntly, the e.xtraordinary sj>ce<I of develoj)- 
 
 i; i:; the lines of xsthetic demand and artistic 
 
 supply is largely due to that co-operation in effort 
 for which the American j)eople have shown a posi- 
 tive genius. Multituiles of private organizations, 
 such as the women's clubs, have given the move- 
 ment an almost fierce imix«tus, and in recent days 
 munici{xil action in the decoration with ix'auliiul 
 painting and sculpture of the buildings that be- 
 long to the people, in the contrivance of Indefx^nd- 
 cnce Day and Christmas celebrations, historical 
 pageants which stimulate the imagination as well 
 as give pleasure to the senses, and cautious cxjx-ri- 
 ments in the support of dvic theatres, bands, and 
 chorxises — all this is revealing to the people that 
 there are noble forms of art that do not demand a 
 spedal education attainable only by a privileged 
 few, but are accessible to all by the very fact that 
 all are citizens of equal rank in a commonwealth 
 
 77
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 that recognizes no restriction of opportunity in the 
 pursuit of physical, mental, and moral health. It 
 is this social aspect of the American art movement 
 which is its chief justification and the guarantee of 
 an enduring future. 
 
 All this being apparent to the most cursory ob- 
 servation, it follows that the schools and colleges 
 must assume a directing part in this process of 
 popular education, for the colleges as well as the 
 schools stand upon the principle that in learning 
 and culture there is no exclusive aristocracy. The 
 college exists for the people, not the people for the 
 college. Every college course is contrived and ad- 
 ministered with a view to some social need, and 
 will be moulded by conditions that are imperative 
 because they are implicit in the national evolution. 
 
 Assuming that the time has come when the 
 higher institutions of learning will strive to pro- 
 mote the culture and appreciation of art according 
 to their opportunity, the discussion will hereafter 
 turn mainly upon the question, what shall be the 
 position which art shall occupy in the curriculum ? 
 Shall it be treated as a cultural or as a vocational 
 study, or both? In what proportions shall theory 
 and practice divide the territory between them? 
 Where does the one end and the other begin? 
 Whatever may be the attitude toward "practical" 
 courses, such as drawing, modelling, and musical 
 performance, there is on all sides rapid progress 
 toward the adoption of instruction in the history 
 and criticism of art as being in every respect in 
 
 78
 
 Ml'SIC IN Tin: COLLEGE 
 
 accord with the ditjnity aui! of the college. 
 
 It is iiHuinlK-nt ujmm) ihf coi iic home of the 
 
 humanities to'cjci>ound and interpret art, to medi- 
 ate Ix'twet-n the artist and the student, to demon- 
 strate the j)l;ue that aesthetic culture holds in the 
 life of reason. As "outside interests" the concert 
 courses, the art exhibitions, the dramatic |XTform- 
 ances, have lon^ lx*en encouraged in many institu- 
 tions. But the lime is at hand when they must 
 be taken more seriously than this, and systematic 
 measures l>o empioyeti to bring them into an or- 
 ganic relation with the established college s>'stem. 
 They must InTome an insitie interest not an 
 incidental show under irresix)nsible managers, but 
 regulated by the college authorities, and through a 
 vital connection Ix-twi-en them and the classroom 
 the pleasure that they give Ik* made a means of 
 real culture by the demonstration of its relation- 
 ship to the intellectual life. 
 
 n 
 
 This being the case with the general subject of 
 historic art as a factor in education, how does it 
 stand with the art of music? Is music any less 
 serviceable than inx-try or |xiinting in the nurture 
 of the intellect and the emotion? Admitting the 
 right of th( " • ' ' le 
 
 results in > ig 
 
 vague and sentimental, everything that would 
 tend to encourage mental indolence and looseness 
 
 79
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 of thought — granting this, can music maintain a 
 claim to admission on equal terms with those 
 studies which obviously involve intellectual and 
 moral discipline? 
 
 Up to a certain point music has always been 
 welcomed as a precious influence in college life, 
 for if there is one means of emotional expression 
 that is more universal and instinctive than any 
 other, it is song. Wherever in college life there is 
 the enthusiasm of fellowship and loyalty, this high 
 spirit overflows in melody. The student song is 
 a branch of the folk-song, spontaneous and inevita- 
 ble. If a college could be found anywhere in the 
 wide earth where singing was unknown, one would 
 infer but dry returns from a mental life so hard and 
 joyless. College authorities, moreover, have al- 
 ways encouraged music as a religious agency; the 
 college chapel, like every church, must have its 
 organ and choir. The glee-club is an institution 
 already of respectable antiquity, and always re- 
 ceives ofl&cial countenance. Many collegiate bodies 
 have so far advanced in the recognition of musical 
 values that they give aid and comfort to choral 
 societies, and it is not unusual to find among the 
 events of the academic year professional perform- 
 ances of orchestral, chamber, and solo music, in- 
 dorsed by faculty action if not actually guaranteed 
 by the college treasury. These privileges have 
 been esteemed as a refining influence, a tonic and 
 recreative agent, classed even with the religious 
 exercises on Sunday and in the daily chapel as an 
 
 80
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 Ingredient in that spiritual atmosphere which can- 
 not be sufficiently providc<l by the work of lal>ora- 
 lory, library, and lecture-room. Certain forms of 
 music have alwa>-s liccn in the odor of sanctity, 
 and in such institutions as the English universities, 
 standinj^ ui>on ecclesiastical foundations, and in 
 many American schools created as adjuncts to re- 
 ligious denominations, the ancient associations of 
 music with the inner life of the church have made 
 a partial adoption of it into the educational s>'stcm 
 inevila!)le. 
 
 Secular music, however, stands on a different 
 footing. Its necessity is not so evident, its claims 
 not at first sight so imj^erative. It, too, has its 
 associations, but they are not in all cases entirely 
 edifying. In every college in this country the wel- 
 come has iKvn long dclaye<l. in many the invitation 
 is still jurlial and grudging, and in not a few the 
 fair applicant still finds a barricaded door. Even 
 at the Ix-st it may Ix* stated as a general fact that, 
 until very recent da>'s. it was practically the unan- 
 imous verdict of the American colleges that if 
 music were to he admitted under any conditions 
 it should Ik' by virtue of its religious contribution; 
 and, if secular, employed as an accessor)', a decora- 
 tion, if ' use the term, important just as it 
 is desir.i .; the academic buildings should be 
 comely and symmetrically placed, the grounds at- 
 tractive to the eye in their smooth spaces of grecn- 
 er\'. their balanced grouping of shrubs and trees. 
 These thing'i, it was agreed, furnish an cnWron- 
 
 8i
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 ment from which the stern ways of learning derive 
 a certain grace and tenderness, and exert a sub- 
 jugating spell upon the rude spirits of rebellious 
 youth. 
 
 Farther than this many college governors are 
 still reluctant to go. A prejudice against music 
 lingers in the minds of scientific and literary men. 
 An apprehension of its structure and qualities calls 
 for the exercise of mental processes that are differ- 
 ent from those employed in their special pursuits, 
 and it is often difficult for a scholar to realize 
 that there can be scholarship in a department that 
 is radically different from his own. Those who 
 follow a science develop a strictly scientific habit. 
 They want what they call ideas, facts, contact with 
 reality, and in this music seems to them to be lack- 
 ing. They distrust a power that acts upon the 
 sense and the uncharted field of primary emotion, 
 without leaving a deposit that can be recalled and 
 used. Instead of offering us more of the life to 
 which our experience is united, music, they would 
 say, annuls that life and creates a world of its own, 
 a world as intangible as the fairy realms of Celtic 
 legend. 
 
 How shall one bring the nervous excitements of 
 music into friendly union with the sciences and 
 philosophies? Religious music, say the conser- 
 vators of scholastic tradition, we will receive, for 
 not only is it an aid to devotion, but for that very 
 reason it renounces the sensual allurements and 
 emotional agitations of instrumental color and 
 
 82
 
 MUSIC IN TIIK COLLEGE 
 
 rhythm, and assodatcs itself with the most tran- 
 quilli/.in^ ideas. Hut what of operas, orchestral 
 |K*rform.inccs of the works of the mcMlcrn sensa- 
 tional school, and the dazzling exploits of virtuosos? 
 What is the sijjniticancc of the frenzied applause 
 that follows these astonishing; displays? Is there 
 not something iKTversc in the very nature of 
 music that moves it often to act as a distraction 
 from serious concerns and prcwluce mental disturb- 
 ances that are exhausting instead of tonic? 
 
 Even the votaries of this seductive art arc 
 force*! to admit that certain safeguards should \)c 
 thrown around musical indulgence. Music, by its 
 very nature, is subject to a suspicion to which none 
 of its sister arts are exposed. Even so lilxTal a 
 thinker as William James exhorts concert-goers to 
 |X'rf»)rm .some Ix-nevolent action after every musical 
 entertainment, in order that their volition shall 
 not be weakened by the hypnotizing sixrll that has 
 Ixx-n thrown around them. The writer of a re- 
 cent much-advertised bcH)k assures his readers that 
 music always saps the vitality of its devotees, and 
 that there never was a composer more than half of 
 whose life did not rccjuire ajx^logy. A writer in 
 the Harvard Stusical Rn;inv sa>'s: "Let a motlem 
 ordiestra play a pure triad — only one — with its 
 vibrating yellow violin tones, the shimmering white 
 of its woo<l, the blazing red which its brass can 
 make visible, the narcotic quivering of the harp, 
 and the barbarous rumble of the tympani — one 
 chord only — and people arc in a state where they 
 
 83
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 cannot discern between their right hand and their 
 left, where a papier-mache dragon is terrifying, and 
 prostitution beautiful." 
 
 It is certainly interesting to be told that the 
 ladies and gentlemen of the higher circles of Boston 
 are thrown into a state of erotic dementia at every 
 concert in Symphony Hall. The only purpose in 
 quoting this ridiculous statement, and the equally 
 absurd assertion of Price Collier, is to call attention 
 to the fact that even the most puritanical enemy 
 of aesthetic indulgence would never think of apply- 
 ing such terms to any other art. That the mind 
 of a musician could ever work like that of this 
 writer in the Harvard magazine indicates that there 
 is something pecuhar to the nature of music which 
 may, in a certain order of minds, give rise to un- 
 wholesome suggestions. There is no other artistic 
 agency that is productive of such physical excite- 
 ment as the rhythm, tone-color, and dynamic out- 
 bursts of music. Musical performance, in all 
 periods of its history, has tended toward the exag- 
 gerations of virtuosity. In music, as in the drama, 
 those who are most conscious of its higher intel- 
 lectual and poetic values are always aware that 
 their efforts as its patrons for the sake of its bene- 
 fits must include resistance to its abuses. Music 
 has an unparalleled efficiency as an intensifier of 
 feeling, and has no hesitation between health and 
 disease in forming its alliances. The nervous and 
 emotional excitements that accompany musical 
 performance when all its fascinations are un- 
 
 84
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 chained arc indeed a heightening of life for the 
 moment; but the test of value comes with the re- 
 action that follt)ws. when the serious inquirer asks 
 the question that Taine prop>ounds in view of the 
 spectacular French grand 0[)era, viz., What is it 
 that we have felt — have we, in sober fact, felt 
 anything? 
 
 Herein is the test of the worth of any aesthetic 
 cx{x:rience — has life l)een iK-rmanently instead of 
 temporarily heightened? Arc these vivid musical 
 cxyx-riences refreshing as well as stimulating? 
 And if music as a continued object of pursuit in- 
 volves exiK-rienccs which, however delightful, are 
 sui>erficial and transitory, does the art contain 
 compensations which will correct the tendencies 
 which, when overemphasized, bring against it the 
 warnings of philosophers and moralists? What do 
 history and psychology teach concerning the essen- 
 tial nature of music? Do they justify the love 
 which mankind has always bestowed upon this 
 constant companion of its joys and sorrows? Is 
 this love a love of passion, or of reverence? And 
 if the latter, what are the attributes which have 
 enabled music to set up its shrine in the deeper 
 heart of humanity? Certainly an art that is so 
 superficial and debilitating as its enemies assert 
 could never have become a universal need, could 
 nc\cr have reached its fullest development in na- 
 tions that are pre-eminent in physical ami intellec- 
 tual energy. There must be .something in its very 
 nature that promotes mental and moral health 
 
 8S
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 when wisely used. The first task in determining 
 the place of music in education must be to discover 
 the character of these elements of virtue. When 
 these are known, the further problem of employing 
 them will be shorn of the most serious of its diffi- 
 culties. 
 
 Ill 
 
 An education that is in the highest degree 
 worthy of the name will accomplish two results 
 — it will stimulate all the physical, mental, and 
 spiritual faculties into a self-conscious and ever 
 self-renewing activity, and it will create in the 
 individual a realization of his vital relationship to 
 the world and society. In all his studies he will 
 find a personal value and a social value. His aim, 
 implicit and direct, will be the further expansion of 
 life. In certain departments into which his train- 
 ing is divided — such, for example, as physical 
 culture, mathematics, language-study — the stu- 
 dent will have the attainment of personal efficiency 
 as his particular goal; in others — as, for instance, 
 history, political science, Hterature — the social 
 consciousness will be especially active. In the 
 one order of studies consciousness is especially di- 
 rected inward, in the other outward. In the union 
 of the two — in the release of inner vigor and in a 
 joyous sympathy with the life of the world and 
 man — lies culture. 
 
 It is the characteristic of art that, when studied 
 86
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 in all its relations, it accomplishes l)oth these re- 
 sults and becomes a cultural influence of a high 
 order. For art is not only a jK-rsonal exiK-ricncc, 
 it also has a history. \Vc appropriate the i)icture, 
 the symphony, the poem, and it so stirs our spirit 
 that for the moment we arc isolatctl in our rapture 
 and self is all in all. Hut when we cmt-rge from 
 our trance we sec the work as objective, its relation- 
 ships appear, and we obtain from it instruction that 
 adds to our actjuainlance with life. As these ex- 
 periences multiply they inevitably connect them- 
 selves witli the exjKricnces of others, in the i)ast 
 as well as Uic present; we are led into the great 
 world of thought and emotion that envelops our 
 own, and the reaction to the immetliale impression 
 is mergeil in the desire to know and feel in the 
 whole as well as in the particular. The history of 
 art ap|)ears to us not merely interesting but neces- 
 sary, for it brings to us communications that in- 
 form us of the true source of that faith in its value 
 which we instinctively feel. We learn that it 
 comes from the heart of humanity, and that our 
 joy in it is an implicit recognition of a common 
 ^iritual herilane. Art is supremely a unifying 
 power. Men clutch selfishly at material benefits, 
 but in the presence of beauty there is the sympathy 
 of fellowship, since to sh.r ' !y with another 
 is to incre;Lsc one's own p 
 
 It is plain that music is essentially at one with 
 the other arts in these res|>ccts. It is. like them, 
 a striving of U)e human spirit after self-realization, 
 
 87
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 and it has a peculiar power of exciting and convey- 
 ing ideas that lie at the basis of emotional experi- 
 ence. Hence the universality of its appeal. It 
 is the language by which men read one another's 
 hearts. 
 
 What, then, is this communication effected by 
 music? Just what does it present which those 
 who produce and hear it recognize as a testimony 
 to a common human need? 
 
 In the first place it gives evidence of moods and 
 impulses that are so profound and diffused that 
 they can be expressed only by symbolism and sug- 
 gestion — that are understood only as a kindred 
 spirit is set into corresponding vibration. That 
 music is devoid of the imitative means which the 
 other arts possess, instead of being a weakness, is 
 the very reason of its peculiar power. It uses 
 auditory instead of visible or definitely suggestive 
 images, but this erects no barrier between the soul 
 and the object of its craving. Reality is not per- 
 ceived by the senses, but is touched only when the 
 soul is put in motion and reaches out in search of 
 its counterpart. The function of all art is thus to 
 stir the soul; it is symbolic and not literally rep- 
 resentative. The visual images of painting and 
 sculpture, and the suggested images of poetry, are 
 only symbols of a deeper fact which is not contained 
 in their palpable forms. Still more penetrating are 
 the symbols of music, for motion and change, tim- 
 bre and rhythm, offer an infinitely subtle corre- 
 spondence with the flux and varying tension of 
 
 88
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 the inner life of feeling. And music does more 
 than this - it not only projects these puls.'ilions 
 and gives tliem organized form, but it creates them. 
 Life seems to receive a passionate reinforcement 
 under the thrill of music. One lives intensely in 
 a newly revealetl world. Music is thus a means 
 of the manifc*station of essential life, and it is a 
 life not less real and significant because it discloses 
 itself not so much in achievement as in aspiration. 
 Every one Is aware of a sort of yearning quality 
 in music, which even jKwtry cannot contain in an 
 equal degree. It has been called the keenest ex- 
 pression of the joy of life, but it might be called 
 with equal truth the keenest expression of the 
 pathos of life. It Is the projection of life in its 
 simplest and most ardent emotional elements, de- 
 tached from those incidents that make .so much 
 of the sum of daily existence - - detached even from 
 those material suggestions from which the most 
 mystical and tenuous i>octry cannot wholly free 
 itself. In music the undercurrents of life come to 
 the surface, and as it takes possession of our senses 
 and puts the will to sleep it awakens faculties of 
 which in our ordinary* daily course we are not 
 aware. It is music, more than any other medium, 
 which reaches down into that "burietl life" which 
 Matthew Arnold divines as tlie home of the far- 
 thest secret of our search — **the m>*stery of this 
 heart which beats so wild, so deep in us," "the name- 
 less feelings that course through our breast," the 
 unknown source "whence our lives come and where 
 
 89
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 they go." Music, no doubt, leaves us always un- 
 satisfied, but the only convincing explanation of 
 its peculiar power is that it comes "from the soul's 
 subterranean depth upborne," and affords us the 
 bewildering and fascinating paradox that, while it 
 avoids the reproduction of everything that we are 
 accustomed to call reality, it brings vividly to our 
 consciousness that mysterious substance in our na- 
 ture that seems most truly permanent and real. 
 
 It is this intimation of a yet unfathomed spiritual 
 meaning which makes music not only a cherished 
 object of affection, but also an inexhaustibly in- 
 viting theme of inquiry on the part of psycholo- 
 gists and aestheticians. In the development of its 
 technical forms it has attained an exquisite and 
 ordered complexity which affords endless dehght 
 to the theorist and the historian; but to linger in 
 this region is to dwell upon the surface. Music is 
 not merely "an art of beautiful motion," as many 
 of its practitioners seem to conceive it — it testi- 
 fies to a necessity of utterance in the human soul; 
 it is an evidence of the spirit's striving after light 
 and self-knowledge, and hence is not less deserving 
 of learned consideration than those arts, appar- 
 ently more definitely instructive, which vainly try 
 to persuade us that they teach us something that 
 is both tangible and conclusive. 
 
 90
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 TV 
 
 Mu^ic has a history, ll is M-li-M)iistiin use, ami 
 its forms arc the result of the tlcvelopment of cen- 
 turies. It has at the same time sought to extern! 
 and deepen its powers of expression. In this effort 
 it has not remained isolated or wholly self-dej>end- 
 ent; it has responded to certain stimuli that have 
 acted u{X)n literatures, arts, philosophies, and insti- 
 tutions, and like them is to be understood not by 
 itself alone, but in its relation to the larger tend- 
 encies of the age. Spiritual forces, beyond indi- 
 vidual control, are moulding human existence; they 
 arc apparent in the aspirations and cvcr-broaden- 
 i 'ions that make history. Human con- 
 
 i- a channel in which these forces move, 
 and mankind testifies to its recognition of them in 
 religions, philosophies, and the arts. "The |>olil- 
 ical life of a nation," says the author of Jean Chris- 
 topke, "is only the most superficial asi>cct of its 
 being. In order to know its interior life it is neccs- 
 sar)' to |K*netrate to its st)ul through literature, 
 philosophy, and the arts, for in these arc reflected 
 the ideas, the passions, and the dreams of a whole 
 people." Is this statement as true in resixxt to 
 music as it unquestionably is in respect to litera- 
 ture and the arts of design? If so. then we have 
 the strongest motive for extending our study of 
 music outside our own individual ex]xrricncc, find- 
 ing in its large historic evidences a value which 
 supplements and dignifies our direct personal 
 
 9«
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 pleasure. When we survey composers and musical 
 works in groups and masses — in connection with 
 historic institutions, such as the mediaeval church, 
 with intellectual tendencies, such as the German 
 and French romantic movements, or with national 
 strivings for expression, as in the music of Russia or 
 Finland — music takes to our view a representative 
 aspect and aids us in attaining a deeper knowledge 
 of the epochs to which these phenomena belong. 
 
 Not less stimulating to our curiosity are the 
 biographical suggestions that spring up the moment 
 we are drawn to the work of any one of the great 
 leaders of musical progress. Every composition 
 that possesses the decided note of individuality 
 startles us with the conviction that a message from 
 a fellow being is conveyed to us; that it is not a 
 formal piece of handicraft but an emanation from 
 its author's essential life. We as human beings, 
 alive to all things human, find that our hearts are 
 awakened to sympathy with a heart that is appeal- 
 ing for our comprehension. One evidence of this 
 is that we invariably wish to know the name of 
 the composer of the music we enjoy. If the name 
 had before been unfamiliar, then a new friend is 
 added to our circle. If the music is the work of 
 one who is already a favorite, about whose life we 
 are already informed, then we join the present 
 impression to previous impressions, all working to- 
 gether to enlarge our acquaintance with the hon- 
 ored master. We call an instrumental composi- 
 tion that bears a poetic title "representative" 
 
 92
 
 MUSIC IN TIIE COLLEGE 
 
 music; but is not ever)' characteristic production 
 of genius representative ? Is there not something in 
 
 the " Unfmishctl Symphony" of Schubert that i ' : 
 tilies him a-s distinct in temperament and cxjm ri 
 ence from his contemporary peers, Beethoven and 
 Weber; and, again, docs not the music of these 
 masters aLso disclose intellectual traits that could 
 be deUnitely characterized, and that add a human 
 interest lo their art? 
 
 Thus individual works and groups of works ap- 
 pear to us envelop>ed in an atmosphere which col- 
 cr^ and vilali/es them. Their ultimate value con- 
 sists in U)cir relation to life — the amount and 
 quality of life which they contain. 
 
 V 
 
 That music is a natural outgrowth of the emo- 
 tional Ufe. that its significance lies in its testimony 
 to that life, is shown, first, in its universality. 
 There have Ixm nations wnihout sculpture, with- 
 out painting, without architecture, none vsithout 
 some form, however crude, of music and poetry — 
 these two arts in their earlier stages Ix^ing always 
 inseparably blended together. Knowledge may 
 seclude itself for a personal advantage, but the 
 emotions are always s(Kial ; they strive to communi- 
 cate themselves in the search for sympathy, and 
 tbey End least resistance along the lines of sound 
 and ' 1 dancing, with s. 1 
 
 of in , are universally ( i 
 
 9i
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 among primitive peoples, for the purpose of ob- 
 taining a livelier consciousness of ideas that are 
 held in common, and also for making those ideas 
 operative in some way supposed to be helpful to 
 the community. Instinctive desire for expression 
 is seen in songs that celebrate the joys of war and 
 the chase, the longings of love, the maternal feel- 
 ings, the woe of bereavement, the every-day cares 
 of the household, the various amenities that even 
 the rudest life affords. Everything that can stir 
 the heart to a quicker pulsation is heightened or 
 alleviated by audible manifestations in which a 
 regulative artistic principle may be perceived. 
 Collective songs which have a practical utilitarian 
 purpose may be grouped into two classes, viz., songs 
 of labor and songs used in magical incantation. 
 Rites of magic include almost everything that is 
 called religious in the practice of primitive peoples, 
 extending also far up into the ceremonies of the 
 ancient cultured nations, such as the Egyptians, 
 Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. In songs of labor 
 and songs that always accompany the ritual of 
 sorcery we are face to face with the very origin of 
 music and poetry. 
 
 When, in the further progress of the race, literary 
 and plastic records appear, these records furnish 
 constant evidence of the universal diffusion of 
 musical practice. The pagan nations of ancient 
 and modern times have shown their veneration for 
 music by imputing its invention to the gods. The 
 Hebrews alone refrained from such attribution, but 
 
 94
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 they conformed to a universal iK'lief in ascribing 
 to music magical powers. The more enlightened 
 the nation, as for i"xam|)le the Greeks, the more 
 refined and extcndcii music Ix-came. and the more 
 prominent the place assigned to it in the systems 
 of philosophers, educators, and lawj^ivers. That 
 out of this universiU love of music no independent 
 and progressive musical art was achieved by the 
 cultivated nations of antiquity may \)c partially 
 explained by the jxTsistenl notion that the css<.'n- 
 tial purpose of music is utilitarian — for example, 
 acting as an cfl'icicnt means of controlling? the in- 
 visible |x>wcrs in magical incantations, stimulating 
 the ph>'sical energies in labor, guiding the dance, 
 sui< ' the voice in poetic recitation. The full 
 de% . It of an imleix-ndent art of tone is im- 
 possible without an elaborate scientific theory, and 
 the only class caj)al)le of such an achievement was 
 one whose olViciaJ station and habits of mini! kept 
 them bound to custom and tradition. It may be 
 also, as Dr. \Vashingt<m Gladden has suggested, 
 that spiritual relinement must attain a higher stage 
 before music, "the most spiritual of the arts." 
 could fuliil the lowers that are latent within it. 
 "The revelation of God to man is always a slow 
 and gradual process — this phase of it as well as 
 any other." 
 
 This fact of the tardint»ss of music in reaching 
 its full indejxmdence, however it may be explained, 
 in no way lessens the importance of music as a 
 factor in the history of culture. It is only a matter 
 
 95
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 of degrees; the powers of music as an exponent 
 of essential needs of the human spirit have never 
 failed to manifest themselves since humanity be- 
 came self-conscious. The revived study of folk- 
 song in recent times is the expression of the belief 
 on the part of modern scholarship that in the more 
 remote records of melody and poetry are to be 
 found important lessons in racial psychology. For 
 the songs of a people are the most spontaneous ex- 
 pression of fundamental traits of character, truth- 
 ful because they are not the product of that de- 
 liberate reflection which often involves a certain 
 danger of insincerity. The songs of a nation that 
 possesses a strongly marked individuahty will dis- 
 tinctly differ from those of its neighbors; they will 
 embody some peculiar types of melody, tonahty, 
 rhythm, or embellishment which are plainly sug- 
 gestive of certain distinctive qualities in the national 
 temperament. No connoisseur in such matters 
 would mistake a Gaelic folk-song of Scotland or 
 Ireland for a French chanson, or a German Hed 
 for an Italian romanza. These songs first appear 
 among the unlettered class, and have no connec- 
 tion with the cultured art which may flourish in 
 their neighborhood; they are quickened by the 
 commonplace events that arouse personal or social 
 self-consciousness; they are adopted into the every- 
 day life of the community, and become endeared 
 by association with a multitude of intimate and 
 common interests. If we wish to penetrate into 
 the very heart of a people, to comprehend what is 
 
 96
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 most sincere and fumiamental in its character, we 
 may receive no slight assistance from the testi- 
 mony to Ix- found in its store of popular song. 
 
 Let us come higher, into the vast wealth of the 
 cultivatetl. scientific music of the past three cen- 
 turies, and we shall fmd there a still more illumi- 
 nating relation to national Hie. The genius of each 
 of the three foremost musical nations, Italy, Ger- 
 many, and France, has imparted clearly defined 
 and siH'cial characteristics to the works of its rep- 
 resentative composers. Lightness of movement, 
 a vocal quality as <listinct from instrumental, em- 
 phasis ui)on tuneful mclotly, symmetry of form, a 
 strong tendency to reflect transient emotions and 
 general ideas, are apparent in Italian mu.sic. In 
 Germany, the mehxiy, less suave and regular, 
 more free, terse, and impassioned, is less separate 
 in its impression from the solid basis of harmony 
 out of which it sc-ems to grow; grandeur of design, 
 massivcness and complexity of structure, depth 
 and earnestness, an in>istent striving after varie<i 
 expression even to the sacrifice of sui>erficial charm 
 — these features are characteristically Teutonic. 
 In the work of the leading French composers there 
 is everywhere apparent a love of the dramatic and 
 picturesque, an effort to present definite concep- 
 tions, a fondness for moulding the work in accord- 
 ance with preconceived theories, predominance of 
 the critical and reflective over the creative and spon- 
 taneous. sui> nt of technique, elegance, 
 grace, and p: . i. These traits have their 
 
 97
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 parallel in tendencies that have given to the whole 
 intellectual achievements of these nations — par- 
 ticularly literature and art — their historic char- 
 acter. So tenacious are these peculiarities that 
 they survive even that strong cosmopolitan tend- 
 ency that appears in the work of certain excep- 
 tional artists of recent days, which strives to oblit- 
 erate national distinctions in the effort to work out 
 problems that are common to the whole intellec- 
 tual world. Equally illustrative of the persistent 
 control of music by national temperament is the 
 product of such recent aspirants for musical re- 
 nown as Russia, Norway, and Finland. Indeed, 
 nothing is more clear than that the former unifica- 
 tion of musical style was greatly due to the hege- 
 mony of Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries, and of Germany in the nineteenth, and 
 that the struggle everywhere at the present day 
 
 — one that is also beginning to be felt in America 
 
 — is for independent national assertion. 
 
 Not less striking are the differences in physi- 
 ognomy and purpose between the music of the 
 eighteenth century and that of the nineteenth, dif- 
 ferences plainly corresponding to social and intel- 
 lectual features which distinguish those periods 
 from one another. The patronage of the progress- 
 ive music of the eighteenth century was almost 
 completely in the hands of the aristocratic, fash- 
 ionable class (one who makes an exception of 
 J. S. Bach overlooks the great part played by secu- 
 lar music in his work and his education) ; and as the 
 
 98
 
 MUSIC LN THE COLLKGE 
 
 ideas and manners of this class were very much 
 the same all over Europe, national distinctions are 
 less evident than they arc in the changed conditions 
 of tlie nineteenth century. The secular music of 
 the old regime took its direction from the salon 
 and the oix-ra-house; French and Italian fa.shions 
 ruled in music; the art became formal and aca- 
 demic, l^eing conceived as essentially a means of 
 transient entertainment, deferential to the light 
 tastes of a pleasure-seeking nobility. The char- 
 acter of sch(X)ls of art dej^ends much upon the char- 
 .■- ' r of their patronage; in the seventeenth and 
 ti^iilecnth centuries, probably for the last time in 
 the history of the world, the arts were subject to 
 the rule of a heretlitary governing aristocracy. 
 
 Neither were the dominant intellectual forces of 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as 
 WM'ild stimulate the noblest jxiwers of an art like 
 mu>ic. It was the age of Enlightenment and Ra- 
 tionalism, where the reliance in the search for truth 
 was ui>on the shaq) discriminating understanding, 
 not ujwn the intuition, when the world of sense and 
 experience was the whole world of reality, and the 
 search mt>st worthy of man was conceivc<l as that 
 which makes for distinctness and clearness of ol)- 
 scrvation and conception. The dominant spirit 
 was that of analysis, criticism, and lope. With 
 the rejection of authority there was laid the foun- 
 dation of sdcncc and individual freedom, but this 
 gain was paid for by a distrust antl virtual repres- 
 sion of forces such as those whirh prikluaMl the 
 
 99
 
 INIUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 ages of religious enthusiasm and the great creative 
 periods of art. In such an atmosphere music could 
 attain formal elegance, technical precision, and 
 melodious charm — it could not find an open field 
 for the exercise of its full emotional energy. No 
 more instructive illustration of the dependence of 
 music upon circumstances can be found than in the 
 work of Handel — a man nine-tenths of whose 
 enormous intellectual force was wasted because he 
 could not escape from the limitations imposed 
 by the narrow, superficial requirements of his 
 pubHc. 
 
 The great tone masters of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury felt the stir of far mightier forces, for they 
 were sons of the people in a sense in which the 
 composers of the eighteenth century were not. 
 The problems of the age, its hopes, its doubts, its 
 spiritual strivings, penetrated their souls and vi- 
 brate in their music. They could not in any other 
 period have been what they were. The art of the 
 eighteenth century, as a rule, ignored the existence 
 of passion, misery, and fear — there was no place 
 in it for a Millet, a Rodin, or a Dostoievsky; the 
 art of the nineteenth century digs deep into the 
 facts of human nature and does not shrink before 
 its discoveries. Analogous contrasts may be found 
 in the music of the two epochs. Even had the in- 
 struments and the forms been ready, no "Sym- 
 phonie pathetiquc," no "Tristan und Isolde," 
 could have sprung from the light soil of the eight- 
 eenth century. 
 
 ICO
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 VI 
 
 The history of music leads into fields that are 
 inexhaustible in instruction and suggestivencss. 
 Jules Comharicu. at the close of his study of the 
 development of musical art, asks the old question, 
 why music has held so great a place in the progress 
 of dvilixalion. and. passing by the conventional ex- 
 planations, finds his answer in the simple fact that 
 man is a being of faith, imagination, and sentiment. 
 That prolific and harmonious culture of the Greeks 
 can hardly be appreciated without taking account 
 of the part that music played in their education. 
 The development of Roman Catholic music from 
 the fifth century to the sixteenth not only throws 
 a vivid light upon some of the modes of thought 
 of the Middle Ages, but also helps us to under- 
 stand the unique |X)wer which the Roman Catholic 
 polity and discipline have always exercised upon 
 the human mind. The influential part which the 
 German Chorale playtxl in Uie early extension of 
 Protestantism Ls known to all students of the 
 Reformation. The religious works of Sebastian 
 Bach, which were based to a large extent up>on the 
 Chorale, clearly reflect the spirit and temper of 
 German Protestantism. Tlie career of the opera is 
 closely bound up with the history of European 
 manners for three hundred years. Music is the 
 t>pical art of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 
 turies, as painting was of the fifteenth, sixteenth, 
 and seventeenth, and demands for its full compre- 
 
 lOI
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 hension a similar reference to its historic back- 
 ground. The musical problems of the nineteenth 
 century — the relation of music to religion; the 
 transition from the classic ideal to the romantic, 
 closely paralleled by a similar change in literature 
 and painting; the rise of programme music, in- 
 volving difficult questions concerning the nature 
 and scope of music's expressive power; the union 
 of music and poetry, its manner and effect; the 
 extraordinary success of Wagner's works, and the 
 revolution in the whole theory of dramatic music 
 which they caused; the rapid extension of musical 
 study throughout Europe and America, and the 
 effect upon taste and production; the transfer of 
 patronage from the aristocracy to the mixed pub- 
 lic; the establishment of the concert system, and 
 the multiplication of institutions for musical exten- 
 sion — these phenomena, and many more which 
 might engage our attention, prove that music as an 
 art of expression reaches far beyond one's own 
 private experiences and predilections, and claims 
 the respect of every one who concerns himself 
 with the interests that have occupied mankind 
 from age to age. 
 
 Just as soon as the mind ranges reflectively over 
 any considerable area of musical history, it is per- 
 ceived that music has been subject to the ebb and 
 flow of tendencies which offer such analogies to 
 certain general movements in the intellectual world 
 that it would be impossible to consider the corre- 
 spondence as accidental. While it would be in- 
 
 I02
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 exact to say that the larger currents of music arc 
 at any lime constrained by any particular phenom- 
 ena in politics or literature — as. for example, that 
 the tumult in Beethoven's music was caused by 
 the social uj^hcavals of his time, or that the roman- 
 tic phase of music was a result of tlic romantic 
 school of poetr> — yet the analogies between cer- 
 tain dominant traits in musical development and 
 contemjwrary changes in other fields of expression 
 are so evident that it would be just as unphil- 
 osophical to declare that the developments of 
 music have been exclusively due to its own inner 
 necessities of growth as a similar assertion would 
 be in respect to any other historic form of art or 
 literature. The truth would seem to be that 
 music is equally sensitive to those currents which 
 are always flowing in the deeper tracts of human 
 consciousness; and when they come to the sur- 
 face, and effect those transitions which distinguish 
 ejxKh from epoch, music, like every other form of 
 ideal manifestation, is swayed and colored by them 
 and bears its o\%ti witness to their nature and ne- 
 cessity. Thus the life work of such commanding 
 geniuses as Beethoven and Wagner cannot be ex- 
 plained by looking at the p>ericxlic progress of mu- 
 sical art consideretl by itself alone. Their forms 
 and technique might possibly be so explained, al- 
 though even this is doubtful; but the content and 
 spirit of their wtirk. the ideas which they consciously 
 strove to impart, the direct apfx-al which they made 
 to the sympathetic comprehension of their con- 
 
 103
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 temporaries — these %ere a response of delicately 
 sensitive intellects to a stimulus that derived much 
 of its direction from their intellectual and even 
 their physical environment. Even their forms and 
 technique underwent this compulsion, for form and 
 technique in the hands of a great artist are simply 
 conveniences nearest at hand through which, as 
 along the line of least resistance, his impulses move. 
 Technique and form are not implements mechanic- 
 ally fabricated in advance of the feeling to be con- 
 veyed. In the early days of counterpoint doubt- 
 less they were so, but not since the period — we 
 may say the sixteenth century — when scientific 
 music first became aware that its true function in 
 life was expression. An artist of original creative 
 power chooses certain forms because his genius 
 works most easily by means of them. In his early 
 days, when he follows his models, his choice of form 
 is due to his education, but not when he attains 
 maturity. Then he commands his form instead 
 of being commanded by it. Witness the manner 
 in which Bach and Beethoven played with the 
 forms of fugue and sonata, finding in them freedom 
 and not repression. Not even the fulness of time, in- 
 creasing the appliances of music and expanding its 
 technical range, could have made the work of such 
 men as Bach, Gluck, Beethoven, Schubert, Weber, 
 Schumann, Berlioz, Wagner, Liszt, what it was, if 
 the intellectual and social milieu had been different. 
 They were not merely the product of an inevitable 
 musical evolution — they were the product of their 
 age, and witnesses to it. 
 
 104
 
 MUSIC IN Tin: COLLKGi: 
 
 Not only arc the dominant tendencies of a 
 period disclosed in the work of tlie nvxlern tone 
 masters, but also the cross currents, eddies, and 
 reactions, as in the creations of sucli men as 
 Brahms and Mendelssohn. The nineteenth cen- 
 tury was not only a revolutionary age. endowed 
 with forward- reaching energies which have trans- 
 formed the very aspect of civilization as well as 
 its consciousness, but it was also an age of eclecti- 
 cism, of frequent hesitations, subject to seasons of 
 doubt as well as self-confidence, individuals and 
 even groups often seeking refuge amid its uncer- 
 tainties in convictions where rej>ose seemeil once 
 to have been attained. Stability, if found any- 
 where, is found in the past, in institutions, cus- 
 toms, and beliefs that have acquired a semblance 
 of authority; and so. in an age conspicuously 
 marked by individualism, in which strong minds 
 demand release from every shackle that would 
 impede the free exercise of their thought and action, 
 fear of consequences drives others to less adven- 
 turous courses, impelling them to seek the comfort 
 of well-known harbors rather than the dubious 
 treasures that are found only amid the p>eri!s of 
 uncharteii seas. Both procedures, however, the 
 radical and the reactionary, have something in 
 common, both have the nineteen th-centur>' stamp 
 upon them, for they are dictated by a sense of 
 personal liberty and resi)onsibility. far more than 
 was the case in former epochs when the individual 
 was more subject to the general belief and custom 
 of his community or class. A man may choose 
 
 »o5
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 orthodoxy, in spite of a strong current in the op- 
 posite direction, but he feels himself free in choos- 
 ing it. 
 
 This rebellion against the coercion of types, so 
 characteristic of all departments of thought in the 
 nineteenth century, is strikingly apparent in music, 
 and explains the greater variety and force of the 
 music of that century as compared with the music 
 of its predecessor. In fact, instead of music being 
 less responsive than the other arts to encompassing 
 spiritual forces, it is, when comprehensively studied, 
 often distinctly more so; and while it is called the 
 modern art because it has flowered only in the 
 past four hundred years, it is especially entitled to 
 that designation because of its flexibihty, its com- 
 plexity, its subtlety of expression of every shade 
 of feeling, the readiness of its attachment to ad- 
 vancing ideas. Even from the merely historic 
 point of view, therefore, music challenges the atten- 
 tion of the historian and the sociologist, and pro- 
 pounds problems which require a grasp and an 
 acumen that may be worthily fostered in the most 
 austere haunts of learning. 
 
 VII 
 
 In proportion as art in its development acquires 
 self-consciousness and technical freedom, interest 
 is more and more concentrated upon the Hves and 
 characters of representative artists. The habit of 
 mind fostered by the scientific spirit of our day 
 
 io6
 
 MUSIC L\ THL COLLEGK 
 
 inclines us to inquire not only concerning the im- 
 mediate elTect of a work of art. not only concern- 
 ing the elements of which it is composed, but also 
 how it came to be. We discover that the works 
 of any artist of the first rank exhibit qualities that 
 plainly distinguish them from the productions of 
 others — that each has what we call his individual 
 style. These dilTcrcnces of style are not super- 
 ficial acquisitions, but are inherent, and are in- 
 separably identified with dispositions which dis- 
 tinguish the artist as a man from other men. 
 They are forms of expression which the artist can- 
 not alter by any amount of efTort; they are iden- 
 tified with the very texture and tendency of his 
 mind. In every work of strong individuality 
 there is a revelation of the author's self. This es- 
 sential self may be matle manifest after the work 
 has been — somewhat mechanically — begun; or 
 the spiritual turmoil may come first, excited by 
 some actual experience of pleasure or pain — it 
 does not matter, the work is the expression of an 
 antecedent reality, and is an appeal for human 
 sympathy. At once there is a sense of fellowship 
 aroused in us, and so far as we are capable of like 
 experiences (as when we look at a landscape-paint- 
 ing, or hear a poem or a poignant piece of music) 
 the love for the work passes at once into a feeling 
 of companionship with the known or unknown 
 author. We cannot evade this camaraderie ; there 
 are no others with whom we feel more closely akin 
 than those who put our own conscious or latent 
 107
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 emotion into beautiful form. If these works were 
 not embodiments of the very soul of their creators, 
 this feeling on our part could not possibly exist. 
 In every true work of art a virtue lies which can- 
 not be explained except in terms of human ex- 
 pression and human need. 
 
 The hfe thus revealed is not the life of an artist 
 disengaged from the complete life of a man. For 
 man is a unit, not a jumble of unrelated faculties, 
 and every performance of his, whether of high 
 imagination or the most prosaic routine, is regulated 
 by the personality that is distinctively his own. 
 The genius and the experience of the artist may 
 be so far removed from any consciousness of ours, 
 his language may be so difficult, that his work 
 seems to us at first like a hieroglyphic to which we 
 have no key; but we believe that if the barrier 
 could be broken we should discover a soul suffi- 
 ciently like our own as to seem neighborly and 
 companionable. This insatiable craving to find 
 the man behind the work accounts for the sadness 
 we feel over the hopelessness of knowing anything 
 of the authors of the Iliad and the Book of Job. 
 It accounts for the unwearied persistence which for 
 generation after generation pursues the quest for 
 any record that may uncover the mystery of Shake- 
 speare's Hfe, and reads into the Sonnets a confes- 
 sion that brings this seemingly supernatural being 
 down nearer to our earth. 
 
 The pursuit of signs of character as revealed in 
 works of the imagination presents far more diffi- 
 
 io8
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 culty in music than in rcprcsrntativc art or poetry. 
 In tlic case of ihe latter we are usually able to go 
 directly from the work to the artist; in the case of 
 music we seek first after external evidences and 
 inteqjret the work in the light of these. The cor- 
 respondences between music and event or disposi- 
 tion are not obvious; the testimony is not direct; 
 we must employ inferences which easily go astray 
 into sentimental assumptions. Stevenson's re- 
 mark that every work of art is conscious of a back- 
 ground no doubt applies to music, but here the 
 background often seems lost in mists and shadows. 
 So uncertain are the clews that one school of 
 critics refuses to fmd in music any indication of 
 character outside the composer's musical genius, 
 which to them is a thing apart; while others, agree- 
 ing that music is a personal disclosure, often rad- 
 ically disagree in their interpretations. Goethe 
 once said that every poem of his was a confession, 
 and such we may easily believe was often the case 
 with the compositions of a Beethoven, a Wagner, 
 a Chopin, a Tchaikovsky. But the thing con- 
 fessed — what is it that shows the "Sonata Appas- 
 sionata," "Parsifal." the "Polonaise in F sharp 
 minor," or the "Symphonic pathetique" to be a 
 window into the composer's soul and not simply 
 a piece of skilful handicraft? The music alone is 
 incapable of furnishing the evidence; we must go 
 outside of it and search the records of the artist's 
 life, his words, the testimony of his contemporaries. 
 We must also match works with one another, sum- 
 
 109
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 marize the achievements of a period in the artist's 
 career, find some fibre that connects his inner with 
 his outer world, identify the complex interaction 
 of elements that makes the product not only an 
 expression of the artist's mood but also represent- 
 ative of forces that acted upon him. But — and 
 here is the essential point — when the connection 
 between the composition and the artist's life is 
 found, then the music appears as a more conclusive 
 witness to his essential spiritual nature than any 
 other evidence whatever. The first suggestion 
 must come from without, but compared with the 
 searching truth of the music it is only partial and 
 provisional. 
 
 In all our attempts to fathom the real significance 
 of music we are thrown back upon the deeper prob- 
 lems of personality. Where is the essential hfe of 
 the composer to be found? What is the hidden 
 mine from which he drew the jewels of his melody ? 
 That there is a subconscious region in which their 
 elements He hidden is beyond question; but what 
 were the forces that deposited them there and then 
 moulded them into form? Was there a hereditary 
 influence at work, and if so when did it begin? 
 Does it reach backward to the first ghmmering of 
 consciousness upon this globe? If, on the other 
 hand, the rudiments of these sounding forms were 
 coincident with the artist's own separate experi- 
 ence, how did this experience act ? If the causative 
 force was subconscious, or if it consisted in physical 
 or emotional stimuli coming from outside, of which 
 
 no
 
 MUSIC IN TIIE COLLEGE 
 
 the musician was aware at the moment — in either 
 case the mystery is no less; for, if the hitter was the 
 fact, what was' the alchemy that transmuted the 
 sensation of pleasure or pain into a musical phrase? 
 WTicn Mendelssohn, on the occasion of his visit to 
 the Hebrides, wrote a few bars of music in a letter 
 to a friend, "to show you how powerfully the place 
 alTected me," the connection between the scene 
 and the music was real, but how was it efTected? 
 A composer reads a tale, sees a landscape, meets 
 a friend — at once melodies and harmonies spring 
 from their hiding-place into his consciousness. He 
 writes a song — it is incorrect to say that he tries 
 to imitate or represent the imagery or sentiment 
 of the poem; a vivid imi)ression is made upon 
 his mind and something comes forth that is a mys- 
 tical paraphrase in tones of the poet's thought. 
 With Hugo Wolf this transition often occurred in 
 the hours of sleep — the song being full-formed 
 in the brain on waking and needing only to be 
 written down; with Schubert the magic formula 
 was pronounced the instant the verses were read, 
 and pTcsio ! a lovely mcUxly stepped forth complete. 
 A musician's mind' may be subject for a long time 
 to some powerful excitement, as Wagner, Beethoven, 
 and Schumann in their love-longings, and this con- 
 flagration in the soul kindles a llame in the music 
 which burns in us also as we hear it. There was a 
 passionate love of nature in Beethoven which was 
 the source of some of his noblest music. "When 
 I am in the fields," he said, "it seems as though 
 
 II I
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 every tree cried Holy ! Holy ! Holy ! " Religious faith 
 and patriotism gave Verdi's "Requiem" its incom- 
 parable splendor. The " B Minor " and " D Major " 
 masses, "The Passion According to St. Matthew," 
 "The Beatitudes," "The Dream of Gerontius" — 
 what are they but fragments thrown off from a 
 larger whole, testifying to a force that dominated 
 the very life of their creators ? We call music sub- 
 jective, abstract, "an appeal to the sixth sense in 
 terms of the fourth dimension," but these terms 
 come from an aesthetic that is out of date, or at 
 best figurative and approximate. The ties that 
 bind music to the world of sense and experience 
 are invisible, but they existed from the beginning 
 and they are never completely severed. Nothing 
 can come from nothing — music, like every other 
 activity, is life movement taking a special form. It 
 is response to stimulus. This stimulus may come 
 from a musical experience — Bach often played the 
 works of other men in order to excite his own in- 
 vention — but the shock that strikes the creative 
 fire may come from one of an innumerable variety 
 of experiences. Whatever the shock may be, the 
 result is moulded and colored by the composer's 
 own spiritual constitution, which also changes and 
 develops under the vicissitudes of his life. 
 
 The laws of musical composition are not under- 
 stood, but we are coming to realize that there are 
 laws, and that they do not separate the musician 
 from his fellow men. The greatest musician is he 
 who lives most amply and intensely. He speaks 
 
 112
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 to us through his art; his message is sincere and 
 we get more of life by reading it. Ah, but how 
 diflicult the reading is! How we stammer over 
 his phraseology, and in despair are often driven 
 to assert that the communication is unintelligible 
 because it means nothing ! We do not see the 
 truth, that the musician's language is a universal 
 human language, and that we have only to awaken 
 faculties that are latent in all of us to perceive that 
 the message is its own interpreter. 
 
 The tone masters are spokesmen of our race, and 
 it behooves us to listen to their prophecy. No 
 doubt the deeper significance of their speech can 
 only be intuitively discerned, and in this we are 
 helped in our own experience of life, which will 
 prepare for us the responsive frame. Only he who 
 has known love can know the songs of Schumann. 
 Vincent dTndy's word is as true for the hearer 
 as for the performer when he asserts that no one 
 should undertake the interpretation of the "Sonata 
 Appassionata " who has not himself sufTered. No 
 doubt there is danger of pressing these correspond- 
 ences too far, but there can be no question that 
 we receive vast aid to musical comprehension by 
 studying the lives of those who have manifestly 
 put their rejoicing or sorrowing hearts into their 
 harmonies. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The biographies and rccc^rded utterances of the 
 great composers are alone sufficient to refute many 
 
 113
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 of the current shallow notions regarding the intel- 
 lectual and spiritual content of the art they glori- 
 fied. The value of art is a recreative value, one 
 says. Art is an outgrowth and a higher manifes- 
 tation of the play impulse, says another — the 
 simulation by animals and undeveloped men of 
 primitive acts that were useful to life, "the spon- 
 taneous employment of forces acquired by nutri- 
 tion." "Hence art is a higher form of play, and, 
 to those who receive it, essentially the enjoyment 
 attached to the idle contemplation of forms." 
 From this point of view the aim of art is to "treat 
 reahty as a spectacle, real objects as if they were 
 images of themselves, the functions of life as if 
 they were a sport." This is not the opinion of the 
 artists, who may, perhaps, be allowed to have a 
 word in the matter. "There has hardly ever been 
 a creative artist of the first rank," says Rudolph 
 Eucken (he might have said never), "who professed 
 the aesthetical view of life, for such a one cannot 
 look upon art as a separate sphere dissociated from 
 the rest of Hfe; he must put his whole soul into 
 his creation, he cannot be satisfied with mere tech- 
 nique, and he is far too conscious of the difficulties 
 and shortcomings of this creation to make it a 
 mere matter of enjoyment. As a matter of fact, 
 the aesthetical view of life is professed not so much 
 by artists themselves as by dilettantists, who study 
 art from the outside, and often enough force their 
 theories upon the artists, who, not so much dis- 
 posed to abstract discussion, and indeed defense- 
 
 114
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 less against it, hardly realize that this separation 
 of art from life as a whole docs not elevate art but 
 degrades it." 
 
 Confirmations of this statement by the phi- 
 losopher of Jena sprinj; up readily in the mind of 
 any one who is at all conversant with the history 
 of music. "The world does not see," exclaimed 
 Beethoven, ''that music is a revelation, sublimcr 
 than all wisdom, than all philosophy." An exag- 
 gerated expression, no doubt, the words of a fanatic 
 perhaps, but they give no help to the "play theory," 
 or tlie thet^ry of passive contemplation. Handel, 
 in the middle of the century which held almost 
 universally the belief that music existed for amuse- 
 ment, rebuked a well-meant compliment to the 
 "entertainment" which his music had given the 
 town with the proud confession: "I should be 
 sorry if I only entertained them; I wish to make 
 them better." And when he was writing the 
 "Hallelujah" chorus of the "Messiah" he thought 
 he saw "heaven open and the great God himself." 
 
 The masters of music have been leaders, not 
 followers, of the aesthetic movement of their age; 
 uplifting the taste of the time, not subservient to 
 it; the sers-anLs of their genius and the truth of 
 art, not of the fickle public; devotees of an ideal 
 that was not granted to their contemporaries. 
 The reforms of Gluck and Wagner were in a real 
 sense moral reforms; the purpose was so lofty that 
 it took no account of the perils that confront 
 every one who defies tlie customs and settled be-
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 liefs of the day. The ruling motive of Sebastian 
 Bach was not to earn his salary as a routine choir- 
 director, but to achieve perfection; not to gain 
 fame, which he never knew, but to perform true 
 service to God and his church. The annals of 
 music abound in inspiriting examples of austerity 
 and consecration. In every period one finds shin- 
 ing instances of men who held stoutly to truth and 
 noble purpose in the midst of every temptation to 
 compromise, suffering privation, obloquy, and the 
 bitter trials of defeated hope in obedience to the 
 higher law which bade them use their powers for 
 the good of their fellow men and not for emolu- 
 ment. Art, like religion, has its noble army of 
 martyrs, music no less than its sister arts, and 
 hardly a great musician has been spared some 
 measure of the pain which the world is ever prone 
 to inflict upon its benefactors. 
 
 IX 
 
 The scrutiny of the lives of the great composers, 
 as of the masters in the other arts, suggests in- 
 quiry concerning the ethical as well as the intel- 
 lectual consequences of exclusive occupation in 
 imaginative creation. This phase of the subject 
 might be dismissed as irrelevant on the ground 
 that inquisition of morals is inapplicable to any 
 particular class or profession as compared with 
 others, were it not for the fact that artists, both 
 creative and reproductive, are frequently singled 
 
 ii6
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 out by a certain order of self-appointed censors 
 for special reprobation. The frequent discussion 
 of the connection between art and morality im- 
 plies that their spheres naturally unite, or ought 
 to do so, and that the motto noblesse oblige is espe- 
 cially applicable to artists, who represent in the 
 eyes of the world an agency of such vast powers of 
 instruction and inspiration. It is certain that the 
 members of the artistic professions have never 
 claimed exemption from the ethical requirements 
 that obtain among the generality of mankind, but 
 at the same time they have never admitted that 
 the duties oi their otVice made it incumbent upon 
 them to pose as teachers of morals and religion. 
 The release which they have fmally won from the 
 overlordship of the church and the state has sim- 
 ply consisted in the assertion of a privilege that 
 lies in the very nature of their calling. In the in- 
 terest of a divine right, viz.. freedom of self-e.\pres- ^ 
 sion, the artist is his own spiritual adviser, and he 1 
 declares that the obligation to be true to the idea 
 which strives instinctively for realization is to him 
 the one supreme law. The influence of his work 
 ui)on others and their judgment upon it is to him 
 a matter of minor concern, and the man who is 
 least troubled by questions of the moral effect of a 
 particular work of art is the man who produced it. 
 It could hardly enter his mind that a work which 
 he knew to be sincere could be morally injurious 
 to any one. for it is a j^rincifile generally to be ac- 
 cepted that tlic moral or immoral effect of a work 
 117
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 of art depends upon the spirit and motive of its 
 author and not upon the subject or the particular 
 manner of technical handhng. The influence of art 
 does not lie in its form but in its spirit, and the 
 spirit will be in accord with that of its creator, and 
 will not be hidden from an intelligent observer. 
 
 It must be confessed that it is easy for the artist 
 to lose sight of certain ethical considerations which, 
 because of prejudice or conventional habits of 
 thought, may intrude upon the aesthetic point of 
 view in the case of an observer who has not been 
 trained to look for the spirit within the form. 
 When the artist conceives his idea, and when he 
 is in the stress of executing it, he is absorbed and 
 isolated. He is alone with his vision; he does not 
 inquire whence the vision came; it is to him good 
 because it is his own. He inhabits a separate 
 world, of which he is (or so it appears to him) the 
 creator. His only conscious motive is an artistic 
 one. When he emerges from this retreat it is to 
 enter another, and his whole life is a succession of 
 such self-centred experiences. His chief conscious- 
 ness is one of free, self-impelled activity; least of 
 all does he feel restraint by anything outside the 
 laws of his art. 
 
 Every strong, compelling force in human nature 
 tends to run to excess by losing sight of counter- 
 balancing considerations, and the very quality of 
 mind that produces great art would naturally tend 
 to promote a disregard of the prudences, with their 
 side glances at neighborhood opinion, which make 
 
 ii8
 
 MUSIC IN Tin- COLLEGE 
 
 up so much of ordinary life. "The two spheres 
 [of art and moralityl, " siiys Eucken, "seem to place 
 life under opposed tasks and valuations. Morality 
 demands a subordination to universally valid laws; 
 art on the other hand desires the freest develop- 
 ment of individuality. Morality speaks with the 
 stern voice of duty; art invites the free play of all 
 our forces." 
 
 It is not strange that an artist, who rightly de- 
 mands the free e.xercise of his individual genius, 
 should, when placed in the midst of a philistine 
 and bourgeois environment, sometimes carry con- 
 ceptions that belong to art over into social rela- 
 tions, and convince himself that the unhampered 
 activity of his natural inclination in one field is 
 incompatible with constraint in the other. This 
 instinctive craving for liberty on all sides, permit- 
 ting the dominant passion for artistic independence 
 to overflow into the domain of ethics, explains epi- 
 sodes which we would gladly hide in the lives of 
 such men as Liszt, Wagner, and Berlioz. When 
 we perceive similar lapses in the careers of a con- 
 siderable number of poets and novelists in the same 
 period, particularly in I'raruc. we explain them 
 in the same way — as phenomena to be expcctcM 
 in a revolutionary epoch such as that of nineteentli- 
 ccntury French romanticism, where license is the 
 shaded side of the just revolt against an arbitrary 
 tratlitionalism. Any one. however, who should 
 suppose that such deflections arc characterisdc 
 tendencies in the life devoted to art would show a 
 119
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 discreditable ignorance of art history. Art is by 
 no means prone to abuse its freedom; in fact, 
 caution and respectful deference to current habits 
 and ideas are far more observable, even in the most 
 brilliant periods of art development, than defiant 
 self-assertion. Art is more inclined to steady the 
 better tendencies of the time than to unsettle them, 
 and this applies especially to the field of ethics. 
 Art history discloses many such gratifying spec- 
 tacles as that of the Italian Renaissance, when the 
 artists were far more conspicuous witnesses to the 
 everlasting principles of morality than the poHtical 
 leaders or even the princes of the church. Music 
 shows us men like Beethoven and Handel, stain- 
 lessly pure amid fashionable corruption; men like 
 Schubert, Weber, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Grieg, 
 and many others of the Romantic period, leading 
 domestic lives of an almost commonplace simplicity 
 amid the emotional excitements and social rival- 
 ries of their calling; men like Palestrina, Bach, and 
 Franck laying their vast powers humbly before 
 the throne of the God whom they served through 
 the ministry of his visible church; groups of men, 
 more obscure but not less heroic, such as the or- 
 ganists and cantors of the German Protestant 
 Church in the seventeenth century, who kept 
 bright the pure flame of art and piety amid the 
 frightful demoralizations of the Thirty Years' 
 War. Not less striking is the superiority of the 
 motives of many of the composers of the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries in all western 
 
 1 20
 
 MUSIC IN Tin: COLLEGE 
 
 Europe to Uic shallow ideals of the fashionable so- 
 ciety uj>on whose palronaRc music in that period 
 was forced almost wholly to depend. 
 
 But why all this pother over the conduct of 
 artists, and the imaginary conflict between art and 
 morality? Where is the real man to be found if 
 not in his art, the master passion of his soul? Is 
 the real Beethoven in his rough jokes and his quar- 
 rels with his landladies, or in the "Ninth Sym- 
 phony" and the "Missa Solemnis"? Wagner's 
 life shows us much that is petty and ignoble, but 
 did "Lohengrin," and "The Ring of the Nibelung," 
 and "Tristan und Isolde," and "The Mastersingers 
 of Nuremberg." and "Parsifal" come from a mean 
 and corrupt source? Have the masters of music 
 been lovers and servants of their kind, or egotistic 
 exploiters of tlieir fellow men ? When we sum up 
 the whole question, is not Guyau correct in his be- 
 lief that great art results from living the life of all 
 beings and expressing this life by means of ele- 
 ments borrowed from reality? "The great artist 
 is not he who contemplates; it is he who loves and 
 who communicates his love to others." Kucken 
 sums up the whole question of the relation of art 
 to morality when he says, reviewing the history of 
 the apparent discrepancy between these two si)heres 
 of human life: "Morality was able to escape the 
 danger of becoming rigid and superficial only by 
 entering into wider relationships. When the move- 
 ment took place, however, in so far as it led toward 
 the appropriation of a new reality, and in so far 
 
 121
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 as it came to mean not merely the correct fulfil- 
 ment of command but an inward renewal of man, 
 a progress toward newness of life, it found art ab- 
 solutely indispensable; for this new matter could 
 not be comprehended as a whole, and become really 
 present and alive, without the assistance of artistic 
 activity; nor could it become really universal in 
 the absence of the constructive labor of art, weav- 
 ing inward and outward together. When the great 
 object is to attain to a new world and a new life, 
 to rise above the petty aims of the mere man and 
 mere every-day life, then art, with its quiet and sure 
 labor conditioned by the inner necessities of things, 
 with its inner liberation of the soul, and with its 
 power to bring the whole infinitude of being in- 
 wardly near to us, and to make it part of our own 
 life, must be directly reckoned as moral." 
 
 X 
 
 In view of these considerations, inferred from 
 the impressions given by great musical works and 
 from the statements of the composers in regard to 
 the principles that actuated them, we cannot fail 
 to find a profound significance in the fact of the 
 supreme development of music in such a century 
 as the nineteenth. For here we have a period dis- 
 tinguished, beyond all that have preceded, for sci- 
 entific research, for the practical application of 
 scientific discovery to every convenience of life, 
 for enormous expansion of industry and commerce, 
 
 122
 
 Misic IX Tin-: c(jlli:ge 
 
 for prodigious accumulation of material goo<ls. for 
 the passionate assertion of the sulViciency of visible 
 nature to supply the urgent needs of mankind. 
 The result of such ambitions and the enormous 
 rewards that have follo\ved labor and enterprise 
 would be, we might suppose, a submergence of the 
 spiritual consciousness, a check to the purer ideal- 
 isms, involving the i)rogressive atrophy of those 
 desires which the religions have held as witnesses 
 to the true needs and possibilities of the soul. 
 And yet it has not been so. There has never been 
 a time when the cravings of the spirit were more 
 apparent, or the evidence more distinct that the 
 attainment of material power cannot satisfy the 
 most insistent longings of human nature. The 
 several forms of art have no doubt been greatly 
 afTected by certain .special requirements of an in- 
 dustrial age; commercialism has deflected taste 
 into channels marked out by its own requirements, 
 and here and there the elTect is seen in tendencies 
 toward sheer ostentation and vulgarity. Even mu- 
 sic has not escaped such unfavorable inllucnce; 
 but the powerful upUil in music upon the subjec- 
 tive, personally emotional side, together with a re- 
 newed outburst of creative power in painting and 
 sculpture, the recent revival of poetrv. including 
 poetry of an inward, mystical type — all this forms 
 a counterbalance which renews the hope that it 
 will apiK-ar in the future as well as in the past that 
 man will not, for any great length of time, lose 
 sight of those spiritual forces which must, if any,
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 prove his ultimate salvation. Let it not be thought 
 extravagant to say that the great composers of the 
 nineteenth century are as truly the exponents of 
 its character as the scientific discoverers or the 
 captains of industry. 
 
 XI 
 
 When we turn our attention away from historic 
 and biographical considerations and listen, as we 
 commonly do in opera-house and concert hall, to 
 musical works for the immediate and direct enjoy- 
 ment of something in itself sufficiently beautiful, 
 we easily discover that even here intelligence has 
 a serviceable part to play, and that the permanence, 
 and even the keenness, of our satisfaction is con- 
 nected with our antecedent state of preparation. 
 Through instruction we are brought to the appre- 
 ciation of music as a fine art rather than an aim- 
 less flow of unrelated sounds. In music, as well 
 as in poetry, we look before and after; the impres- 
 sion of an instant has no point except as it is re- 
 lated to previous impressions and excites an ex- 
 pectancy of impressions to follow. It is the be- 
 fore and after that gives each tone its life and 
 meaning. As the composer thinks in relations, 
 so the listener must hear in relations. The ability 
 thus to gather the parts into a coherent whole 
 comes with experience and knowledge; there is a 
 period in the life of a child when he cannot grasp 
 even the simplest melody as a whole; and the 
 124
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 adult cannot apprehend a complex form as a work 
 of art and Rrasp the comjKJSfr's intention unless 
 he knows how to direct his obscr\ation and co- 
 ordinate his perceptions. The keenest natural sen- 
 sibility to music's sjkII will carry one but a little, 
 way without some knowledge of the principles of 
 musical design. The study of those principles 
 transforms the heetlless amateur into a connois- 
 seur; with tlie ability to trace the fluid organiza- 
 tion of harmony and form, there is disclosed to 
 him a plastic jxjwer in the comjxjscr's material 
 which i>ermits an endless variety of interesting 
 texture, and enables him to acquire the concep- 
 tion of unity as the aim of variety, of clear-sighted 
 contrivance, of the adaptation of means to aesthetic 
 ends. The ability to recognize details as parts of 
 a still more beautiful whole — one of the essen- 
 tials of a cultivated mind — is cfTt*ctually pro- 
 moted by the analysis of musical works. If in a 
 ballet dance the enjoyment of the s{>ectator is 
 increased, as we are assured by its sup|x>rters. by 
 some knowledge of its technique, how much more 
 must this l>c the case in the art of music. In the 
 swift succession of the tonal factors a constant tax 
 is imposeti uj>on the memory in the adjustment of 
 departed to immtnliate sensations. Not only tliis, 
 but each instant's perception is comjxjund, in- 
 cluding relations of pitch, volume, and timbre, each 
 part flexible as it swa>*s under the jiressure of 
 rhythm, and yet only to be evaluate*!, like a figure 
 in a tapestry, as it combines with other components 
 
 »^5
 
 UVSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 of the design. To clear one's path through these 
 shifting entanglements, and follow the law that 
 directs each and the law that binds them into 
 unity, is to impose a task upon the mind which 
 can be accompHshed only through preliminary 
 study, reinforced by a concentration of attention 
 which many persons, even with the best of will, 
 find almost painful to sustain for any considerable 
 length of time. The discipline involved, for in- 
 stance, on the part of a conscientious musical critic, 
 who must give to his readers in the morning a 
 judgment upon a complex composition heard for 
 the first time the evenmg before, can with difficulty 
 be imagined by one who hears music in that languid, 
 passive manner that is the utmost of which many 
 concert habitues are capable. The hearing that 
 really hears is emphatically an active exercise, for 
 it reaches out and seizes the swiftly flying webs of 
 sound and holds them tenaciously for inspection. 
 With this process there comes a mental provoca- 
 tion that is peculiarly invigorating — not merely 
 the invigoration that attends every healthful ex- 
 ercise of faculty, but a lasting enrichment of men- 
 tal treasure — the conviction that one is in pos- 
 session of something alive as well as beautiful, 
 something substantial, not subject to decay. 
 
 In the scientific, theoretical divisions of musical 
 art there appear fields for the exercise of the most 
 active intellectual powers. In acoustics, physi- 
 ology, tonality, harmony, counterpoint, form, in- 
 strumentation, orchestration, composition, the most 
 
 126
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 indefatigable scholarship may find ample scope for 
 its cncrg)', not only in the way of invcsti^ati«)n 
 leading to further knowlcilgc, but also in the anal- 
 ysis and compamon which constitute a rational 
 basb for exact and comprehensive criticism. 
 
 XII 
 
 Still farther must we proceed in our estimate of 
 the function which music performs in the life of 
 culture. The gr n that arises from the 
 
 analysis of the \n i properties which music 
 
 exhibits as an art of form, must be supplemented 
 by more inward antl sf>ontaneous reactions if mu- 
 sic Is to fulfil the higher ends of art. The fmal 
 appeal of music is to the emotional nature, and its 
 ^ ' ' ' ition to the heart of man is that 
 
 i' tlet for hLs tenderest feelings, ami 
 
 b capable of producing a keenness of ecstasy that 
 is l>cyond the reach of any other artistic agciu \ . 
 In this latter (juality hes not only its glory but .il>-» 
 its danger. If musical indulgence lulls the strong 
 f ' ' to sleep, if it stirs f< " ' * shallow 
 V ie, if it makes one i i in the 
 
 performance of daily duly, then whatever its fas- 
 t' it cannot be held a^ ' ' ^ ' my 
 
 o >up|)oscs that such d< .irr 
 
 inherent in the very nature of music has been very 
 unfortunate in hi^ ' ' ' 
 
 thing wrong in li ; . . ' 
 
 question that music — rightly pursued, be it ob- 
 1^7
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 served — is an efficient agent in the fortifying of 
 the higher sentiment, the development of the clari- 
 fying, upHfting emotions. The secret Hes in the 
 selection for companionship of works that are the 
 product of strong, sincere feeling, earnest purpose, 
 and unyielding will. From such works comes a 
 shock that vitalizes while it disturbs. Our busi- 
 ness is, by the intelligent use of the means at hand, 
 to open channels through which the spirit of the 
 masters may flow into our own without impediment. 
 Right here lies the chief worth of association 
 with great works of art : they are emanations from 
 the intellect that produced them, the virtue that 
 goes out of them is one that was merely trans- 
 mitted, they draw us into a charmed circle where a 
 strong intellectual force is dominant. A work of 
 art is great just as there is a quality of greatness 
 in its creator. When we survey a picture by Rem- 
 brandt or Millet, a statue by Michelangelo, or hear 
 a symphony by Beethoven we are brought into 
 contact with a heroic personality, and our glad re- 
 sponse is an evidence that we also have something 
 heroic within us. These strong elements of hfe 
 being put into distinct concrete form, they are 
 enabled to act upon us directly; we recognize them 
 as something suited to our need; we appropriate 
 them and our spirits receive a new accession of 
 strength. It is impossible to escape this influence, 
 and the more we exercise ourselves upon life's 
 problems the more we are indebted to these great 
 spokesmen of humanity. It is in view of this fact 
 
 128
 
 MUSIC IN THE COLLKGE 
 
 that a mfxlcrn writer has dcclarcti that "the poet, 
 the artist, the seer arc the men who, more than the 
 professional j)hilosophers. have preserved alive tin* 
 inmost soul of humanity." 
 
 It is not t»K) much to claim for the art of music 
 that it conveys messaj^es drawn from the very 
 sources of emotional life and character with even 
 greater force than the representative arts. It is, 
 indeed, tlie highest function of representative art 
 to convey general ideas whose profit is that they 
 enri( h frcliiiij rather than add to knowkxlge — St. 
 G iuilen-s\ >lalues of Lincoln and Sherman, for ex- 
 ami)le. deriving only a minor interest from accu- 
 racy of ix)rtraiture; toiling humanity passes before 
 us in the rhythmic movement of Millet's Sower — 
 yet it is in music that the splendor and pathos of 
 life find their most unobstructetl path to the sym- 
 pathetic imagination. The profoundest commen- 
 tators upon Beethoven — Wagner, Holland, d'Indy, 
 Combarieu — put this conception of the composer 
 as hero into the forefront of their inteqirelation 
 of his work, and for the same reason treat him as 
 thr t)pical nnHlern musician. That the qualities 
 which music symlx)lizcs are abstracletl from imme- 
 diate locality and incident seems a gain rather than 
 a loss. It is a common e.xix*rience that ideas that 
 arc fundamental and especially |Knetrating arc 
 often im()artc<l most conclusively by means that 
 stir t' '>y indirtvtion. as in noble build- 
 
 ings .^ lis tt) great men and momentous 
 
 achicvcmaits — Gothic cathedrals, for example, 
 
 1J9
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 surpassing all possible didactic agencies in the com- 
 pelling majesty by which they impress the mind 
 with a sense of the nearness and wonder of the in- 
 visible world. In architecture, in music, in every 
 process by which the rehance is upon symbolism 
 rather than upon imitation, the peculiar effect is 
 due to associations gathered from a multitude of 
 impressions, inherited and acquired. With the 
 mind open to such influences, knowing that the 
 forms and colors of music are not mere mechanism 
 ingeniously devised for play, but a congenial me- 
 dium for the gratification of a spiritual need, then 
 they come to us as tidings from a kindred mind — 
 we feel the touch of a comrade's hand, we hear in 
 the harmonies the sound of his voice. 
 
 Back of all this there is still another mystery, 
 for the composer draws inspiration from a source 
 that is not confined to his own experience and 
 escapes the control of his will. Beyond the indi- 
 vidual attributes which can, to some extent at 
 least, be diflercntiated, as when we compare one 
 composer's style with that of another, there is 
 something which transcends all explanation, which 
 analysis cannot reach or theories explore, an im- 
 pulse which may be likened to a great tide flowing 
 from the boundless deeps of universal Being, which, 
 making its way through countless channels, reveals 
 a part of itself to our senses and understanding. 
 The deeper part, the fmal source of its vitality, is 
 not so revealed; if known at all it is recognized 
 only by our instincts and intuitions. 
 
 130
 
 MUSIC L\ THE COLLEGE 
 
 XIII 
 
 Such an art as this is no vain or shallow thing. 
 It has proved its necessity by scr\-ing as an inevi- 
 table a' it to every manilVstalion of the 
 social ( from the dawn of history until 
 now. One must obscr\'e also that music has a 
 creative as well as an expressive power in resp>ect 
 to ideas and feelings. The author of The Golden 
 Bough makes no unwarranted claim when he as- 
 serts that "this, the most intimate and affecting 
 of the arts, has done much to create as well as to 
 express religious emotion, thus modifying more or 
 lcs>< ' ■ ■ fabric of belief." Similar are the 
 rca* .-d by music nyyon patriotism, the 
 love of the sexes, humanitarian impulses, and all 
 the instincts. |>;issions. and determinations of 
 which music is able to take cognizance. The prin- 
 ciple so emphasized by modem jjsycholog)* — that 
 what we are dejK'nds to a great e.xtcnt on what 
 we do, that every e.\pressi<jn modifies llie nature 
 that expresses — applies to communities and races 
 as well as to in "" T; * jning as the over- 
 flow of simple t: when every mani- 
 festation of mood was crude and childish, employed 
 also for i.in puqxjses without any recogni- 
 tion of .! \aluc. music has been continuously 
 subject to the action of the reflective reason, culti- 
 vated for joy in ■ ■ " "■ r the con- 
 trol of law. or.; ^ which re- 
 acted upon the primordial impulse by affording it
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 a means for freer movement; until at last, while 
 still bringing to human sensibility the strongest 
 stimulus attainable by art, music is so regulated 
 by scientific procedure, so buttressed by method 
 and precedent, that the excitements of raw emo- 
 tionalism are made to yield to the higher aesthetic 
 satisfactions. 
 
 These self-conscious forces, shaping the impul- 
 sive currents of tone into permanent artistic forms, 
 do not, however, lay any fetters upon the free ex- 
 pansion of music's expressive energy. As it has 
 kept pace with all the changes in social conscious- 
 ness and institutional forms that are capable of 
 co-operation with so delicate a vehicle, reflecting 
 the shifting moods that result from such changes, 
 so it will continue to do in spite of the hindrances 
 of conservatism. There is as yet no apparent limit 
 to the adaptability of music to certain constant 
 demands of the spiritual nature. In spite of its 
 magnificent achievements music is still in the ex- 
 perimental stage. The turmoil in the musical 
 world to-day arises from the conviction that there 
 are untraversed fields of expression still lying open 
 before it. Its tendency is to ally itself still more 
 intimately with the forward movements in art and 
 literature, and to derive new forms and colors from 
 their suggestion. Music is even more flexible in 
 its adjustments than the other arts, which are re- 
 strained by their representative or utilitarian func- 
 tions. For in music the mood is full master in 
 conditioning the design and color, and neither ex- 
 
 132
 
 MUSIC m THE COLLEGE 
 
 tcmal nature nor past usage has the right to set 
 limits to its extension. The lessons derived from 
 the history and psychology of music arc demon- 
 strations of tlie mutual dei)ondcncc of music and 
 life, and they offer to the serious student assurance 
 of rich stores of instruction in the time to come. 
 
 Here, then, is the cretlenlial which music pre- 
 sents to the college and university as it proudly 
 taks the rights of domicile. T of its aesthetic 
 
 value as an art of form. il,s - > c as an inter- 
 
 pretation of life, its refining touch upon the emo- 
 tional nature, and the means it affords for the cul- 
 ture of imjxjrtant elements of character, the old 
 neglect must be no longer suffered, and thejcad.- 
 crship in musical education on the intcqiretativc 
 and appreciative side must be assumcxl by those 
 institutions whose very circumstances and prestige 
 enable them to place such education upon solid 
 intellectual foundations. 
 
 «33
 
 PART III 
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC: HIS PREPARA- 
 TION AND HIS METHOD 
 
 Accepting to the full the lessons which the his- 
 tory of art teaches us in regard to its function in 
 the development of civilization, there can be no 
 reasonable hesitation in according to art an hon- 
 orable station in the college curriculum. The ques- 
 tion is no longer concerning the existence of art 
 in the college on some kind of terms — for no in- 
 stitution of learning rejects it altogether — but 
 what the nature of those terms shall be. Shall the 
 college be content with fine architecture while giv- 
 ing its students no instruction in regard to the 
 reasons for its excellence; with occasional concerts 
 and dramatic performances as a mere transient 
 means of mental recreation; with a miscellaneous 
 collection of art objects which few ever visit, and 
 the nature of whose value an interested student is 
 left to find out for himself? Or shall the college 
 draw these agencies into close union with its meth- 
 odical classroom instruction, showing its students 
 
 134
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 bow to judge a.s well as feel, and to develop a taste 
 based on correct principles? 
 
 There is no doubt that the hesitation to give 
 full privilege to a.*sthetic interests acts more ob- 
 structively in the case of music than it does in 
 respect to plxslic art. partly because its less obvi- 
 ous relation to actual life, and its preilominant 
 appeal to the senses and vague elemental sensibil- 
 ity, make the neci'ssity for cihjI analytic procc<lurc 
 in the attainment of its appreciation less apparent. 
 Even where the neetl of fme examples is recognized, 
 it seems roniinonly taken for grantcil that the 
 hearing of choitc music and go<Kl jxTformance is 
 sufTicicnt. Even those who value the presence of 
 music in their lives are prone to assume that mu- 
 sical l)cauty must inevitably be its own witness, 
 exercising as complete a command over the spirit 
 as the iKMuty c)f sunshine and sky and verdure, 
 which neols no argument or analysis, but sets the 
 heart alremble with ecstasy when June takes the 
 eart' But even this com- 
 
 pari .. ig it legitimate, breaks 
 
 down when one considers that even the beauty of 
 nature » r l>e full; with<»ut the exer- 
 
 cise of ( ~ active i; i> c. There are re- 
 
 sources of culture in the study of the picturesque 
 aspects of the world w' " ' " .ver yet been 
 
 recognized by profession Not one in 
 
 a hundrcti of those who call themselves lovers of 
 nature really xf what ' ' them. The col- 
 leges niight to good atl\ ^. idd courses in the 
 
 135
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 appreciation of nature, with John C. Van Dyke's 
 Nature for Her Own Sake for a text-book, and 
 the writings of Ruskin, Thoreau, JefTeries, and 
 "Fiona Macleod" for required reading. What 
 many people call a love of nature is often hardly 
 more than a sense of bodily comfort under pleas- 
 ant atmospheric conditions, or delight in physical 
 action quickened by external stimulus; but as a 
 Wordsworth or Thoreau uses the term, or as a 
 Corot or an Inness feels it, it is the result of edu- 
 cation. The difference between a native Samoan 
 and Winslow Homer in the love of the sea, or be- 
 tween a Swiss peasant and John Ruskin in face of 
 the mountain gloom and glory, is simply a dififer- 
 ence in culture. The "noble red man," contrary 
 to a general impression, has no real love of nature; 
 the most sensitive child sees but little in comparison 
 with the revelation that will be granted him with 
 his further intellectual development. We see not 
 with our eyes but with our minds. There are as- 
 tonishing revelations of natural beauty of color and 
 form to one who reads the writings of the vision- 
 maimed Lafcadio Ream. The landscape artist 
 is learning all his life not merely to paint but to 
 see. Most of us are not much more than children 
 in the trained use of our senses, and we should be 
 able to profit greatly by the instruction of those 
 who have learned the secret of true vision. We 
 see what we have been taught to see. The man 
 who has long enjoyed the companionship of the 
 poets and painters of nature will sec with their 
 
 136
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 eyes as well as think in terms of their philosophy. 
 After a course in Thoreau's "Journals" he will 
 wonder at his former blindness, and the "Modern 
 Painters" will endow him with new senses. The 
 gain from the study of the visible aspects of nature 
 with the help of the great artists is immense, for 
 we learn that here also the richness of the result 
 is proportioned to the degree of attention, com- 
 parison, and reflection which we bring actively to 
 bear. 
 
 II 
 
 If we profit by the experience of others in attain- 
 ing an intelligent love of nature, how much more 
 in the appreciation of art ! To him who is not in- 
 structed, but yet has an inborn capacity to feel, 
 art too often leaves impressions of pleasure which 
 are vague and unsystematized, impressions that 
 quickly fade and fail permanently to enrich the 
 understanding. As art is not the product of crude 
 emotion, but Hves only as trained intelligence and 
 stern power of will meet in its creation, so its pur- 
 pose is not fulfilled in the case of one who does not 
 bring reflective understanding to its estimate. A 
 thrill of pleasure which does not measure and com- 
 pare, but finds its end in itself, is an experience that 
 is delightful and pure, but does not enable its pos- 
 sessor to profit more by the next experience. He 
 may indeed grow more sensitive with the repetition 
 of nervous and emotional excitements, but the self- 
 knowledge that is essential to intellectual progress 
 
 137
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 is not materially increased. A true lover of art, 
 in fact, will not frequent picture-galleries and con- 
 cert halls without taking pains to meet their friendly 
 ofiferings half-way. He wishes to become a critic, 
 that is to say, to understand as well as to enjoy, 
 to compare his impressions with those of his friend, 
 and be able to give some reason for his preferences. 
 The increase in depth of vision which is promoted 
 by aesthetic contacts depends upon relations that 
 are not discerned intuitively. The mind must 
 first be cleared of erroneous notions concerning 
 the nature and function of art, the eye and ear 
 taught to select and combine in accordance with 
 the dictates which the artist himself obeys, the 
 right conclusion assisted by all manner of perti- 
 nent suggestions and indirect approaches, every 
 hindrance due to wrong education or natural preju- 
 dice cleared away, so that the artist's message may 
 find quick entrance into intellect and heart and 
 fulfil its mission there. 
 
 Ill 
 
 To perform this generous service for students 
 who wish to become connoisseurs in music is the 
 privilege of him who assumes to teach the history 
 and appreciation of this art. The remainder of 
 the present discussion will be devoted to the ques- 
 tion of his preparation and his methods. What 
 should be his view of his art — its relations and 
 significance, social and personal? How shall he 
 
 13S
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 go to work to enable his pupils to see below its 
 surface and organize their detailed impressions into 
 productive knowledge ? 
 
 The first question has been treated in the pre- 
 ceding chapters. The second is now awaiting an 
 answer. It divides into two problems, the teach- 
 er's equipment and the manner of his procedure 
 with his class. 
 
 The rapid spread of interest in the history of 
 music among American musicians and students in 
 later years is a symptom which must give the liveU- 
 est satisfaction to every one who longs to see music 
 take the station to which it is entitled among in- 
 tellectual concerns. Still more recently, what is 
 called "musical appreciation" has followed the 
 lead of history, sometimes attaching itself to the 
 skirts of its forerunner, sometimes, with a strange 
 lack of wisdom, trying to break out a separate 
 path of its own. Whatever may be said of the 
 results thus far attained, the entrance of a subject 
 so profound and far-reaching into musical educa- 
 tion is an inspiriting spectacle to every musician 
 who beheves that his calling is as serious as any 
 other. For just as soon as the study of an art is 
 firmly planted upon a basis of historic criticism 
 and a recognition of its intimate relation to life 
 and the spiritual advancement of the individual 
 and the race, then the stage of dilettanteism and 
 trifling is past. Whenever works of musical art 
 begin to be studied, not simply with a view to 
 performance for temporary entertainment, but as 
 
 139
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 vehicles for the presentation of beauty and the 
 communication of vital emotion, then the student 
 may be made to see that the complete lesson of 
 musical art cannot be learned if each work is set 
 apart and insulated. He discovers that there is an 
 art of music — not merely separate works of art 
 — having the attributes and large purpose that 
 all the arts possess as factors in human progress. 
 To live in the whole, which was Goethe's rule for 
 the intellectual life, is likewise the condition of 
 real profit in any single subject of inquiry. Every 
 educator who knows what is going on in colleges, 
 schools, and organized private circles perceives that 
 music is everywhere being drawn into the grasp of 
 this idea. Its progress is every day accelerated, 
 and the enthusiasm on the part of teachers and 
 pupils is prophetic of still finer results. Mechan- 
 ical inventions have given this work an enormous 
 impetus, for a difficulty that would have been in- 
 surmountable a few years ago — that of adequate 
 illustration — has now been overcome. The whole 
 ideal and practice of musical education are rapidly 
 being transformed. The grand result of it all is 
 that students of music are being made into think- 
 ers instead of mere technicians. No longer are the 
 musically gifted the only ones benefited by musical 
 study — the great mass of the untalented may see 
 that this difiicult art has also something for them, 
 if only they are willing to undergo the gentle dis- 
 cipline which opens the mind and makes wise their 
 natural affection. 
 
 140
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 IV 
 
 There is, however, a less cheerful side to the 
 matter, which must receive the speedy considera- 
 tion of teachers and directors of educational in- 
 stitutions. The demand for instructors is vastly 
 in excess of competent supply, and the result is 
 that there is no other subject in the whole circuit 
 of our educational practice that is taught with so 
 slender a stock in trade. Young men and women 
 who know nothing of musical history except its 
 outlines, and are even less familiar with the de- 
 partments of human thought and action to which 
 musical history and philosophy are related, are at- 
 tempting to teach one of the most complex and 
 abstruse subjects in the whole range of knowledge. 
 And because there is no better material to be had, 
 these novices are given positions in high-grade 
 schools and colleges. They work chiefly by means 
 of brief text-books, and the text-books which have 
 the largest sale in this country are only dry com- 
 pilations which give no intimation that history is 
 something more than mere chronological succes- 
 sion. The "appreciation" of music is usually 
 made to appear as an acquaintance with forms and 
 technicalities, the philosophic study of the mind 
 as it creates and receives being so difficult that the 
 most comfortable way of dealing with this funda- 
 mental question of taste and judgment is to ignore 
 it altogether. In private musical circles the same 
 holds true. Beginners do not know what or where 
 141
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 the right material is, how it is to be used when 
 found, how the facts are to be grouped, or upon 
 what principles the relative values of facts and 
 groups of facts are to be estimated. The true 
 psychologic and historic background nowhere ap- 
 pears. Not only are works and biographic data 
 isolated from one another, but the whole art is 
 detached from the Hfe of which it is the token. 
 It is very much as if one should undertake to study 
 or teach psychology and should stop with physi- 
 ology. Or as if one should attempt to learn the 
 history of a country by memorizing an elaborate 
 table of contents. Those who are attracted by 
 the history of music are bewildered by the vast 
 accumulation of detail which confronts them at 
 every turn. They do not know how to begin or 
 how to proceed; their work is disappointing to 
 themselves because they are not able to co-ordinate 
 their facts and derive from them the generaliza- 
 tions by which they become really significant. 
 
 As the heads of colleges and schools know noth- 
 ing, as a rule, of what the history and criticism of 
 music involve, so musicians themselves in most 
 cases do not see the whole length and breadth of 
 what is contained in musical expression or in music 
 as a means of culture. This is explained by the 
 nature of their education. They have not been 
 trained in the methods of historical research and 
 critical interpretation. Their study has been 
 chiefly along the line of musical technicalities, and 
 they are not able to overpass the bounds of their 
 142
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 specialties and traverse with clear vision those 
 parallel regions of art, philosophy, and science where 
 are found so many illuminating side-lights that help 
 to solve the problem of music as a vehicle of ex- 
 pression. Even in the higher institutions of learn- 
 ing the teaching of musical appreciation often goes 
 no farther than the analysis of musical structure. 
 How can the real lesson of Palestrina, of Bach, of 
 Beethoven, of Wagner be understood without a 
 deep knowledge of the purposes of these men, and 
 the conditions in which their works appeared? 
 Those works are representative, and they represent 
 something more than counterpoint, or theme devel- 
 opment, or orchestration. What were the artistic, 
 social, and ecclesiastical conditions that compelled 
 the masses, motets, and hymns of Palestrina to take 
 their peculiar form and character ? What were the 
 tendencies that culminated in the work of Bach, 
 and what was his relation to German Protestantism? 
 What were the ruling forces in the music of the 
 nineteenth century, which are so plainly indicated 
 in the compositions of Beethoven that he is taken 
 as the leader and type of that epoch? What was 
 the motive that inspired the revolutionary propa- 
 ganda of Richard Wagner? On the basis of what 
 aesthetic, social, and ethical theories did he establish 
 the final position which the music-drama holds in 
 the world of art ? Such problems as these go some- 
 what deeper than the level that is reached by the 
 teaching of music history that we commonly find 
 around us to-day. Not long ago a series of absurd 
 
 143
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 answers to questions in music history, emanating 
 from one of our Western universities, appeared in 
 a musical journal. They were supposed to exhibit 
 the stupidity of those who set them down in their 
 examination papers, but they showed nothing of 
 the sort. What they did prove — the questions 
 as well as the answers — was the incompetence of 
 the instructor. 
 
 But let us be charitable. A large allowance for 
 incompleteness of preparation on the part of teach- 
 ers should be made, for defects of training must come 
 to Hght when an eager and wide-spread curiosity 
 and a peremptory demand for instruction spring 
 up almost in a day. There must be long and thor- 
 ough training for this department of education, as 
 much as for any field of science or philosophy, and 
 the colleges and universities must furnish it. This 
 they have hardly yet even begun to do. There 
 are but one or two institutions in this country 
 where the history and criticism of music are in 
 the care of men who have made long and special 
 study of those subjects, and are enabled to give 
 their whole time to them. Lectures on the history 
 and criticism of music are now heard in many uni- 
 versities and colleges, but the lecturer as a rule 
 must make this department simply a side issue. 
 The only time he can use for preparation is that 
 which he is able to snatch from the weary hours 
 occupied in the teaching of harmony, or piano- 
 playing, or whatever his specialty may be. The 
 colleges call for experts in the history and inter- 
 
 144
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 pretation of literature, and in a few instances 
 (still a very few) in the history of painting, sculp- 
 ture, and architecture, but they leave the interpre- 
 tation of music to those who have crammed for it 
 in their eleventh-hour leisure. The consequence 
 is that scholarly work in this department is rare 
 in the higher educational institutions of America. 
 The contrast between this country and Europe in 
 this respect is noticeable. Such eminent scholars 
 as Sir Hubert Parry, Hermann Kretzschmar, Hugo 
 Riemann, Jules Combarieu — to mention a few 
 out of many — are regular or occasional lecturers 
 in colleges and universities. Others equally fa- 
 mous are lecturers in the national conservatories of 
 music. In this country, to be sure, we have critics 
 who have produced an amount of Hterary work that 
 is highly honorable to American taste and schol- 
 arship. But where are these men to be found? 
 With few exceptions they are in newspaper ojB&ces. 
 With their literary skill and their broad acquaint- 
 ance in many fields of knowledge, added to their 
 musical culture, they are admirably equipped for 
 the work that is needed in our higher abodes of 
 learning, but these institutions know them not. 
 
 Why should college experts in other departments 
 be blamed if they look with scant respect upon the 
 work done by their colleagues in musical exposi- 
 tion ? Fortunately, men properly qualified as pro- 
 moters of the higher musical culture are beginning 
 to appear in our colleges. They will be far more 
 numerous when their subject is relieved from the 
 
 145
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 disability which obHges it to force its own way, 
 and the trained competents are no longer compelled 
 to break down barriers of prejudice before they 
 are allowed freedom to assert the beliefs and the 
 powers that are in them. 
 
 Given the opportunity which the colleges will 
 soon be ready to afford, what preparation is re- 
 quired of the man who wishes to cultivate this 
 promising field ? A considerable knowledge of the 
 details of musical science is presupposed. But he 
 must not isolate his subject from other human 
 concerns. In order to bring his mission into har- 
 mony with the ideal of university culture he must 
 first make definite in his own mind and that of 
 others the special basis of form and expression upon 
 which music rests, and then reach out into those 
 historic, social, and aesthetic relations where the 
 final significance of musical culture is to be found. 
 These relationships have already been indicated 
 in the preceding discussion. It only remains to 
 keep directly in view the lecturer confronting his 
 class, and suggest the general nature of his spirit 
 and his method. 
 
 The teacher of musical history and appreciation 
 finds himself supplied with a large mass of facts 
 from which conclusions are to be drawn. These 
 facts consist of musical works, technical, historic, 
 and biographic data. The lessons to be derived 
 
 146
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 are of two kinds, viz., historic and critical generali- 
 zations and personal applications. The second 
 class will in the end dominate the first; Pater's 
 question, ''What, precisely what, is this to me?" 
 is the factor of chief moment. That is to say, the 
 qualified instructor must be a critic, and the incul- 
 cation of right principles of criticism among his 
 pupils must be uppermost in his design. 
 
 Now what is art criticism ? Contradictory opin- 
 ions prevail and provoke heated controversy. To 
 the "subjective" critic, criticism, in the famous 
 phrase of Anatole France, is the story of "the ad- 
 ventures of one's soul among masterpieces." The 
 experience of one's soul in face of works of art is 
 the matter of prime interest, not the work itself as 
 an external, self-sufl5cient entity, except in so far 
 as it is the agent by which the reaction is effected. 
 The critic of this school may be supposed to say: 
 If I study a work dispassionately with the purpose 
 of discovering all its bearings and connections as 
 an item in an evolutionary scheme or as a reflec- 
 tion of some passing phase of social progress, then 
 my standard is scientific, not aesthetic. An aesthetic 
 judgment is a formulation of one's own feeHng, 
 and my own feeling is the only guarantee of value 
 which I can directly know. Hence it follows that 
 there is no universal and unchanging standard of 
 aesthetic merit, and authority in matters of taste 
 is a tyrannical assumption which must be resisted 
 in the name of intellectual freedom. I may be in- 
 terested in another's opinion in regard to a certain 
 
 147
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 work of art, and may learn something from his 
 statement of his reasons; but his preference can 
 have no claim upon my acceptance, and its best 
 service is merely in some brilliancy of description 
 which will fan my own emotion into a brighter 
 flame. 
 
 The classic defense of the cause of the subjective 
 critic in the controversy is that made by Anatole 
 France. "The technical conditions in which ro- 
 mances and poems are elaborated," he says, "in- 
 terest me in only a slight degree. All books in 
 general, even the most admirable, appear to me 
 infinitely less precious by that which they contain 
 than by that which is put into them by him who 
 reads them. The best, in my opinion, are those 
 which give the most to think about, and things the 
 most diverse. The great benefit of works of the 
 masters is to inspire sage reflections, ideas grave 
 and familiar, floating images like garlands inces- 
 santly broken and rewoven, long reveries, a curi- 
 osity vague and delicate, which attaches to every- 
 thing without exhausting anything, the memory 
 of that which was dear, forgetfulness of vile cares, 
 the moved return upon oneself. The critic must 
 be thoroughly penetrated with this idea, that 
 every book has as many different copies as there 
 are readers, and that a poem, like a landscape, 
 transforms itself in all the eyes that see it, in all 
 the souls that conceive it." He compares critics 
 to those Alsacians of the Hohwald who have placed 
 benches for wayfarers at points where the shade 
 
 148
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 is most sweet, the view most extended, nature most 
 alluring. "These good Alsacians," says M. France, 
 "have taught me what kind of service those are 
 able to confer who have hved in the country of 
 the spirit and have for a long time wandered there. 
 I resolved for my part to go and place rustic benches 
 in the sacred groves and near the fountains of the 
 Muses. This modest and pious employment de- 
 mands no doctrine or system, and requires only a 
 sweet astonishment before the beauty of things. 
 Accommodated to my tastes and suited to my 
 powers, the task of criticism is to set with love 
 benches in beautiful places, and to say, following 
 the example of Anytus of Tegea: 'Whoever thou 
 mayest be, come and sit in the shadow of this 
 beautiful laurel, in order to pay homage there to 
 the immortal gods.' " 
 
 This ideal, so winningly expressed, has unques- 
 tionably an awakening effect when sought by a 
 pure mind and transmitted with a power which is 
 able to create a similar vision in one whom the 
 critic desires to teach. The critic who has "no 
 doctrine or system," but seeks only to record 
 "grave reflections," to inspire "floating images" 
 and "long reveries," to present not what the work 
 contains but something that he puts into it, must 
 himself, if he is to accompHsh his aim, be a skilled 
 literary artist, and must create something that is 
 itself a work of art, a counterpart of that which 
 he observes. In cases where this hterary skill is 
 of a high order it will often happen that the criti- 
 149
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 clsm will be of greater artistic merit than the thing 
 criticised, and the main interest of the reader be 
 turned from the object interpreted to the subject 
 interpreting. Again, the object will be treated 
 simply as a text which furnishes an occasion for 
 the gathering of reflections from many sources. 
 Walter Pater's celebrated rhapsody upon the 
 "Mona Lisa" gives us no instruction that would 
 help us to judge of the merit of the portrait, and 
 might have been just as well inspired by any one 
 of a hundred piquant female faces. There are 
 many analogous instances in literature in which 
 the beauty of the result seems almost to justify 
 the method. Poems suggested by works of art 
 must inevitably be of this character. Keats's 
 *'Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a notable example. 
 Among the great prose writers, as for instance 
 Ruskin, there are eloquent responses to the touch 
 of beauty, where the writer seems endowed with 
 an inspired insight, and, striking with magical 
 phrases into the centre of the mystery, thrills the 
 reader's soul into a mood which seems to him the 
 deepest and purest consequence which he could 
 hope to obtain. The critic's art is the transparent 
 medium by which the heart of the reader and the 
 heart of the artist mingle together. 
 
 Such revelations, however, are in the nature of 
 the case rare, and we feel that, in spite of their 
 charm and suggcstivcness, they are not implicitly 
 to be trusted. We often discover that two im- 
 pressionist critics will be afifected in totally dif- 
 
 150
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 ferent ways by the same production, and also that 
 the critic's rhapsody is often called forth by some 
 single attribute in the object of his admiration, 
 quite ignoring other qualities which if dwelt upon 
 would occasion a different verdict. It is not the 
 whole of his intellect which the critic brings to 
 bear, but a part of it. He puts himself into the 
 object, and it is in the last resort himself that he 
 gives his reader. And so, when the reader escapes 
 from the atmosphere of enchantment he often finds 
 himself all at sea, and begins to make inquiry 
 after trustworthy principles which will steady him 
 amidst these contradictions. However highly he 
 values these stimulating influences, he will readily 
 see that when he examines a work of art with the 
 help of such criticism he must, as a preliminary, 
 study the critic, in order that he may know how 
 much allowance to make for the personal equation. 
 
 VI 
 
 The critic of the "objective" or impersonal order 
 proceeds more coolly. He tries, in Matthew Ar- 
 nold's phrase, to put himself out of the way and 
 let humanity decide. To him a work of art is not 
 something that may be admirable at one time, 
 uninteresting at another, according to the mood 
 through which it is observed. There are, he would 
 say, fixed degrees of merit among art works which 
 can be determined in accordance with principles 
 that are derived from experience; these principles 
 
 151
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 do not fluctuate with every change of individual 
 taste or the caprices of fashion; they are finally 
 established because they are in conformity with 
 traits that are embedded in the very constitution 
 of the human mind. This is what is meant by the 
 "laws of art" — they arise not from the arbitrary 
 preferences of those who assume authority to de- 
 termine that such and such methods and forms 
 shall constitute the treatment and themes of art, 
 but because the consensus of those whose experi- 
 ence covers a broad field of space and time, and who 
 are best qualified to judge of the relation of art 
 to physical and spiritual life, declares that certain 
 manifestations of the art impulse answer to a con- 
 stant human need. To discover these needs and 
 relations, and to interpret works of art, not in 
 terms of momentary excitement, but in terms of 
 permanent gratification, is the task of the objective 
 critic. The critic of the former order calls upon 
 his intuition; the critic of the latter order applies 
 his understanding. His method is the comparative, 
 which goes beyond the particular work and its 
 immediate impression in search of relationships 
 which will afford a measure of the true value of 
 the work by determining the complete compass of 
 its functions and influence. 
 
 The critic who is thus actuated believes that 
 works of art possess a value in themselves which 
 is inherent, absolute, not varying in correspondence 
 with the fluctuation of emotion or fancy. He 
 wishes to ascertain in what this merit consists, 
 
 152
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 and seeks for standards that may guide his judg- 
 ment in the right way. He believes that such 
 standards exist, because in art as in morals a thing 
 is not good to-day and bad to-morrow, true in one 
 age or country, false in another. He distrusts the 
 personal estimate when unsupported, because he 
 knows that it is fickle and arbitrary, dependent 
 upon temperament and moods which have no ulti- 
 mate validity, certainly no authority over the opin- 
 ions of others. If one's use of art is merely for 
 one's own indulgence, then the exclusive personal 
 consideration may serve, but not if one assumes 
 to instruct others. The teacher must not say to 
 his pupils, "The only thing I can give you for your 
 help is my own private preference"; neither must 
 he say, "There are no rules of taste: take what you 
 like; your own feeling is your only concern, and 
 your inclinations are as good as those of any other." 
 Art appreciation can be taught, and teaching im- 
 pUes comparison and standards. It is certain that 
 all works are not equally good, and their merit is 
 not determined by a correspondence that may exist 
 between them and the popular judgment of their 
 time. If this were not so there would be no reason 
 in asserting that the operas of Wagner are superior 
 to those of Rossini. The Gothic architecture and 
 the works of Shakespeare and Rembrandt were 
 barbarous to the men of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries, but few would now have the 
 hardihood to assert that a change of taste in the 
 years to come would deprive them of their great- 
 
 153
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 ness. The choral works of Sebastian Bach were si- 
 lent and forgotten for eighty years, but their beauty 
 was as undiminished as that of the "Hermes" of 
 Praxiteles during its burial of eleven centuries. 
 Are there no criteria by which the beginner in art 
 appreciation may be made to understand the su- 
 periority of Praxiteles and Bach and Shakespeare 
 and Rembrandt? When Ruskin writes ecstatic- 
 ally of Turner we are undoubtedly made to see 
 what we should not otherwise have seen, and our 
 pleasure in the pictures is enhanced by the con- 
 tagion of the critic's enthusiasm; but are there no 
 positive grounds by which it can be decided once 
 for all whether Turner's pre-eminence is real or an 
 illusion cherished in the brain of his eloquent apos- 
 tle? Moreover, the masters are not always at 
 their best; how can we sift their productions so 
 that we may discriminate and not waste our time 
 over that which is inferior? There are grades in 
 the hierarchy of art, many worthless efforts are 
 thrown in our way, charlatans and pretenders 
 clamor for public notice, and in the interest of our 
 pride, and perhaps of our purse, we fear to be de- 
 ceived and put to eventual shame. Where is the 
 infallible precept to be found which we may take 
 into our understanding and rest upon as a safe- 
 guard against error? 
 
 No final answer can be given, but the impersonal 
 critic is convinced that, although his results may 
 not be infallible, yet there are truths in art toward 
 which he may approach, and that there are methods 
 
 154
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 of inquiry that are more to be trusted than his 
 own whims or even his instincts. He discovers 
 that there is an intellectual element in art as well 
 as an emotional one, that at the basis of all art 
 production there is science. Every department of 
 art has its special technique; technical perfection 
 or imperfection is an important factor in the esti- 
 mate of its value, and good or bad craftsmanship 
 is a feature that can be definitely recognized, 
 taught, and explained. Works of art in a multi- 
 tude of instances have a decorative or utiUtarian 
 purpose, and there are fixed principles by which 
 they can be judged as adequate or inadequate to 
 their motive. The important question of origi- 
 nality and individuality can be easily determined 
 by comparison. The artist's motive may often be 
 discovered, and the degree of clearness and force 
 by which he reaHzes his aim. The error of judging 
 one class of work by standards applicable to another 
 class may easily be avoided, for there is no es- 
 sential disagreement among scholars in regard to 
 these distinctions. There is one method of treat- 
 ment for mural painting, another for easel painting; 
 one style for piano music, another for the string 
 quartet; one method of handling the material in 
 the drama, another in the epic. The artist con- 
 siders not merely his impulse, but also his medium, 
 and the state of mind to which he must* appeal. 
 To the critic this impulse, this medium, this appeal 
 must all find a harmony in the expression of the 
 work. These and many other considerations that 
 
 155
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 enter into aesthetic judgment are not capricious, 
 but constitute established principles, which, al- 
 though not final in the evaluation of the work, 
 can never be left wholly out of the account, and 
 they insure the candid inquirer against radical 
 errors. In a word, the critic who brings scholarship 
 to his aid first studies the work dispassionately in 
 all its bearings of form, structure, application, and 
 intent, and teaches his followers to see it as it ap- 
 pears to the normal sense, so far as the normal 
 sense can be trained to analyze, without danger 
 that the impression will be distorted by an inter- 
 vening haze of temperament. 
 
 This method, however, cannot reach finality. 
 The personal equation can never be left out of 
 the account. Back of those impressions which all 
 who have trained senses will receive essentially 
 in the same way, there is the expression, the emo- 
 tion, the vision, which can only be intuitively dis- 
 cerned. FeeUng can only be interpreted by feel- 
 ing. As a man is so he feels, and no critic, however 
 learned or sympathetic, can force all his hearers 
 into the same emotional path. The common re- 
 source in directing art appreciation is to take art- 
 ists who have been accepted as supreme by the 
 agreement of the best minds acting through con- 
 siderable periods of time, and attempt to mould 
 the judgment in accordance with the spirit and 
 style of their works. But even this course, which 
 seems so safe, involves insuperable difficulties, for 
 even if the station of these artists may have been 
 
 156
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 fixed forever in the hearts of men (although even 
 this cannot be proved), to demand that other 
 works should be prized only as they conform to 
 these models would be an exercise of tyranny, 
 which has indeed been often practised with mis- 
 chief as the result. To insist that new works shall 
 repeat the qualities of the old puts a bar before 
 progress. This spirit condemned the Gothic in 
 the name of the antique, the romantic in the name 
 of the classic, the realistic in the name of the ro- 
 mantic, the impressionist in the name of all the 
 others. To imbibe the spirit of the great ones of 
 the past is, indeed, a powerful aid to culture, but 
 when our instructor takes any work or group as 
 model we properly ask his reasons for his choice. 
 Says Matthew Arnold: "There can be no more 
 useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to 
 the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore 
 do us most good, than to have always in one's 
 mind lines and expressions of the great masters, 
 and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry. 
 Of course we are not to require this other poetry 
 to resemble them; it may be very dissimilar. 
 But if we have any tact we shall find them, when 
 we have lodged them well in our minds, an infalli- 
 ble touchstone for detecting the presence or ab- 
 sence of high poetic quality, and also the degree 
 of this quaUty, in all other poetry which we may 
 place beside them." Very good, but we at once 
 inquire: How shall we know these passages of 
 supreme excellence when we see them? There 
 
 157
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 must be back of them a standard which explains 
 their selection — where shall we find it? Arnold 
 undertakes to help us by offering quotations from 
 Homer, Dante, and others, but why did he choose 
 these particular passages? What is there in 
 
 "Absent thee from felicity awhile," 
 or 
 
 "And courage never to submit or yield, 
 And what is else not to be overcome," 
 
 that bears the unmistakable mark of supreme 
 genius? Would not a critic of a different men- 
 tality from that of Arnold offer a very different 
 list for our adoption as touchstones? Arnold is 
 plainly falling back upon the "personal estimate" 
 which a few pages earher he condemned as ''fal- 
 lacious." It follows that while the subjective 
 critic may renounce objective criticism and sim- 
 pHfy his reaction to the utmost, the critic who 
 seeks for law and authority cannot leave the per- 
 sonal preference out of the account. The true 
 wisdom in his course lies in accepting every phase 
 of art which seems to answer a reasonable want, 
 bracing his estimate by the aid of every support 
 he can summon from within and without, and 
 thereby making his individual pleasure, which he 
 cannot be expected to forego, to rest upon broad, 
 catholic, and tolerant conclusions. 
 
 158
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 VII 
 
 A third order of critics carries the analytic method 
 of the second still farther, throwing the emphasis 
 upon the attachments between works of art and 
 the life to which they are related. This criticism 
 treats art works first and foremost as human doc- 
 uments, and is chiefly interested in them as afford- 
 ing instruction upon the conditions — psychologic, 
 social, racial — which they reflect. The critic of 
 the first class interprets in terms of his own instinc- 
 tive reactions of pleasure or distaste, the second 
 judges according to principles which he deduces 
 from the experience of the intellectual world, the 
 third explains by the results of his study of causes 
 and effects. The latter has been called a scien- 
 tific critic, and his interest is akin to that of an 
 archaeologist or an economist. 
 
 The acknowledged leader of this scientific school 
 is Taine. In his "Lectures on Art" he explains 
 that "the principal point of [the true method in art 
 history] consists in recognizing that a work of art 
 is not isolated, and consequently that it is neces- 
 sary to study the conditions out of which it pro- 
 ceeds and by which it is explained." The first step 
 is to understand that "a work of art belongs to a 
 certain whole, that is to say, to the entire work of 
 the artist producing it." In the second place, "the 
 artist himself, considered in connection with his 
 productions, is not isolated; he also belongs to a 
 whole, one greater than himself, comprising the 
 
 159
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 school or family of artists of the time and country 
 to which he belongs." Finally, ''this family of 
 artists is itself comprehended in another whole 
 more vast, which is the world surrounding it, and 
 whose taste is similar. The social and intellectual 
 condition is the same for the pubUc as for the art- 
 ists; they are not isolated men; it is their voice 
 alone that we hear at this moment, through the 
 space of centuries, but beneath this living voice 
 which comes vibrating to us, we distinguish a mur- 
 mur, and as it were a vast, low sound, the great, 
 infinite, and varied voice of the people, chanting in 
 unison with them." "We have therefore to lay 
 down this rule," says Taine in summing up, "that, 
 in order to comprehend a work of art, an artist, or 
 a group of artists, we must clearly comprehend 
 the general social and intellectual condition of the 
 times to which they belong." In reiterating his 
 conviction on this point Taine positively annuls 
 the position taken by the subjective critic. "A 
 critic is aware," he affirms, "that his personal taste 
 has no value, that he must set aside his temper- 
 ament, inclinations, party, and interests; that, 
 above all, his talent lies in sympathy; that his first 
 essay in history should consist in putting himself 
 in the place of the men whom he is desirous of 
 judging, to enter into their instincts and habits, 
 to espouse their sentiments, to rethink their 
 thoughts, to reproduce within himself their inward 
 condition, to represent to himself minutely and 
 substantially their surroundings, to follow in imag- 
 
 i6o
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 ination the circumstances and impressions which, 
 added to their innate tendency, have determined 
 their actions and guided their lives. Such a course, 
 in placing us at an artistic point of view, permits 
 us better to comprehend them; and, as it is com- 
 posed of analysis, it is, like every scientific opera- 
 tion, capable of verification and perfectibility." 
 
 This system of Taine has been justly criticised 
 as reducing art to the domain of natural history; 
 as giving no reason for the feeling of love to par- 
 ticular works that arises from the sense of spiritual 
 companionship between the receiver of the work 
 and its creator; as recognizing no ground of prefer- 
 ence for one art work as compared with another 
 (as a zoologist does not declare one shell-fish better 
 than another, but merely seeks to know the facts 
 about them) ; and, most of all, as ignoring the ob- 
 vious truths that works of genius are something 
 more than the mere natural products of external 
 conditions, that the great artist is in advance of 
 his time and himself alters his environment, con- 
 tributes to the shaping of the conditions which in 
 turn react upon his subsequent activity. Taine, 
 by marshalling an imposing array of facts con- 
 cerning the milieu in which the arts have developed, 
 has emphasized the necessary lesson that a vital 
 relatioii exists between artistic creations and their 
 epoch, but omits from the calculation the free, spiri- 
 tual self-determination which is not only the condi- 
 tion of art progress, but also, in the last resort, the 
 ultimate ground of the delight which art brings to us. 
 i6i
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 VIII 
 
 If neither of these critical methods gives us the 
 whole truth of art appreciation, overasserting on 
 the one hand the emotional factor, on the other 
 the cold intellectual, where, then, is the right proce- 
 dure to be found? The answer is, In all of them 
 combined. The final value of art to all of us is 
 the personal value — the amount of Hfe that it 
 contains, heightening, enlarging, strengthening our 
 own spiritual life. The joy and lasting worth to 
 us comes in a glad surrender to that essential, un- 
 analyzable element which enters our souls without 
 impediment, free for the moment from those re- 
 minders of cause and relation which would turn our 
 thought to its historic and scientific associations 
 and away from the living spirit. Nevertheless — 
 and here comes the reason for our study of the 
 history and morphology of art — our minds must 
 undergo some preliminary preparation for that re- 
 ceptiveness which seems at the moment spontane- 
 ous and unconditioned. Art works, no matter how 
 ideal they may be, are not isolated or miraculous; 
 the artist is not snatched away out of space and 
 time, reporting of a world apart from that in which 
 his fellow men perform their daily tasks. Every- 
 thing that he achieves testifies to a life which is 
 the product of a multitude of ordinary activities, 
 and the recognition of these in their influence upon 
 the artist and his work is a necessary part of the 
 mental equipment of one who would not only en- 
 
 162
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 joy the work as a thing of beauty, but also find his 
 knowledge of the world and men increased by 
 means of it. There are standards of comparative 
 value in art; there are historic, social, psycho- 
 logical, even physiological influences acting upon 
 him who creates and him who sees or hears, and 
 out of a clear understanding of the complex nexus 
 of causes and results comes that attitude of mind 
 which brings the emotional response (which, no 
 doubt, is the highest term) under prudent self- 
 control, because supported by a perception of those 
 general truths which unite our own experience to 
 the experience of our fellows who are beauty- 
 seekers and truth-seekers like ourselves. 
 
 The privilege of the critic lies not only in the 
 development of his own intellectual and emotional 
 faculties, but also in the assistance he gives to 
 others by presenting the rational ground of his 
 appreciations. The three orders of criticism above 
 described, each alone deficient, should merge in one. 
 *'When I speak of criticism," said William Sharp, 
 "I have in mind the marriage of science that knows 
 and of spirit that discerns." The question for the 
 critic is not only what the work contains, but how 
 it came to be. A work of art is both an organism 
 and an integral part of a larger organism. The 
 emotional response will be affected by knowledge 
 of its genesis and function. Works testify to the 
 artist and also to his environment. We are bathed 
 in the currents of life which flow through them. 
 While they heighten our individual self-conscious- 
 163
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 ness, they also take us out of ourselves and make 
 us citizens of a larger commonwealth. The proc- 
 ess that distinguishes in works of art all the factors 
 that reveal the movements of inner and outer life, 
 and increase the sympathetic as well as the affect- 
 ive powers, is what we call interpretation, and in 
 interpretation, fully understood, is found the proper 
 office and the higher satisfaction of criticism. 
 
 DC 
 
 These conclusions belong to musical criticism 
 as well as to criticism of literature and plastic art. 
 Their application is especially difficult in the art 
 of tone, but the principles of interpretative criti- 
 cism, as already expounded, must be made to in- 
 clude the history and appreciation of music, for 
 music cannot be understood by one who shuts him- 
 self up within the boundaries of musical forms, and 
 lets the visible and active world go its way unheeded. 
 ''It is perfectly futile," exclaims Mr. Ernest New- 
 man, " to go on discussing the aesthetics of music 
 in abstrado, without reference to the historical con- 
 ditions under which the art has lived, and under 
 which it has been moulded from century to century." 
 
 The teacher of the history and appreciation of 
 music must, therefore, be a critic, with the knowl- 
 edge, breadth of view, and sense of proportion 
 which the office of an interpreter requires. He 
 must be at home not only with music but also with 
 a great deal besides music. He will find that sci- 
 
 164
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 ence, art, literature, and history are constantly fur- 
 nishing water for his mill. He must not isolate 
 music as a whole, and he must not isolate any de- 
 partment of music. There are many who pretend 
 to teach the appreciation of music who confine 
 their attention to matters of musical structure and 
 technique — the merely formal side of the subject. 
 It is as if one were to teach archaeology in the name 
 of art, or grammar to those who looked for litera- 
 ture. It is easily conceivable that a man like 
 Charles Lamb, who confessed that he had no ear, 
 might be greatly interested in the history of no- 
 tation, or even the machinery of counterpoint. 
 There are histories of music which seem to discover 
 everything of interest in the art except that it is 
 beautiful and speaks to the heart. On the other 
 hand, one who disregards the scientific foundation 
 and the appeal to the reflective understanding is 
 as reprehensible as the narrow technician. The 
 instructor may strive to arouse the emotional na- 
 ture of his pupils and assure them that the suffi- 
 cient warrant of music is in its beauty and the joy 
 it gives; he may properly indicate his own prefer- 
 ences because they are drawn from a large experi- 
 ence; but he must show that emotions and pref- 
 erences are to be based on reason and subject to 
 revision. He should so lead his disciples that their 
 delight in single works will spring from minds clar- 
 ified by previous experiences, each acting as part 
 condition of the following mental state, emotion 
 ever looking back to knowledge for its confirma- 
 165
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 tion. But if he attempts to impose his own private 
 temperamental judgments upon his class as a law 
 for their own decisions, their obvious retort will 
 be annihilating to his pretensions. His true proce- 
 dure will be to throw them back upon themselves, 
 employ the method of suggestion, bring to them 
 the means that will avail for the formation of wise 
 conclusions. Then, in the last resort he can leave 
 them free, confident that, though they may wander 
 and go astray, they will not wholly lose their bear- 
 ings, but will work out at last their own aesthetic 
 salvation. For salvation, in matters of art appre- 
 ciation, consists not in forming fixed and final con- 
 victions, but in readiness to forsake old standing- 
 ground when change means progress toward new 
 light and fuller truth. 
 
 X 
 
 Reverting again to questions of method — the 
 scholarly expounder of the history of music finds 
 the guiding thread amid the labyrinth in the prin- 
 ciple of evolution. A comprehensive estimate of 
 works and phases of art is gained when they are 
 studied, not as detached, self-dependent items, but 
 as the result of processes. Too many students 
 and teachers, even authors of books and "outlines," 
 arc well satisfied with raking together miscellaneous 
 facts, with great apparent admiration for facts as 
 such, quite unaware, it would seem, that these in- 
 teresting counters are of no value except as they 
 
 i66
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 are related to one another as components of an 
 organic whole. The method of evolution, which 
 has been defined as "continuous progressive change, 
 according to certain laws and by means of resident 
 forces," has found no more brilliant illustration 
 than in the history of modern music. This process, 
 indeed, has not been continuous and unbroken 
 from the beginning until now. Not until the 
 Christian era did music become conscious of powers 
 unknown in its primitive and antique condition, 
 and even in the early centuries of the Christian 
 period the tendency for a time was rather toward 
 simplification. From the invention of part writing 
 in the neighborhood of the year looo, the develop- 
 ment of counterpoint was regular and systematic 
 up to its culmination in the sixteenth century. At 
 that point music seemed to hesitate, to grope for 
 a new standing-ground, and then, seizing the oppor- 
 tunity afforded by an old principle, now for the 
 first time recognized in all its possibilities, advanced 
 along a number of channels, each current drawing 
 stimulus and direction from the others. From 
 that moment there has been in vocal and instru- 
 mental music a constant unfolding of forms and 
 styles out of previous forms and styles, incessant 
 selection, adaptation, and specialization, with also, 
 as in the vegetable and animal world, abortive 
 growths, arrested movements, and exhausted en- 
 ergies. Every musical composer, every composi- 
 tion, and every school has a definite place in this 
 intricate but logical system. So persistent has 
 167
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 been this evolution that every student of musical 
 history must make the recognition of this process 
 his point of departure; for it shows him that no 
 single event or tendency is to be studied in isola- 
 tion, but always as a part vitally connected with 
 a great living whole, and only to be understood in 
 its relation to the whole. 
 
 The evident cause of this remarkable develop- 
 ment process, so far as music may be said to be 
 conscious of its motive, is found in the desire for 
 beauty and for expression of feeling. The primi- 
 tive musical impulse is not aesthetic but utiUtarian. 
 Music is here a means, not an end, striving for 
 some ulterior good, not for pure delight. Magical 
 incantation, employed throughout the world from 
 the most remote epochs, finds its most potent 
 agents in tones, rhythms, and the allied art of 
 dancing. Hardly less universal are songs of labor; 
 and the efficiency of bodily movements in develop- 
 ing the sense of rhythm, and the power of rhythmic 
 tone to heighten the physical energies and regulate 
 collective action, arc attested by a multitude of ob- 
 servations. In none of these uses, which go far 
 to explain the very origin of music, are tone and 
 rhythm conceived as the material of an independ- 
 ent art with distinct laws of its own. Music in 
 this stage is bound as a slave to poetry, to the 
 dance, to labor, to magical incantation and relig- 
 ious rite. Emancipated in the Middle Ages, it in- 
 curred a new bondage, and became the puzzle of 
 ingenious theorists; it remained for centuries the 
 
 168
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 exercise-ground of learned contrivance, a gratifica- 
 tion to the eye and the understanding rather than 
 to the ear and the emotion. 
 
 Gradually the formalism of the period of the 
 Renaissance yielded to a craving for expression, 
 and the intricate devices of the schools relaxed 
 into a grace of melody and a harmonious sweet- 
 ness to which the heart and the imagination could 
 gladly respond. It remained to join music to the 
 sentiments which spring from contact of the soul 
 with the various experiences of social and domestic 
 life. There ensued a revolt against the ecclesias- 
 tical style on account of its austerity and limited 
 range of expression, and a demand for a means of 
 rendering a more varied order of moods and con- 
 ceptions resulted in the development of the recita- 
 tive and aria. The application of these new modes 
 of song to dramatic dialogue produced the opera. 
 Instrumental music also began to take shape as 
 an independent art, at first imitating the older 
 forms of chorus music, next running off into 
 florid devices of embelhshment, adopting also the 
 rhythms, turns of melody, and simple sectional ar- 
 rangement derived from the dances of the common 
 people. The modern key system arose through a 
 natural transformation of the mediaeval Gregorian 
 modes, stimulated by the need of unhampered free- 
 dom in modulation and of a reciprocal balancing 
 of tonal supports. The Italian opera and instru- 
 mental music developed side by side, the opera 
 emphasizing melody, the other busying itself with 
 169
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 contrivances of rhythm, harmony, and form. The 
 French opera arose in the seventeenth century 
 through the grafting of the new Itahan style of 
 music upon the court ballet. In Italy, France, and 
 Germany, and to some extent in England, comic 
 opera sprang up exuberantly from the union of 
 native melody with national burlesque comedy. 
 Dramatic music, early in the seventeenth century, 
 began to divide into two great currents — the opera 
 and the oratorio, the latter expanded to giant pro- 
 portions by Handel. J. S. Bach, drawing his tech- 
 nique from the German chorale and organ music 
 and French instrumental chamber music, worked 
 the recitative and aria also into his scheme, and 
 pouring into the whole mass the fervor of his in- 
 tense spiritual nature, built up those stupendous 
 passions and cantatas in which are fulfilled all the 
 tendencies which had been moving in German 
 music for a century. 
 
 Instrumental music in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries shows us still more clearly the 
 operation of evolutionary laws. At the beginning 
 of the instrumental movement in Italy and France 
 the styles of writing for organ, stringed instruments, 
 and keyed chamber instruments were very much 
 the same. As the special capabilities of each class 
 of instruments came to be better understood, the 
 manner of writing for them became more in- 
 dividual. The polyphonic and the homophonic 
 styles began to be differentiated, and also to react 
 upon each other. The contrapuntal style clung 
 
 170
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 to the organ, while the violin and the precursors 
 of the piano worked out the sectional forms of the 
 suite and sonata. The organ style was ampHfied 
 by the German church musicians, of whom the 
 last in the line of progress and the greatest was 
 J. S. Bach. The stream of orchestral and chamber 
 music, rising in Italy and France, was deflected 
 into Germany and Austria, and the symphonies, 
 quartets, and sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, and Bee- 
 thoven were the outcome of the impulse which 
 gave its first signal in the little dance-pieces of the 
 violinists of the seventeenth century. 
 
 In the closing years of the eighteenth century 
 the sprightly little operetta of Austria and Ger- 
 many — itself an offshoot from earlier dramatic 
 practice — began swiftly to expand into the splen- 
 did form known as the romantic opera, which was 
 first given a standing in high musical society by 
 Weber and Spohr, and was borne to world conquest 
 in the hands of Richard Wagner. At the same 
 time the German lied, sweet and shy as a village 
 maiden, was drawn from seclusion, like another 
 Cinderella, and raised to princely rank by Schubert, 
 Schumann, and Franz. 
 
 In the nineteenth century the differentiating of 
 abstract forms has apparently come to an end, 
 but the ferment, instead of subsiding, only rages 
 more violently within the confines of the forms 
 themselves. The homophonic method, erected 
 upon independent foundations by the eighteenth- 
 century symphonists and sonata-writers, has been 
 171
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 subjected to a process analogous to that through 
 which the mediaeval polyphony passed, so that to 
 the transparent simplicity of Scarlatti, C. P. E. 
 Bach, and Haydn have succeeded the massiveness, 
 concentration, complexity, inward energy, and af- 
 fluent detail of the orchestral works of the later 
 German and Russian schools. Melody in the up- 
 per part with plain accompaniment having done 
 all that it could in respect to variety and interest, 
 Beethoven, in his last quartets, announced the 
 programme of further progress by leading the 
 melody into the heart of the structure, giving life 
 and free movement to the inner and lower parts — 
 not a reaction to the old counterpoint, but apply- 
 ing contrapuntal treatment to the solution of new 
 problems of expression and design. In continua- 
 tion of this tendency the fragments of old forms 
 became readjusted through the assertion of a new 
 principle by which form — as in Wagner's dramas 
 and Liszt's symphonic poems — became moulded 
 under the exigencies of a poetic motive, instead of 
 remaining subject to the architectonic principles 
 of the classic masters. The modern emphasis upon 
 expression as paramount to sensuous beauty and 
 symmetry of form could have no other result. 
 The present-day composer, like the poet and 
 painter, demands the free exercise of his individual- 
 ity, and shapes his work, not in accordance with 
 traditional standards, but as his personal genius 
 fmds the easiest outlet for its own original and ab- 
 solutely sincere unfolding. The effort to make 
 
 172
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 instrumental music more intense and individual, 
 raising melody, harmony, rhythm, and orchestral 
 color to the highest pitch of force and splendor, 
 has consistently driven instrumental music into 
 the attempt to portray definite concrete concep- 
 tions, symbolizing outward scenes and movements 
 and the moods and passions of the soul — as in 
 the programme symphonies, overtures, and sym- 
 phonic poems of Berlioz, Liszt, Strauss, and their 
 disciples. The older Italian and French forms of 
 opera, which at one time seemed to have become 
 exhausted, sprang into new life under the inspira- 
 tion of Gluck and Rossini, and, aided by an extraor- 
 dinary constellation of singers, intoxicated the 
 world by the vehemence of their passion and the 
 brilliance of their melody. The art of orchestra- 
 tion, aided by radical improvements in the mecha- 
 nism of wind instruments, ever propounding new 
 problems in variety, fulness, and delicate shading 
 of tone, has been extended and refined by the later 
 masters until the most greedy ear is well-nigh 
 surfeited with sheer voluptuousness of sound. In 
 short, the imion and refinement of all the factors 
 which the centuries have brought forth to en- 
 chant the ear and kindle the imagination has 
 now lifted musical art to such a height of glory 
 that it would almost seem as though the assim- 
 ilation of the results attained would be gratifica- 
 tion enough for a century to come, even if the 
 onward march of musical invention were to be 
 completely stayed. 
 
 173
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 XI 
 
 The rational principle of connection which the 
 student seeks for in the midst of the vast accumu- 
 lation of details is to be found, it seems, in the su- 
 preme fact of growth, which links successive events 
 together, not by a mechanical, but by a vital bond. 
 As every human being has a history, each experi- 
 ence within and without modifying his character, 
 so that what he is at one moment is conditioned by 
 what he was a moment before; so music, in its 
 unnumbered phenomena extending down the ages, 
 has a history, as consistent, as progressive as that 
 of any organism whose changes testify to a con- 
 stant push of a life-force within. In order to under- 
 stand any musical form or any group bounded by 
 a nationality, institution, or period, the scrutiny 
 must be directed to its antecedents and environ- 
 ment. 
 
 Now, to go further: if we search below the sur- 
 face we shall find that this advancing movement 
 has been made possible by the inpour at stated 
 times of new streams of energy. Whenever any 
 musical movement has shown signs of exhaustion, 
 a current of life from outside has either entered 
 the veins of the whole body of the art, giving it a 
 new force or direction, or else the infusion has 
 stimulated some modification of a single element 
 in the parent form, thus giving rise to a new off- 
 shoot to be expanded and specialized in its turn. 
 These revitalizing influences have most frequently 
 
 174
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 come from the fresh fields of popular poesy, the 
 song and dance music of the common people. In 
 the naive, unperverted life-consciousness of the 
 uncultured masses He the pure springs from which 
 art again and again draws the elixir that sustains 
 or restores. Even the complex contrapuntal cho- 
 ruses of the mediaeval church — as far removed from 
 natural expression as an art can well be — bor- 
 rowed their themes as much from popular tunes 
 as they did from the chant-books; and indeed the 
 liturgic chant itself was doubtless, at least in part, 
 a modification of the domestic music of antiquity. 
 The German Protestant Church music, which rose 
 to such magnificent proportions in the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries, drew its spirit, and some 
 of the most indispensable constituents of its form, 
 from the people's hymn-tune. The new pattern 
 of melody which made the earlier opera and ora- 
 torio what they were was the transfer into con- 
 scious art of the spontaneous tunefulness which 
 had long been the most cherished possession of the 
 multitude. And when, at certain periods, the 
 Italian form of aria became stereotyped and its 
 expression conventional, the folk-song, handmaid 
 of the popular comedy, brought a draught of brac- 
 ing outdoor air into the operatic hot-house, and 
 not only imparted higher truth to the French and 
 Italian grand opera, but also became the inspira- 
 tion of distinct additions to the world's art in the 
 French opera comique and the German roman- 
 tic opera. The whole art of instrumental music, 
 
 175
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 although drawing into itself the learning of the 
 schools, leads back to the popular dance; the final 
 destiny of the sonata and symphony was assured 
 when certain organists and violinists, early in the 
 seventeenth century, conceived the thought of 
 imitating the crisp rhythms, evenly balanced 
 phrases, and simple sectional forms of the country 
 dances, and elaborating their patterns into larger 
 artistic designs, Haydn, the foster-father of the 
 symphony, quartet, and sonata, and Beethoven, 
 who gave them their sovereignty in modern art, 
 were giants who, Antseus-like, drew their chief 
 strength from the earth. Haydn imparted to his 
 works the abounding vitality, the racy joyousness, 
 of Austrian and Hungarian folk-music, and Bee- 
 thoven constantly refreshed his genius from the 
 flood of life which he felt coursing in nature and the 
 humanity around him. So Schubert, Schumann, 
 Franz, and Brahms gave the German lied, the child 
 of the peasantry, its universal expressive power. 
 The art ballad of Loewe and his compeers is the 
 folk-ballad of Germany, England, and Scotland, en- 
 riched by the addition of the descriptive power of 
 instrumental art. The most characteristic of the 
 piano works of Schumann, one of the regenerators 
 of nineteenth-century music, are in the last anal- 
 ysis the folk song and dance, expanded by con- 
 structive skill and transfigured by emotion. Even 
 Mendelssohn, an afterglow of the classic school, 
 was most original when spellbound by the charms 
 of landscape and folk-lore. The whole romantic 
 
 176
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 movement in music, culminating in Wagner, drew 
 its spirit and color from romantic poetry, and that 
 in turn from beliefs and experiences which consti- 
 tuted the folk-poesy and folk-religion. And, as a 
 final demonstration that the nourishment of music 
 is in the popular soil, toward the middle of the 
 nineteenth century came the momentous musical 
 invasion from Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, 
 and Scandinavia, which in every instance had its 
 source in the national musical consciousness, — a 
 movement which has given a new impetus and 
 quality to European tonal art, and which affords 
 one more impressive illustration of the truth that 
 in the heart of the simple, ingenuous people lie 
 inexhaustible resources of feeling from which art 
 may be ever renewed. 
 
 XII 
 
 The expounder of musical history finds, as we 
 have seen, a working method for the drawing of 
 his ground-plan in the principle of evolution, that 
 is to say, of growth. Every act is attached to an 
 act in the past; musical forms progress from the 
 simple to the complex, the parent stems throwing 
 out branches, which in turn become organized and 
 matured; and along with this technical, we might 
 say physiological, development, expression tends 
 out of the abstract, vague, general, and formal into 
 the particular, definite, individual, and character- 
 177
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 istic. He also finds that this twofold advance is 
 quickened by the stir of life that springs up spon- 
 taneously in the popular heart, which, as soon 
 as it becomes sufficiently self-conscious, overflows 
 into the more artificial art channels, giving direc- 
 tion and force to the intellectual currents, which 
 without such infusion would in time lose their 
 energy and become stagnant. 
 
 We also find, as our survey enlarges, that the 
 historic movements in musical art are to a great 
 extent associated with contemporary changes in 
 the larger world of thought and action. As in the 
 departments of literature and painting, so there has 
 always been a magnetic connection between mu- 
 sic and certain dominant social tendencies. These 
 correspondences must not be pushed so far that 
 for the sake of a doctrine we conjecture a relation- 
 ship that docs not actually exist; intellectual 
 changes, cfTecting certain results in religion, politics, 
 literature, or representative art, may produce no 
 analogous consequence in music, or else the anal- 
 ogous phenomenon in music will appear at a later 
 period. Secularization in music, although an out- 
 growth of the Renaissance, appeared long after the 
 Renaissance had established its mission in other 
 spheres. It would be difTicult to explain the work 
 of Sebastian Bach in the light of contemporary 
 tendencies in religion or art; his counterparts must 
 be looked for in an earlier time. Nevertheless, the 
 vital relationship between music and the whole life 
 of man cannot be disputed. The form and expres- 
 
 178
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 sion which music has taken in particular nations 
 and times cannot be explained by the mechanical 
 processes of technical evolution alone. 
 
 Music can never be understood if it is divorced 
 from life. The significance of musical works is not 
 exhausted when their immediate aesthetic impres- 
 sion has passed. Every composition is a human 
 document; in it we see more or less clearly defined 
 the Hkeness of its creator. It is an event in the 
 artist's emotional life; it leads us back to that 
 most worthy of all objects of study, a hving man. 
 But this living man is not isolated or self-deter- 
 mined; he is made what he is only slightly, if at 
 all, by his own resolution, but vastly more by in- 
 nate and inherited dispositions, by physical, so- 
 cial, and moral influences, by modes of thinking, 
 feeling, and acting which prevail in the epoch in 
 which he lives, and which he shares with the mem- 
 bers of the community or race to which he belongs. 
 The spiritual elements which combine to form 
 what we call his "genius" cannot be precipitated 
 by any formal analysis of his work. Just as soon 
 as the investigator compares different styles and 
 phases of musical development with other mani- 
 festations of contemporary activity, when he ex- 
 amines all the conditions amid which large related 
 groups of musical compositions, and also single 
 works of the highest order, appear, he will often 
 discover that the musical forms respond in the 
 most sensitive fashion to the hidden impulses that 
 reveal themselves in the literature, art, philosophy, 
 179
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 religion, and even sometimes in the political events, 
 of the time to which they belong. 
 
 From this point of view music rises to the dig- 
 nity of a world oracle, and he who would expound 
 its message must have so broad a range of vision, 
 a mind so cultured and sharpened, that he is able 
 to gauge all the influences in art, science, belief, 
 individual and social dispositions, which have from 
 age to age laid hold of the art of music, and have 
 fitted it to become, like its sister arts, a means 
 for the expression as well as the adornment of 
 life. These reactions of music upon life and of 
 life upon music easily evade clear demonstra- 
 tion; by reason of the very mystery of music's 
 origin and the indefiniteness of its expression, it 
 can give no such detailed and positive testimony 
 as poetry and the graphic arts are able to furnish; 
 it reflects, rather, those general diffused states of 
 consciousness which are more easily divined than 
 described, but which are the underlying conditions 
 of those particular phenomena with which words 
 and pictorial representations deal. Difhcult as it 
 is to trace the relationships between music and life, 
 they cannot be disguised, and the fuller one's 
 knowledge of history — the deeper one's insight 
 into what really constitutes the problem of his- 
 tory — the more apparent becomes the truth that 
 music has its roots in that common soil from which 
 all human emotions spring. In this lies the higher 
 worth and the perennial fascination of the study 
 of the history of music. 
 
 1 80
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 To illustrate this principle conclusively would 
 be to write the history of music. To cite only a 
 few of the most striking correspondences: there 
 is the fact of religious music, the adaptation of 
 musical forms and styles to the forms and ideals 
 of worship in the different branches of the Chris- 
 tian church ; the inseparable union of music, poetry, 
 and dancing among primitive and ancient peoples 
 — the utiHtarian conception of music as an indis- 
 pensable aid in labor, magical incantation, and all 
 manner of social activities; the reciprocal action 
 between music and lyric and dramatic poetry from 
 the earliest ages until now (Rene Doumic, for ex- 
 ample, has shown how the drama of the classic age 
 in France was affected by the opera). One might 
 show how the spirit of the Italian Renaissance 
 seized upon music in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, when the frank dehght in the indulgence 
 of sense, the revival of pagan myths as subject- 
 matter of art, the passion to embrace life under 
 every guise, especially to separate the individual 
 from the mass and bring his special proclivity 
 into action — all of which had metamorphosed 
 art, science, literature, and manners — deployed 
 themselves once more in the field of the opera. 
 One might show how fundamental national and 
 racial qualities may be traced in national music, 
 from the simple folk-song to the most elaborate 
 achievements of finished art. The revolution in 
 artistic ideals which signalized the opening of 
 the nineteenth century — the romantic movement, 
 i8i
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 the demand for a more subjective expression, the 
 striving to penetrate to the very roots of emotion, 
 the substitution of direct personal revelation for 
 academic routine — in a word, the notion of mak- 
 ing personal disclosure the first endeavor and the 
 conveyance of delight the second, in exact reversal 
 of the dominant eighteenth-century motive, in 
 which the conveyance of dehght was paramount, — 
 all this is plainly reflected in the music of the later 
 epoch. Indeed, modern music flows into the world's 
 life as the river flows into the sea; the river adds 
 its current to the larger mass, and its own waters 
 are in turn tinctured with the ocean brine and 
 raised and lowered by the ocean tide. 
 
 Art history stirs the mind to a wider range of 
 sympathy, and hence to a larger capacity for pleas- 
 ure. Art history shows the artist and his work 
 in their native atmosphere. Great historic crises 
 create a turmoil in the spirits of men from which 
 issue new habits and states of mind, effecting ex- 
 traordinary spiritual changes throughout a con- 
 tinent or an epoch, and out of these fermentations 
 art leaps in new shapes and attributes, while at 
 the same time it reveals more clearly to men the 
 nature of the upheavals they have endured. By 
 the instruction of history the art-lover takes ac- 
 count of the influences of race and social condi- 
 tions, of public taste and fashion, of patronage — • 
 now of the church, now of the aristocracy, now of 
 the public. He learns that one standard of inter- 
 pretation cannot be applied equally to all forms 
 
 182
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 and schools, and he acquires larger capacities of 
 enjoyment by coming into sympathetic touch with 
 modes of feeling different from but not less true 
 than his own. The critic who takes all the factors 
 of the problem into account will come to realize 
 that a judgment that is sagacious is pliable and 
 adaptive; he will measure art works by the laws 
 involved in their own peculiar nature, and not by 
 a pedantic canon or an arbitrary predilection. 
 He will see how every sincere production met a 
 need of its time, how it indicates the achievement 
 of the art at a certain point in its career, how it 
 contributed to the art's advancement, and also 
 how it reflects some special phase of feeling that 
 was rife among those for whom it was created. 
 Just as we study the ethnic religions, not from the 
 standpoint of either an antagonist or an apologist, 
 but simply to learn to what extent they are the 
 natural products of certain stages of culture, and 
 how they in turn throw light upon their origin. 
 
 By deep investigation into the history of music 
 in all its aspects, and by the masterly use of the 
 means that induce a Hberal estimate, the critic 
 becomes that superior being, an interpreter. He 
 does not thereby become any the less a critic. In 
 his perception of historic or evolutionary values he 
 will not become obtuse to sesthetic values. He 
 will still retain convictions; just as the Hberal stu- 
 dent of the history of religion need not become in- 
 different to the claims of the independent spiritual 
 life, nor surrender his belief that in his own religion 
 
 183
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 there dwells the fullest manifestation of the divine. 
 Rather will the true critic, by the richer knowledge 
 of human nature which his historic inquiry brings 
 to him, be trained to see more clearly what is of 
 enduring value, in contrast to those shifting phe- 
 nomena which accomplished a needful but tem- 
 porary service and passed away. 
 
 XIII 
 
 It would be difficult to assign any limits to the 
 range of thought and study to which the art of 
 music Invites one who would read its many secrets. 
 The further one pursues the fascinating theme the 
 more correspondences one finds in nature and the 
 varied activities of the human mind. No acquaint- 
 ance in science, history, literature, or art seems to 
 come amiss. The larger one's experience grows, 
 the more apparent it becomes that, in spite of the 
 diversity of subject-matter, material, form, and 
 method, there is among all the arts a common 
 bond and a common office. Suggestive compari- 
 sons meet the musical critic on every side; perti- 
 nent illustrations crowd upon him; all the species 
 of imaginative thought seem to belong to one fam- 
 ily, so abundant are the resemblances and affini- 
 ties. When the technical analysis of musical works 
 gives way to the study of them as results of forces 
 within and without, the tracing of processes ex- 
 tends to the recognition of relationships which con- 
 nect the lives and productions of the composers 
 
 184
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 with issues of the widest sweep and importance. 
 Weber's operas not only have German romanti- 
 cism for a background, but they have a significant 
 part to play in the momentous struggle for inde- 
 pendence waged by German national art against 
 foreign dictation. The sharp heat-lightnings of 
 French romanticism play through the works. of 
 Berhoz; he is of the house and lineage of Hugo, 
 Gautier, Dumas, and Delacroix. Such men as 
 Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner stand in such vital 
 connection with the spirit of their age, their works 
 are so obviously symbolic of certain emotional 
 tendencies which have created new types in Hter- 
 ature and laid bare new capacities of enjoyment 
 and suffering in the human heart, that one instinc- 
 tively feels, and their commentators inevitably im- 
 ply, that one who would properly estimate these 
 musicians must bring to the task an understanding 
 enlarged by a broad familiarity with philosophy 
 and art. The study of the early opera leads back 
 to the Renaissance, its causes, nature, and effect. 
 The music of the Catholic Church involves the 
 Catholic Hturgy and ceremonial, the special type 
 of devotion fostered by the cloistral discipline, the 
 ideal of art promoted by the motive and spirit of 
 the Catholic Church, and the changes which that 
 ideal has undergone from the mediaeval to the 
 modern period. The "programme school" of in- 
 strumental music suggests intricate questions con- 
 cerning the nature and limit of music's expressive 
 power. Dramatic music and the song lead into 
 
 i8s
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 the study of poetry and the drama as psychologic- 
 ally and historically allied to music, and the man- 
 ner in which these arts may be combined to a 
 common action. 
 
 The ramifications of this magnificent subject 
 have no assignable end. The explorer's enthusiasm 
 will rise with every moment in his toilsome advance, 
 for he will find that in this field of intelligence, as 
 in every other, nothing is isolated and there are 
 no finalities. New problems will confront him 
 wherever he goes; his steps will be ever beguiled 
 into fresh regions of enrichment and wonder. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Another factor remains to be considered, viz., 
 the human factor as it is exemplified in the stu- 
 dents whom the teacher must prepare to profit by 
 the lessons which the history and science of music 
 afford. There are two orders of relationships with 
 which the instructor in the history and apprecia- 
 tion of music will concern himself. Musical works 
 in their objective relationships — historic, social, 
 structural, etc. — have been already considered; 
 even more attractive subjects of inquiry are found 
 in the nature of the action of musical works upon 
 the mind of the recipient. In this second problem 
 the work as a concrete, objective fact remains un- 
 changeable — the plastic element is the receiver's 
 feeling. A scientific experiment in the laboratory, 
 
 i86
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 or a mathematical demonstration, is the same to all; 
 while a phenomenon that calls upon the sense of 
 beauty and sets the feeling into vibration is not 
 the same to any two individuals. According to the 
 constitution of one's mind does one see or hear, 
 and mental states are determined by experiences 
 and inheritances that are never duplicated. The 
 eye is aware of color and form, the ear of sound, 
 but it is the spirit that divines the reaHty that lives 
 within the visible or audible body. The teacher's 
 finest task is to aid in the culture of this discern- 
 ing spirit, and quicken in his pupils every sensi- 
 bility that will enable them to attain the utmost 
 refinement of discrimination in the use of the sense, 
 the understanding, and the emotion. 
 First, there is the culture of the sense. 
 There can be no question that the training of 
 the perceptive faculties, like the training of the 
 emotions, is far too much neglected in our schools. 
 The formation of habits of keen observation has 
 an incalculable influence upon the general progress 
 of the intelligence, while in the development of 
 £esthetic appreciation the power of quick response 
 to delicate impressions, and the recognition of 
 subtle shades and combinations of shapes and hues 
 and tones, is a prime condition of accurate estimate 
 of artistic values. A beginning may well be made 
 in the observation of the sights and sounds of na- 
 ture, for in the infinite variety and glory of the 
 outer world will the organs of sense find their most 
 healthful exercise. 
 
 1S7
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 Can the powers of the eye and ear be increased 
 by practice? Certainly not as the strength of a 
 muscle or the capacity of the lungs can be aug- 
 mented by exercise. The amount of light that is 
 received by the eye, and the number and ampli- 
 tude of the vibrations of air that enter the orifice 
 of the ear, are constant with any given individual 
 — they cannot be enhanced by any known dis- 
 cipline. But while the natural sensitiveness of the 
 organ cannot be changed, the mind can form habits 
 of attention and comparison which will add im- 
 measurably to its store of recognized beauties in 
 forms, shades, and timbres. The first condition 
 is the will to see and hear, the belief that nature 
 furnishes endless rewards to those who diligently 
 seek; the second is prolonged and minute obser- 
 vation. 
 
 Elizabeth Bisland, the biographer of Lafcadio 
 Hearn, says of him: "Maimed in his vision, while 
 still a lad, almost to the point of blindness, yet the 
 general sense left upon the mind by his whole body 
 of work is one of color. Not a shimmer or a glory 
 escaped him. From his books might be gathered 
 a delightful anthology of the beauty of tint, of 
 form, of shadow, of hne. No loveliness was too 
 subtile, too evanescent, too minute, to be recog- 
 nized by those dim and straining eyes." Thoreau, 
 Emerson said, had the eye of a bird, and his "Jour- 
 nals" display an almost incredible acuteness of 
 vision. These men were not exceptional except in 
 their desire to see, and in the eagerness with which 
 
 i88
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 they strained their vision to catch the utmost 
 revelation of beauty vouchsafed by the contact of 
 light with reflecting surfaces. 
 
 From countless sources comes evidence of the 
 amazing delicacy which vision may attain. In the 
 mosaic factory of the Vatican, it is said, there are 
 stones of twenty-eight thousand different hues. 
 Note the iridescence that plays through the na- 
 ture pictures upon thousands of pages of modern 
 literature. Take a single example from the essay 
 entitled "Rosa Mystica," by "Fiona Macleod." 
 The writer is sitting in an old garden by the sea; 
 the time is late autumn. "A white calm prevails. 
 A sea of faint blue and beaten silver, still molten, 
 still luminous as with yet unsubdued flame, lies 
 motionless beneath an immeasurable dome of a 
 blue as faint, drowned in a universal delicate haze 
 of silver gray and pearl." Notice the rich vocab- 
 ulary of color in modern English; the dozens of 
 compounds that define recognizable shades of 
 primary hues; the opulent store of remote, exotic 
 appellations, such as mauve, damask, amber, saf- 
 fron, lapis lazuli, verd-antique, ultramarine — words 
 which seem in themselves to throb with color, float- 
 ing memory and imagination into regions where 
 the world is all aglow with tropical splendors. 
 The keen vision of the seeker after beauty finds 
 the utmost loveHness of tint not in flowers, not in 
 jewels, but in the tender flames of the stars — white, 
 blue, yellow, red, orange. The ancient poets and 
 artists, we are sometimes told, were incapable of 
 189
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 seeing color as moderns see it — but this lack, if 
 it existed, was not incapacity; the structure and 
 function of the eye were the same in the elder days 
 as now; the ancient observer was not so interested 
 in these fine shades of difference; the modern sen- 
 sibility is not so much a matter of aptitude as of 
 temperament, for it is the more intimate relation 
 to nature brought about by scientific discovery, 
 more nervous haste after novel experience, new 
 modes of thought, that have enabled the sensitive 
 subject of the present day to find delight in phe- 
 nomena to which his far-away ancestor was com- 
 paratively indifferent. 
 
 Beyond all reckoning is the increase in the zest 
 of life which is acquired by him who trains his 
 sight to perceive the finest degrees of contrast in 
 the intensity, quality, and relations of abstract form 
 and color. Nature and art, in this pursuit, rein- 
 force and guide each other. The lover of the 
 painter's art must strive to develop a painter's eye. 
 It is held as worthy of remark that it was reserved 
 for landscape-painters of the present day to dis- 
 cover that there is strictly no such thing as local 
 color, but that objects change their color accord- 
 ing to the direction and amount of light. Shadows 
 arc not black; shadows cast l)y bright sunlight upon 
 snow have always been blue, but the artist who 
 so represents them is called by the rabble ''un- 
 natural." Ruskin asserts that in one of Turner's 
 landscapes there is not a space as large as a grain 
 of wheat that docs not contain gradations in color. 
 190
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 Supposing this to be true, it shows as keen a color 
 sense in the critic as in the painter. 
 
 The thinker who pursues a course of education 
 in color also learns that a refined taste consists 
 not in a love for vivid sensations and strong con- 
 trasts, but rather for mellowness, harmony, and 
 delicacy of gradation. The great colorists are not 
 those who spread flamboyant hues upon their can- 
 vases. The Oriental rug which tempts the true 
 connoisseur is subdued and reposeful in its rich 
 blending of low tones. "The crimsons and golds 
 of sunset," says Professor John C. Van Dyke, 
 "flame and glow with brilliant splendor, but turn 
 about and see if the pearly grays of the eastern 
 sky have not their color charm as well." "In the 
 dull clouds hanging over the Jersey marshes in 
 November, in the volumes of silvery smoke thrown 
 up from factory chimneys and locomotives, in the 
 reflected grays of the pools and the creeks, the faded 
 yellows and browns of the rushes, there is a wealth 
 of color beauty which only the trained eye can ap- 
 preciate. Such a scene may have infinitely more 
 refinement about it than the scarlet foliage and 
 blue sky of an October noonday." The judicious 
 lover of landscape will not climb the mountain 
 when the sun sends a dazzling flood of light through 
 a dry and cold blue atmosphere, but when the air 
 is suffused with haze, or the sky is hung with broken 
 clouds, for then nature brings forth her richest 
 tapestries, and spreads them amid veils of opal 
 and mother-of-pearl. But if no mountain is near 
 191
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 he need not repine, for he may find a feast for his 
 eye in a clump of yellow sedge overhanging a 
 wayside pool whose amber is tinged with azure 
 from above. 
 
 " Nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare." 
 
 XV 
 
 The analogy between the senses of sight and 
 hearing in respect to their education is so close 
 that the principles of one may often be applied to 
 the other. Nature, indeed, is less lavish in her 
 tribute to the ear than to the eye; nevertheless, the 
 physically deaf suffer sad deprivations even out-of- 
 doors, and the nature-lover will find great pleasure 
 accruing to him if he has learned to catch the mul- 
 titudinous reverberations and the coming and go- 
 ing of adjusted sounds, which at times are amply 
 bestowed and but rarely vanish into utter silence. 
 Thoreau, to whom the distant baying of a hound, 
 the throb of a far-off bell, the monotone of the 
 "telegraph harp," brought mystic intimations, and 
 the trilling of insects and birds took the place of 
 orchestras and operas, declared that "the contact 
 of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure 
 and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy." 
 The Jaj)anese, most sensitive of modern races to 
 the subtler impressions of sound and line and color, 
 find an aisthetic delight in the notes of certain in- 
 sects and frogs, which are domesticated for their 
 
 192
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 dainty music, and are celebrated in the verses of 
 poets. The Greeks, too, loved the cicada for its 
 thin monotone, the most tender of the voices of 
 nature. 
 
 Although the sounds of earth that give refined 
 pleasure are few compared with the treasures she 
 spreads before the eye, it is well to give earnest 
 heed to them, for they are not only precious for 
 their own sake, but they help to attune the ear to 
 the niceties of art. Strange as it may seem that 
 notes "jangled, out of tune and harsh," should give 
 pleasure to any one of average intelHgence, yet the 
 abundance of evidence that they do so indicates 
 that the training of the youthful ear to discrimina- 
 tion between the pure and the impure is not to be 
 neglected. The enjoyment that multitudes of our 
 fellow creatures find in the ghastly "white voice" 
 and the discordant tremolo of the worst type of 
 vaudeville singer, makes a musician wonder if, after 
 all, the ears of the majority are not differently 
 constructed in their anatomy from his own. The 
 cheapest pattern of graphophone appears to give 
 as much comfort to some as the violin of Ysaye does 
 to others. The guide to musical appreciation need 
 not deem his effort wasted when he preaches upon 
 the need of preparing the auditory sense to catch 
 the finer shades of tone values. The secret of edu- 
 cation here consists, as in the training of the eye, 
 in acute attention, observation, and comparison. 
 Let the music lover not be content with imperfect 
 intonation, let him learn to detect all the shades 
 
 193
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 of timbre which instruments and voices afiford, 
 let him train himself to perceive the multitudinous 
 varieties and contrasts which are due to the rela- 
 tive predominance of overtones — the differences 
 of quality between the adjacent strings of a violin, 
 between the violin and the viola, the oboe and the 
 English horn, the registers of the bassoon or the 
 clarinet; and while his ear is invaded by the surge 
 and thunder of the full orchestra, let him try to 
 analyze the thick and luscious current into its 
 elements, and gain something of the expert con- 
 ductor's acuteness in the exercise of that wonder- 
 ful faculty which sifts and selects, and turns the 
 dense mass of tone color into a huge spectrum of 
 scintillating hues. 
 
 The advice to the student of music also accords 
 with that given by Professor Van Dyke to the lover 
 of painting — learn to take delight in subdued and 
 delicately modulated tones and combinations. As 
 the volume and garishncss of our orchestras in- 
 crease, so much the more virtue is there in acquir- 
 ing a love for what is moderate and justly balanced. 
 The test of rcfmcd hearing is not furnished by the 
 orchestra, but by the string quartet. The pianist 
 of the present day studies out and applies a sub- 
 tlety of nuance and color by means of pedals and 
 fmger touch which even in the days of the mighty 
 Liszt was undreamed of; — let not his skill and taste 
 be wasted upon an ear too crude to notice the fugi- 
 tive beauties that he offers to the sense. We must, 
 however, acknowledge that there is a danger of 
 
 194
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 attaching too much importance to the sensuous 
 element. A Kreisler or a Sembrich could easily 
 commend a worthless composition to the approval 
 of many hearers by the mere exquisiteness of tone 
 and the perfection of delivery; and although a 
 true artist will not so descend, yet there is constant 
 danger in musical performance that the greater 
 merits of thought and feeling will be sacrificed to 
 the lesser values of timbre and technique. On the 
 other hand, the connoisseur who so disregards the 
 sensuous element that he will approve bad tone and 
 faulty delivery, if only the composition is a master- 
 piece, is likewise in grievous error; for music really 
 exists only as it is performed, and when the physical 
 ear is offended there is no true expression. This 
 latter doctrine is hard for many amateurs, who 
 justly emphasize intellectual values in art, to ac- 
 cept, but it is nevertheless one of the foundation 
 principles of musical appreciation. 
 
 The careful attention to pure tone may have still 
 another favorable result in the influence it exerts 
 upon the singing or speaking voice of the hearer. 
 That such an influence is more than fancy is a 
 statement which would naturally arouse scepticism, 
 but the fact depends upon a well-known law that 
 mental conceptions have a moulding and direct- 
 ing power over the physical organism and its func- 
 tions. Mrs. Clara Kathleen Rogers, in her inter- 
 esting book, "My Voice and I," asserts that when 
 a brain impression of a certain kind of sound is 
 received, the will to reproduce it compels the vari- 
 
 195
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 ous mechanisms to conform to it. "A significant 
 illustration of the ruling power of sound-percep- 
 tion," she says, "is to be found in the fact that 
 most young singers are able to effect a complete 
 change in the quality of their tone after hearing 
 some distinguished public singer who has made an 
 impression upon them. I have heard a light so- 
 prano, with apparently very hmited powers, sud- 
 denly take on an ample, resonant quality of tone, 
 full of color and vitality, the day after hearing 
 Lehmann in the role of Isolde; and another singer, 
 with a dull, heavy, and hard voice, as suddenly 
 achieve flexibility and a pure, sympathetic tone 
 after listening to Melba in 'Lucia'; and I could 
 cite dozens of similar instances. Of course, the 
 change thus effected in the voice of a singer is not 
 permanent. It must necessarily be only a tem- 
 porary thing, because the mental impression of the 
 sound is only ephemeral. It grows fainter day by 
 day, and, as the singer is constantly hearing other 
 voices, the memory of the better sound soon dies 
 out altogether, while the old habits once more as- 
 sert themselves. If, however, it were possible for 
 the singer to remain during a long period under 
 the influence of the sound by which he had been 
 so strongly impressed, the continuity of the new 
 sound-perception would certainly prevail in due 
 time, and cause new habits to be formed in the 
 vocal processes themselves." 
 
 If such results can appear in the culture of the 
 singing and speaking voice, then certainly one who 
 196
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 studies to appreciate rather than to perforin will 
 find advantage in constantly seeking opportuni- 
 ties to hear sound that is sympathetic and sweet. 
 In either case it is the brain that is affected, and to 
 no slight degree does the love of pure sound exert 
 an influence upon character. There is a certain 
 refinement of nature back of every tone that is 
 pure and delicate, and a glad response to it is the 
 evidence of a kindred grace. The Greeks, most 
 sensitive of all men to aesthetic impressions, ab- 
 jured coarse and noisy instruments, and chose as 
 their distinctively national instruments the tinkling 
 lyre and soft-murmuring flute. It is commonly 
 accepted as one of the signs of degeneracy among 
 the Romans of the empire that, with the corrup- 
 tion of the circus and theatre, a love for the sweetly 
 modulated melodies of the Greeks faded out and 
 a passion for harsh instruments and great masses 
 of players and singers took its place. The law 
 holds good in all conditions that nobility of taste 
 affirms itself in a desire for simplicity, moderation, 
 and refined gradation and balance in form and 
 color and sound. The teacher of musical apprecia- 
 tion may justly give emphasis to this factor in the 
 preparation for wise judgments. There is little 
 danger that his disciples will stop with this, for a 
 finely trained ear, habituated to nice distinctions, 
 will readily unite its acquisitions to those of the 
 understanding and the emotion. The culture of 
 the organs of sense prepares the way for that high 
 attainment which Thoreau had in mind when, in 
 197
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 happy consciousness of intellectual progress, he 
 exclaimed : 
 
 "I hearing get who had but ears; 
 And sight, who had but eyes before." 
 
 XVI 
 
 There must be a training of the understanding. 
 
 The college instructor in the value and the use 
 of art faces a group of young people who should 
 need no exhortation to give heed to the intellect, 
 for the thought that is more persistently brought to 
 them, directly and indirectly, than any other, is 
 that they arc in the place they occupy in order that 
 they may learn the uses of the reason, and they 
 would naturally be disrespectful toward any sub- 
 ject that accomplished nothing more than the se- 
 duction of the senses and ephemeral emotional ex- 
 citement. Indeed, the influences acting upon the 
 teacher, for reasons already discussed, tend to in- 
 cline him in a direction that leads away from those 
 soft abodes of delight where the senses and the 
 affections take possession of the reflective powers 
 and lull them into slumber. There is little need, 
 therefore, to exhort him to assign a prominent place 
 in his system of instruction to matters of technique 
 and form, but only to remind him of the proper 
 relationship between the several apartments in 
 which musical appreciation dwells. He will easily 
 discover that the sense-perception, the inspection 
 198
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 by the understanding, and the agitation of the 
 emotional nature, theoretically distinct, are in ex- 
 perience blended in mutual action; that while the 
 intellect is warmed and its exclusive self-conscious- 
 ness, and self-confidence too, is reduced by feeling, 
 the sense-perception is not forsaken by the will, 
 and the passionate emotion is regulated by the 
 judgment and brought under the guidance of the 
 reason. 
 
 The intellect decides upon the final value of the 
 work which demands entrance through the gates 
 of feeling. It constitutes itself a court of appeal, 
 and its decrees become accepted precedents. The 
 term emotion as appHed to art, be it observed, does 
 not mean the same as emotion aroused by personal 
 shocks coming from actual occurrences. The cause 
 of the pleasure afforded by stage tragedy has been 
 the subject of much profound dissertation ever 
 since the days of Aristotle, but there is really very 
 little mystery in the matter. The sadness that is 
 felt at the death of Cordelia or Desdemona is an 
 emotion which is not left to do its poignant work 
 alone, subjugating every consciousness except that 
 of horror and pity, as would be the case in the pres- 
 ence of similar incidents in daily life; but an emo- 
 tion that is held up for inspection by the critical 
 faculty and made to give a reason for its existence, 
 which reason is found in the judgment of the per- 
 formance as true to the laws, not of reality, but of 
 the drama. The feeling of depression is temporary, 
 and the enduring mood is one of pleasure over the 
 199
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 poet's genius and the actor's skill, or it may be 
 one of disapproval in view of the inadequacy of 
 the latter. Similarly with the emotional response 
 to a drama which abounds in cheerful situations 
 and amiable characters — the pleasure is not sim- 
 ply because such and such incidents occur, but be- 
 cause the performance is fme. 
 
 In the process of forming a rational judgment 
 concerning a work of art there must be a period 
 when emotion is held in abeyance while the under- 
 standing applies its tests. In the case of those 
 classes of works which exist in space it is possible 
 to suspend the action of the feeling for an indefinite 
 time, since the fixity of the object precludes all 
 necessity of haste. A literary composition may 
 be read as slowly as seems desirable, and it also 
 remains unchanged while the reader, if he chooses, 
 returns again and again to a passage that had 
 seemed in any way doubtful. The wise critic of a 
 building or statue or painting or poem subjects 
 the work to deliberate scrutiny, he examines 
 every detail, surveys each plane or shade or color 
 or phrase in accordance with a standard furnished 
 him by his knowledge and lusthctic convictions, 
 builds up in his mintl a counterpart of the visible 
 creation, and only when the complete design has 
 been tested and reviewed does he allow his pleasure 
 or disaj)proval to ])Ccomc established and find ex- 
 pression in his words. In a musical composition, 
 heard for llic first time in performance, this pre- 
 liminary analysis is impossible. The hearer can- 
 
 2CX)
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 not say, as before a picture, "I will examine this 
 calmly before I allow myself to enjoy or condemn," 
 for no such respite is allowed him. No two phrases 
 present themselves at the same instant for com- 
 parison on even terms. Only by means of the 
 memory can such comparison be made, and even 
 with the most retentive mind the disadvantage is 
 serious, for as the phrases pass in swift succession 
 their echo in the memory becomes ever fainter, 
 and sooner or later vanishes altogether down the 
 dim corridors. No wonder that many contend 
 that the criticism of musical works at the first 
 hearing is absolutely untrustworthy, because the 
 obstacles to reflective judgment are insuperable. 
 
 Nevertheless, the case is not quite so hopeless as 
 at first glance it appears. The music, indeed, 
 passes like a gust, and we cannot arrest its flight 
 for a reinspection of its elements; but works of 
 musical art can be classified, and by study of other 
 compositions and the principles upon which the 
 art rests we can establish in our minds a certain 
 number of types, and be ready to apply any one of 
 them to the work in hand. As a result of acquaint- 
 ance with the standard musical forms we have in 
 consciousness, we might say, a number of frames, 
 to one of which we apply the particular work be- 
 fore us. If the work is made according to strict 
 classic pattern it will fit the frame; if not, then the 
 divergencies from type, because they are diver- 
 gencies, will be intelHgible. So with the more un- 
 certain problems of style and character — the title, 
 
 20I
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 class, associated ideas, medium and circumstances 
 of performance, practical uses for which the com- 
 position was designed, or any of the numerous 
 conditions that guided the composer's invention, 
 give us occasion to draw upon our stores of knowl- 
 edge, and enable us thereby to apply a criterion 
 which will serve us as at least a safeguard against 
 total error. 
 
 The teacher, therefore, has a large field in which 
 the powers of observation, analysis, co-ordination, 
 and comparison are summoned into exercise. Ev- 
 erything in a composer's activity which calls forth 
 a deliberate intellectual process (and the propor- 
 tion is large) is itself to be appreciated by the 
 employment of similar faculties. The instructor 
 lays emphasis upon these things of technique not 
 simply that the feeling of his pupils may be forti- 
 fied by the intellect, and that they may thus escape 
 the deterioration which might result from the sur- 
 render of the emotion to blind impulse, having no 
 touchstone to separate between the strong and 
 noble and the paltry and base — not that alone, 
 but also that they may find pleasure in the exercise 
 of the intelligence itself. No art worthy the name 
 is lacking in a basis of science, and the greater the 
 art the more the claim that is made upon the facul- 
 ties that measure, compare, and judge. The true 
 musical connoisseur perceives that in structure and 
 design, the craftsman's patient skill, the proportion, 
 arlaptation, and balance of parts, the attainment of 
 unity amid profusion, there is something that may 
 202
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 be likened to wisdom and morality in the com- 
 poser's control of his passionate impulses in the 
 grip of his judgment and his iron will. 
 
 As a result of this discipline the hearer gains a 
 double benefit. As the work of genius passes 
 through his mind it organizes itself while it gathers 
 volume, its resounding waves leave images which 
 coalesce into logical significance; and then, further- 
 more, the fortunate Kstener retains the music in 
 his memory as a living whole, it remains a lasting 
 addition to his mental treasure, which a mere flash 
 of tone colors, or a confused succession of unre- 
 lated emotional disturbances, can never be. 
 
 XVII 
 
 Last and greatest of all, there is the education 
 of the feeling — that unstable element which, en- 
 dowed with the clairvoyant power of intuition, 
 reads the inner secret of the sounding forms and 
 discovers the final purpose of their existence. In 
 the evidence of the emotion is the proof of music's 
 worth. Can we, by any process of analysis, ex- 
 plain this mystic power of divination, increase its 
 sensitiveness, and use it to the enrichment of our 
 life ? Is the task of the instructor arrested at this 
 point, or can he still continue to guide and inspire ? 
 
 The supreme mystery of music lies in the fact 
 
 that its extraordinary power of driving us out of 
 
 our usual condition of mind, and awaking in us the 
 
 most vivid emotions of delight and awe, is accom- 
 
 203
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 plished by an agency that is wholly devoid of any 
 of those concepts, images, and reminders which the 
 other arts are compelled to use. Those arts act 
 indirectly upon the emotion by means of ideas 
 that are identical with or analogous to ideas with 
 which we are already acquainted. No object in 
 a picture, no sculptured figure, is absolutely new 
 in the sense that it bears no resemblance, in the 
 whole or in its parts, to anything we have ever 
 seen; the words and images of poetry must be 
 reminiscent of previous acquaintance or else they 
 are unintelligible. A musical phrase, however, has 
 no counterpart in our experience; it is unprece- 
 dented and unique. Its action upon our feeling 
 is direct, not indirect. This would seem to imply 
 that music can have no meaning, for in the acquisi- 
 tion of knowledge we proceed from the known to 
 the unknown, and nothing can be understood ex- 
 cept as it is able to attach itself to something that 
 is already a part of our mental property. And yet 
 when we surrender ourselves to the ravishments of 
 music it comes to us as admirably defmite, con- 
 vincing, and real; and this sense of rcahty, as of 
 something long sought and complete in the satis- 
 faction it gives, seems to us suflicicnt proof that 
 there is something in our nature to which music 
 attaches itself, and that, too, without those delays 
 wliich our ordinary intellectual processes, depend- 
 ing upon experience and effort, entail. In this 
 eager greeting of music as something native to our 
 souls, it is the intuition that is summoned, and its 
 204
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 answer is unhesitating, free even from all knowl- 
 edge of the means by which this acquaintance was 
 acquired. 
 
 This element which the soul takes spontaneously 
 to itself, as two drops of water flow into one another, 
 baffles the searcher after its origin, and yet it is 
 the spirit which gives to all forms of art their power 
 over the affections of men. We speak of the soul 
 of art which is manifest in beauty, and go no fur- 
 ther in our account of it, for the words soul and 
 beauty repel all attempts at defmition. We know 
 them, but we know them by ways and means that 
 cannot be stated in formulas. This essence, when 
 it appears in music, because it lives only in airy 
 vibrations, seems whoUy disembodied, and the world 
 in which it moves is a world otherwise unexplored. 
 The other arts must employ forms and materials 
 which are associated in our minds with uses apart 
 from those of pure conveyance of impressions of 
 beauty. The beauty is something added to agen- 
 cies of utility which at other times and under other 
 needs may exist without it. Thus, a building re- 
 ceives an adornment which is superfluous from the 
 point of view of its practical service as an abode 
 or a place of business transaction. Implements 
 devised for any kind of usefulness add painted or 
 carven ornament for the sake of another service 
 more ideal. Even when sculpture and painting 
 are employed only for art's sake they must perforce 
 draw their forms from the visible world — forms 
 which bring with them associations that are com- 
 205
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 monplace. Even color, which in pictures is the 
 artist's color rather than nature's, cannot be used 
 alone but is an overlay upon forms which only 
 give coherence and reality. Language was de- 
 veloped under the compulsion of every-day needs, 
 and in the guise of poetry acts through images or 
 suggestion of things which originally had a more 
 humble part in individual and social economy. 
 
 In music, on the contrary, this untranslatable 
 message that passes from the artist's feeling to our 
 own comes to us completely disengaged from every 
 medium that has the power of adaptation to the 
 ends of utility. Its materials are never used for 
 any other purpose but its own. Music is not 
 something made beautiful, it is itself beauty. Its 
 forms are abstract proportions of time and pitch; 
 its subject-matter "series and combinations of 
 sounds, wholly independent of external phenomena 
 and external utility, and having no existence inde- 
 pendent of art" (Edmund Gurney). This element 
 of pure art suggests no antithesis of form and ex- 
 pression and is in and by itself alone the sufficient 
 object of contemplation. The other arts are emis- 
 saries from the world of sense and action — music 
 suggests no operation of the will upon inert matter, 
 its substance is an ethereal substance, which reaches 
 that which is most inexplicable within us and fmds 
 no imi)cdiment in the transition from the outward 
 to the inward. There is no trace of earthly alloy 
 in this impalpable stream. Of the two categories, 
 space and time, upon which our knowledge of the 
 206
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 outer world depends, one of them, space, is elimi- 
 nated. These pure currents, existing only in dura- 
 tion, bathe our souls with a refreshment such as 
 no other aesthetic experience affords, and equally 
 unique is the ecstasy with which the soul springs 
 to its embrace. 
 
 What is the source and composition of this 
 ecstasy? Can it be developed and directed ? What 
 is its effect upon the character of the individual? 
 — for to say that this emotion is transient is con- 
 trary to fact, since there is no mental experience 
 but leaves a lasting imprint upon the character. 
 That it is accepted with an unparalleled frankness 
 and whole-heartedness is proof of its correspond- 
 ence with some inherent craving of the soul and 
 therefore of its reality and value. Can this in- 
 stinctive response to the cry of music be made 
 more sensitive, intelligent, and cordial ? In a word, 
 can the emotional nature, so far as it is affected by 
 music, be made the object of cultivation? 
 
 XVIII 
 
 In the first place, the guide to musical apprecia- 
 tion can perform a negative service — not less im- 
 portant on that account — of showing what the 
 emotional ofhce of music is not. It surely is desir- 
 able that emotion should not be ruled by false be- 
 liefs, or overflow with a volume that is far in excess 
 of its cause, for in that consists the vice called senti- 
 207
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 mentalism. There must be no conflict between 
 emotion and intelligence. 
 
 Difficulties at once strike the teacher when he 
 enters upon the subject of musical expression. He 
 cannot avoid using the term, for, although it has 
 been strenuously maintained by certain writers 
 who assume to speak with authority that music 
 has no representative or even expressive power, 
 that it consists of "sounding arabesques," mere 
 decoration, empty of thought, nevertheless, this 
 opinion is instinctively rejected because it is unable 
 to account for the extraordinary exaltation of mood 
 producible by music, as if a veil were flung aside 
 revealing a world supremely fair in which the 
 spirit feels the confidence of a wanderer returned to 
 his native land. May it not be, however, that this 
 confidence is a delusion and that music has noth- 
 ing positive to give us? When we say that music 
 is expressive, do we intend the word to be taken 
 in its common meaning, as when we say that a 
 picture is expressive? Should we not say rather 
 that the music is impressive, and is not the sup- 
 posed expressiveness due rather to associations 
 arbitrarily imposed? Is not our experience when 
 hearing music, after all, purely a musical experi- 
 ence and nothing more? 
 
 In forms of art or natural objects to which we 
 cust(;marily apply the term expressive we distin- 
 guish two factors, viz., the object heard or seen 
 and the thing or idea expressed. A face, for ex- 
 ample, may express joy or grief. We see the face 
 208
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 by direct perception; the joy or grief we do not 
 see, but we infer it from the lines in the face. We 
 know that the same face may have different ex- 
 pressions at different times — the face therefore 
 is one thing, the expression another. 
 
 So with a work of art — it may interest for either 
 of two reasons : first because it affords an agreeable 
 arrangement of lines and colors, or second because 
 it conveys an idea that is in itself worthy of con- 
 sideration. The beauty and the expression may 
 be so closely united that we hardly distinguish one 
 from the other, as a face that is regular in feature 
 and charming in tint may express kindliness or 
 contentment, and we hardly consider whether the 
 beauty is in the form or the virtue that shines 
 through it. On the other hand, a face may be 
 plain or even ugly in feature and yet so irradiated 
 with noble character or lofty intellect as to take 
 on a beauty that we feel to be of the highest order. 
 Such was the face of Abraham Lincoln ; such is the 
 beauty of the grandfather's countenance in the 
 famous picture of the old man and the child by 
 Ghirlandajo. Poetry is supremely an art of ex- 
 pression, and yet there are lines that give pleasure 
 by the very sound of the vowels, the harmony of 
 the rhymes, and the swing and cadence of the 
 rhythm, apart from their significance. The Italian 
 language is commonly regarded as beautiful even 
 by those who do not understand a word of it. 
 
 "In all expression," says Professor Santayana, 
 "we may distinguish two terms — the first is the 
 209
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 object actually presented, the word, the image, 
 the expressive thing; the second is the object sug- 
 gested, the further thought, emotion, or image 
 evoked. These lie together in the mind, and their 
 union constitutes expression." Now, if the object 
 presented were literally expressive we should be 
 able to separate these quahties in thought. The 
 qualities that make a thing beautiful to the sense 
 are inherent in the thing itself, they are an essen- 
 tial part of its very nature, while the expressional 
 significance is attributed to it out of our knowledge 
 or experience of life. When the idea is so tightly 
 enwrapped in the very nature of the object that 
 we always identify one with the other, we do not 
 speak of the quality as being expressed by the ob- 
 ject. We do not say that a sphere expresses round- 
 ness — a sphere is round ; it would not be a sphere 
 if it were not round. A clear sky does not express 
 blueness, but it is blue. To a Gloucester fisher- 
 man who has seen his friends drowned before his 
 eyes in a gale, the ocean may seem to express 
 cruelty; it docs not express wetness or even im- 
 mensity — it is wet, it is immense. 
 
 It is evident that we may have great beauty 
 with very feeble expression, and intense expression 
 with little or no formal beauty. A vast number 
 of art objects are simply ornamental or decorative 
 
 — the vases on our shelves, the designs of tapes- 
 tries, the jewels that we wear, wood, stone, and 
 metal carvings, etc. One of the noblest of the arts 
 
 — architecture — is, strictly speaking, almost 
 
 210
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 wholly a presentative art. Architecture is cer- 
 tainly not wholly devoid of expression. A church 
 spire may be thought to express aspiration. There 
 is a feeling that may be verbally described in the 
 majestic vaults and gloomy crypts of a Gothic or 
 Romanesque cathedral. St. Peter's Church may 
 be said to express the pride of the pope who built 
 it. This expression in architecture, however, is 
 to 'a large extent conventional, traditional, and 
 associative, not the evidence of temperament or 
 mood on the part of the architect — and certainly 
 not representative. It is essentially imputed by 
 the beholder, very much as the moods attributed 
 to nature are reflected moods. 
 
 The relation between form and expression is 
 more arbitrary in painting than in architecture, 
 since the two terms do not so completely penetrate 
 each other. The f eehng is not so inevitably aroused 
 by the very fact of the art's existence, for the painter 
 may put his own individuaUty into the work, and 
 is not so much confined to a conventional track by 
 his material and subject-matter. Gothic churches 
 always convey the same emotional impression; but 
 two landscape-painters, working side by side, will 
 often suggest widely different states of feehng, each 
 laying his own personal emphasis, drawing out 
 from the objects before him that quality which is 
 in correspondence with his own character. Even 
 in portrait-painting this holds true: Franz Hals and 
 Rembrandt may paint the same sitter — each pic- 
 ture will not only indicate the character of the 
 model but will also betray that of the artist. 
 
 2H
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 XIX 
 
 Now, what is the truth in respect to the art of 
 music? When we speak of expression in music 
 what do we mean by the term? Do we mean an 
 impression that is inherent in the art, inevitable 
 by very reason of the form itself? Or an expres- 
 sion that might be conveyed by any one of a num- 
 ber of forms, separable in thought from the object 
 perceived and attachable to another, as in poetry ? 
 The answer will have much to do with the means 
 that are taken to increase the emotional response 
 and with the result accomplished. 
 
 It is certain that a great amount of music is 
 comparable to ornamental decoration — its inter- 
 est lies in graceful, ingenious play of tones, express- 
 ive, if at all, as any movement is expressive which 
 conveys ideas of health, freshness, and buoyancy, 
 arousing pleasure like that produced by running 
 waters sparkling in the sun, or the racing of clouds 
 on a June morning. Such experiences do not pro- 
 mote introspection, but rather the contrary. Al- 
 most all of the eighteenth-century harpsichord 
 music is of this type, much of ninctccnth-ccntury 
 piano music, and a large proportion of Italian opera 
 melody in all times. In a very large amount of 
 the religious music of Handel and Mendelssohn, 
 even of J. S. Bach, there would be no suggestion 
 of any deep feeling if the recollection of the text 
 were removed. In the church music of the six- 
 teenth century, on the other hand, we discover 
 
 212
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 profound expression, but it is an expression in- 
 herent in music of this particular type, not de- 
 rived from the pious aspiration of this or that 
 composer — for the feeHng might or might not be 
 strong within him; while in a vast quantity of the 
 vocal, orchestral, chamber, and piano music of the 
 past one hundred years, even in opera, we find 
 utterances that are unmistakably personal, which 
 we cannot refuse to call expressive, and often ex- 
 pressive to a very definite degree. But even in 
 works of the most pronounced individual character 
 the music does not acquire the powers of exact 
 representation possessed by words and pictures, it 
 does not add to our knowledge of history, every- 
 day life, or outward nature. Music creates its 
 forms within itself and groups them in accordance 
 with its own apart and inner laws, and the thoughts 
 and moods aroused are musical moods. But are 
 they nothing but musical moods? 
 
 Now comes the curious fact that many people 
 are not wilUng to accept a complete separation 
 between the domain of music and the spheres of 
 language and picture. They constantly incline to 
 interpret music as an actual reflex of things seen, 
 or as expressive of precise feelings. In the first 
 case music, through some mysterious correspond- 
 ence, real or imaginary, stimulates the visualizing 
 faculty, and images, recalled from experience or 
 revived out of sunken regions of romance, spring 
 into being at the touch of musical sounds. Ribot 
 declares that people who are inclined to musical 
 213
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 visualization are weak in genuine musical endow- 
 ment. This may be generally true, but not always. 
 Schumann was a visualizer, or else pretended to be 
 for his own amusement and the mystification of 
 others. The significance of this tendency has been 
 set forth at length elsewhere,* and need not detain 
 us here. It is enough to say that a belief in a 
 literal representative power in music has no rational 
 foundation, and an encouragement of it is much 
 more Ukely to degrade than to elevate musical ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Far more worthy of respect is the belief that 
 music has the power to express and to excite 
 emotions, and in that power lies its noblest serv- 
 ice. The definitions of music given by many 
 famous scholars imply this. It would, perhaps, 
 be rash to deny this ability on the part of 
 music, for we know that men arc often moved 
 not merely to contemplation but to positive action 
 by musical strains; but the more we examine this 
 opinion the more inclined are we to question its 
 validity. A face can be made by a painter to ex- 
 press love, fear, anger, compassion, hope, or one 
 of many emotions, each of which may be distinctly 
 differentiated from any other, but can a composer 
 do the same? The painter accomplishes this feat 
 because he can put the lines of the countenance 
 into relations which are associated in our obser- 
 vation or experience with particular feelings, but 
 
 * The Education of a Music Lover, chap. IX. 
 214
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 are there any musical forms that compel similar 
 inevitable associations ? 
 
 We must hold by the fact that the words emo- 
 tional and expressive are not identical in their con- 
 notations. A piece of music may be strong on the 
 emotional side and weak on the expressive side, and 
 vice versa. A few tones produced by a great vio- 
 linist may bring tears to the eyes (but not tears of 
 grief, be it observed), while it would be impossible 
 to distinguish in them any reference to a visible 
 image or definite thought. Where there is a real 
 connection between a musical work and precise 
 feelings that belong to actual characters and events, 
 this connection is due to an association of ideas that 
 has been mechanically produced. Siegfried's dirge 
 in ''The Ring of the Nibelung" conveys with won- 
 derful power the thought of glory and happiness 
 followed by ruin and dismay, but it is able to do 
 this because the motives of which it is composed 
 have been definitely connected with events in Sieg- 
 fried's life which have occurred in earlier portions 
 of the drama. 
 
 And yet when we listen to great music the very 
 deeps of our emotional nature seem to be moved, 
 as the ocean waters are heaved by the storm. 
 The language of Berhoz is hardly extravagant: 
 "Music associates itself with ideas which it has a 
 thousand means of calling into action, uniting at 
 times all its forces upon the ear which it charms, 
 upon the nervous system which it excites, upon the 
 circulation of the blood which it accelerates, upon 
 
 215
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 the heart which it dilates, upon the thought which 
 it immeasurably enlarges and hurls into the re- 
 gions of the infinite." These disturbances in the 
 physical organism, accompanied by profound psy- 
 chic changes — ideas of grandeur, tenderness, re- 
 sistless motion, vast spaces, religious aspiration, or 
 what-not — these emotions are far more lasting 
 and precious than any superficial excitement of 
 the nerves could be, and they may also be aroused 
 by music that is extremely quiet and simple. 
 Indeed, the emotional nature is often most deeply 
 affected by strains in which physical agitation is 
 reduced to the lowest terms, as in certain calm un- 
 adorned melodies of the great masters which seem 
 to us like monitory voices from the eternal depths. 
 Even when such strains are soundless, merely re- 
 called in memory, they can convey to us impressions 
 of vast bulk, force, or passion. John Addington 
 Symonds, standing reverently before the sublime 
 allegorical figures of Michelangelo in the sacristy 
 of San Lorenzo, was reminded of phrases by Beetho- 
 ven. It requires no long reflection to discover that 
 these effects are not due to the suggestion of definite 
 images or even precise emotions. In fact, there is 
 no emotion thought of abstractly, apart from any 
 person who entertains it or event which causes it, 
 that can so disturb the soul with this sense of 
 beauty, pathos, and delight. Indeed, we pay a 
 poor tribute to the art of music when we feci forced 
 to levy upon the subject-matter belonging to the 
 other arts for means of its interpretation. We talk 
 216
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 about emotions of fear, anger, desire, etc., as ex- 
 pressed by music and excited by music, but in truth 
 they are Scheingefiihle (mock feelings) — intensely 
 real, indeed, but not those that belong to the world 
 of action. There is never any separation in thought 
 between the imagined emotion and the beauty of 
 the music, and when we let the imagined emotion 
 go, the music still remains as beautiful, yes, as 
 grand, as touching, as salutary, as before. 
 
 Certainly we deceive ourselves when we believe 
 that it is some special representation of a concrete 
 idea that gives us our pleasure in music rather than 
 its quality as good composition. The story of the 
 Prodigal Son may be painted ill, but we are able 
 to look beyond the inadequate execution to the 
 eternal truth of the idea; but in music no such 
 dissolution of thought and form is possible. The 
 more music aims at reaHstic expression, the less is 
 its value as music. Imitative music may strive 
 to reproduce the actual sounds of nature, but if it 
 succeeds it is music no longer. A shriek or a groan 
 is more expressive than any musical tone can pos- 
 sibly be. A commonplace succession of lugubrious 
 tones cannot make us feel sad, nor a rattling series 
 of noisy and empty phrases make us mirthful. 
 Moreover, when we strive to interpret music in 
 terms of emotion we run into a very obstinate 
 dilemma, for a musical piece of any considerable 
 length is incessantly changing its rhythmic and 
 dynamic effects, and if we try to feel the emotions 
 it is supposed to render we are kept in a perpetual 
 217
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 see-saw of contradictory moods. A piece may at 
 one moment give us slow notes, at another quick 
 ones, now it runs high, now low, now it is soft, 
 now loud, now sombre, now brilliant, now quiet 
 in rhythm, now impetuous — if the composer is 
 bent on portraying precise feelings, why this dis- 
 order? If we imagine a definite series of ideas, 
 where is the logic, the unity? But when we look 
 at it as a work of musical art, obeying not poetic or 
 pictorial but musical laws, we may find an admirable 
 order, its afilucnt variety falling into coherent sys- 
 tem, quite exempt from the contradiction that en- 
 sues if we seek for images and moods drawn from 
 actual Ufe within its shifting periods. 
 
 XX 
 
 When the arguments are before us and we 
 are ready to admit that to ascribe expressiveness 
 to music is a juggling with words, suddenly a re- 
 sistless tide of glorious music sweeps over us and 
 we are carried away from the bases of philosophy 
 which we thought we had laid so firmly, and there 
 seems nothing within or around us but a world of 
 feeUng — feeling that is not illusion but real. We 
 have no account to give of such experiences except 
 in terms drawn from the language of feeling. The 
 music comes from something which has the reality 
 of duration and creative force, and it assails a life 
 which seems to us for the moment the most actual 
 that our nature contains. We refuse to believe 
 
 218
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 that this music is not expressive; on the contrary 
 it seems the most truly expressive and significant 
 thing in all the world. 
 
 In this conviction we are undoubtedly correct. 
 Music is not isolated from mental states which 
 exist before and after its sounds appear. But how 
 shall we prove this ? How can we so commend the 
 art of tone to others that those who insist on per- 
 manent values as a condition of acceptance of aes- 
 thetic impressions will consent to receive music 
 as an emissary from life? If one hesitates to be- 
 lieve that music can directly excite or express defi- 
 nite moods, may we not find a way of escape from 
 our difiiculty in the undeniable power of music to 
 ally itself with particular sentiments and ideas and 
 intensify the emotional effect which they normally 
 produce ? 
 
 Illustrations multiply as soon as we turn our 
 thought in this direction. Nowhere is this intensi- 
 fying quaUty in music more apparent than when 
 it is employed in religious worship. We enter a 
 church for a purpose so simple and distinct that 
 the expectation of what is to follow our entrance 
 prepares a state of mind which is pecuHarly sen- 
 sitive and open to impressions of a special order. 
 The place, the time, the occasion, the recollections 
 that throng upon us, all unite to prepare a desire 
 to be further worked upon by any agency that will 
 increase the sense of awe and reverence which is 
 not only becoming, but a duty, in anticipation of 
 the solemn act of faith. Such an agency, of pre- 
 219
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 eminent ejQ5cacy, is found in music. The surging 
 chords of the organ, the chanting of the choristers, 
 purge our spirits of any alloy of worldliness, and 
 *'the tides of music's golden sea setting toward 
 eternity" carry us into regions where the experi- 
 ence is so intense and all-absorbing that everything 
 that had seemed real in the common events and 
 activities of our lives shrinks and fades into the 
 inane. The intensifying action of music is so great 
 that neither word nor picture can vie with it in 
 vividness and reality. 
 
 The enormous effects of music upon the sensi- 
 bility are often contingent upon a preparedness of 
 mood. Washington Irving, wandering amid the 
 cloisters and tombs of Westminster Abbey, op- 
 pressed by "the stillness, the desertion and ob- 
 scurity," meditating upon the strange vicissitudes 
 of life and their inevitable issue, haunted by the 
 sombre suggestions enforced by the "strange mix- 
 ture of tombs and trophies," the "emblems of liv- 
 ing and aspiring ambition, close beside mementos 
 which show the dust and oblivion in which all 
 must sooner or later terminate," seats himself be- 
 side the tomb of Mary, Queen of Scots, and sur- 
 renders himself to the weird impressions that per- 
 vade the dim and silent atmosphere. Suddenly 
 the tones of the organ burst upon his ear, alternat- 
 ing with the voices of the choir, affording the one 
 clement needed to fill the current of emotion and 
 fix at once and for a lifetime the one commanding 
 impression which this fane, the most mournful and 
 
 220
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 glorious upon earth, imposes upon every visitor 
 with subduing power. 
 
 So with patriotic music, war songs, home songs in 
 foreign lands — the energy with which they seize 
 upon moods which recollections or longings have 
 evoked, and drive them often to the limit of joy 
 or grief, are beyond the scope of any other art or 
 language. 
 
 Such effects as these are to a large extent due 
 to association of ideas, direct or indirect, personal 
 or inherited, particular or general. Even when 
 dislodged from its connection with the actual situ- 
 ation with which and for which the musical strains 
 were produced, the melody, serving as a reminder, 
 will thrust the mind vigorously in a particular 
 direction, and tones, which apart and unrelated 
 would possess but little interest, will often draw 
 with them a crowd of sacred reminiscences which 
 nerve or vmnerve the resolution, until for a time 
 the man becomes another than his ordinary self 
 through the exaltation of one of the elements of 
 his composite nature. But we must not suppose 
 that this result comes from the mere presence in 
 the mind of some affecting idea, as though the 
 function of the music were no other than to heighten 
 the recollection. The secret hangs rather upon 
 the mysterious property in music itself, so that 
 we might almost say that the idea strengthens the 
 music rather than the music the idea. We some- 
 times say that the music of patriotic or rehgious 
 songs when played upon instruments produces its 
 
 221
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 emotional effect by reason of its association with 
 the words, but what could the words do without 
 the music? How feeble an exercise is responsive 
 reading in church service ! Imagine an army going 
 into battle reciting "Die Wacht am Rhein" or the 
 "Marseillaise" ! So in the mass they sing "Kyrie 
 eleison" and "Gloria in excelsis Deo," not because 
 there is a pleasure in hearing the melodies, but be- 
 cause tones can actually express the passion of en- 
 treaty and adoration, while the words are hardly 
 more than a cold reminder. 
 
 Music when connected with words and action 
 is, therefore, more than an intensifier of ideas and 
 moods. It may bring into relief conceptions which 
 are only suggested by the words or inferred from 
 them, or even awake in the hearer's imagination 
 notions which seem to come from a shadowy realm 
 beyond the compass of text and situation. Hein- 
 rich Schiitz, in the "Conversion of Saul," assigns 
 the words of the Redeemer, "Saul, Saul, why per- 
 secutest thou me?" to successions of united voices, 
 rising from lower to higher, conveying an intima- 
 tion of supcrcarthly majesty, together with an in- 
 creasing urgency of appeal. The death-song of 
 Isolde, in the ecstasy of its note of triumph, in the 
 final pure sonorous concords emerging from the 
 long anguish of passionately driven sequences, 
 concentrates the struggle and rapture of the three- 
 act sublimation of love — the acceptance of death 
 as the fuliihnent of an experience so much more 
 precious than life that with its close no continua- 
 
 222
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 tion of life could be accepted. Neither the words 
 of Wagner nor any possible words could be express- 
 ive in this manner or in this degree. 
 
 Such enlargements of thought are effected by 
 music where language and pictures fail. In the 
 church, in the opera, in oratorio, in song, in the 
 higher orders of programme music, tones cast 
 around the concrete image a luminous mist, in 
 which, as in crystal-gazing, we catch revelations 
 otherwise unconceived. Like the inflections, looks, 
 and gestures of an actor they reinforce the words 
 and images; but they do more than this, they 
 carry over to the emotion a further energy which 
 comes from the same region in which the poet's 
 thought is born, but whose ultimate depths it re- 
 mains for music alone to sound. 
 
 XXI 
 
 Go one step farther; separate music from a 
 formal attachment to words, scenery, action, or con- 
 crete images given by a title or programme — now, 
 because music has abandoned these guides to exact 
 interpretation, has that very thing which was so 
 eloquently expressive before become unexpressive 
 now? Is Liszt's "Les Preludes" expressive be- 
 cause it reflects a train of poetic ideas and holds 
 our imagination in its grasp, and is Beethoven's 
 Fifth Symphony unexpressive because it leaves our 
 imagination hovering in the void ? Are the means 
 of musical effect — changes of pitch, speed and 
 223
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 volume, rhythm, consonance and dissonance, or- 
 chestral color and all the rest, meaningless when 
 they stand apart from all positive, verifiable, real- 
 istic conceptions ? When our spirits are so moved 
 by a stream of noble harmonies that all that is 
 beautiful and holy in life seems for the moment 
 concentrated for our joyful contemplation, are 
 these celestial visitants only a mockery, deceiving 
 us, like the desert mirage, with a semblance of 
 truth which, when it fades, leaves nothing behind 
 but the memory of a glittering illusion ? This can 
 hardly be. Music is definite enough when it takes 
 possession of language and event and adds some- 
 thing to them which they required to attain full 
 supremacy over us. We see clearly enough what 
 this added element is and the particular service 
 that music performs. It could not be so if there 
 were no ground common to the two factors, for 
 otherwise the titles of the "Pathetic Symphony" 
 and the "Pastoral Symphony" might be exchanged 
 without injustice to either. And do we not often 
 feel that music gains an even firmer basis of expres- 
 sion when it renounces the aid of a confederate art, 
 and takes its stand in a domain of feeling where it 
 can afford to be exclusive because sufficient unto 
 itself and supreme? At this point attempts at 
 analysis and demonstration break down; no less 
 do we believe that these sounding forms which 
 excite and charm us have a message that tells of 
 a reahty otherwise unknown, perhaps the most 
 abiding of realities. The chief support for this con- 
 224
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 viction lies in the consciousness that when we hear 
 great music it is not one part of our nature that is 
 taken captive — as when we come in contact with 
 a picture, a tale, a play, which shuts off a part of 
 life and holds us to that — but the music is not 
 circumscribed, it is the circuit of our spiritual na- 
 ture that is traversed, we are no longer in the 
 presence of the phenomenal but the essential; it 
 is the whole in us that is embraced, it is the whole 
 in us that rejoices. 
 
 It needs no psychologist to tell us that these 
 emotions do not pass as wind over water; they 
 do not leave us as we were before. We may 
 suppose that we have forgotten the music of 
 last year; to-day, in spite of the songs of yester- 
 eve, we go about our humdrum task as though 
 they had not been; nevertheless there is a vast 
 unsounded tract below our consciousness where 
 every past impression is stored, which receives an 
 imprint from every thought, mood, and act of ours, 
 where our personaUty has its centre. It is said 
 that in this subhminal haunt all the melodies and 
 harmonies of the composer's creation lie inchoate, 
 in germ or fragmentary suspense, and that music 
 is the one immediate expression of this fathomless, 
 undemonstrable, essential reahty. We cannot tell. 
 We do believe, from evidence that seems potent 
 because it is all within, that those sweet airs and 
 subUme concords which shake and bewilder our 
 hearts are not less true, not less a revelation, be- 
 cause it is left to the emotion to interpret them in 
 225
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 terms of itself, while the logical faculty, which ex- 
 plains in terms of verifiable relations, is forever 
 baffled. 
 
 XXII 
 
 But let us return from this alluring chase after 
 explanations which we may cherish but can never 
 prove; accepting the delights of music as the as- 
 surance of something more than delight, can the 
 musical sense (using the term in its deepest con- 
 notation as dealing with emotional values apart 
 from intellectual values derived from the study of 
 scientific principles and historic relationships) — 
 can this faculty which seems at first thought to lie 
 below the reach of methodical discipline, be made 
 the object of systematic development? Bringing 
 forward again our old comparison with the religious 
 sense, the answer may be — yes, by means of the 
 same method of trust and experiment. In the 
 place which musical art has held in the great world's 
 life, and in the experience of those who have found 
 in it a means of refinement and emotional quick- 
 ening, one may find ground of belief; and then 
 in submitting oneself to the finest influences that 
 music affords, taking its masters as friends and 
 guides, a truth of music may be found which will 
 be its own proof, and will take its helpful place in 
 the formation of character. 
 
 In the process of increasing our susceptibility to 
 the higher influence of music, the influence we 
 226
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 have in mind should undoubtedly be that of music 
 in itself alone and not as an adjunct or accessory 
 to something else. Music is certainly a powerful 
 aid to poetry, action, religious inspiration, etc., 
 but musical culture has something besides poetry, 
 drama, reUgion, and other interests for its end. 
 Nevertheless the object can be attained by indirect 
 as well as by direct means. Music owes so much 
 of its power over the mind to its affiliations that an 
 increased appreciation of what is beautiful and 
 vital in these will count favorably in musical cul- 
 ture. Try to cultivate musical feeHng in a young 
 person and nothing else — shut out all the sweet 
 ministries of poetry, art, nature, friendship, stimu- 
 late the musical imagination and no other — would 
 the musical consciousness, just that alone, gain or 
 lose thereby? The magnetic attraction that ex- 
 ists between music and so many other means of 
 the expression of the spirit, proves their affinity, 
 and each factor in the alHance may benefit by the 
 sympathetic recognition of the other. Stimulate 
 the love of anything beautiful and the love of 
 music grows when it is felt that musical beauty is 
 not isolated, but springs from a common soil and 
 helps to enrich that soil. Every experience that 
 helps to soften the heart and quicken the conscious- 
 ness of the relation between the individual soul and 
 the visible and invisible world around it, will en- 
 hance the emotional reaction to musical beauty, 
 provided that music is not conceived as wholly ab- 
 stract, shutting off one part of the mind from every 
 227
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 other, but is felt as belonging in the very essence 
 of life and necessary to life's full expression. 
 
 As music has proceeded in its historic career 
 these associations have accumulated in constantly 
 increasing multitude and force, so that in the nine- 
 teenth and twentieth centuries it would almost ap- 
 pear as though the very rationale of the higher 
 musical criticism must proceed along the attach- 
 ments which music throws out. If in the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries music appeared 
 divorced from the essential Hfe of the time, it is 
 so no longer. Music has become a vivid reflection 
 of nationality, personal temperament, spiritual and 
 even material tendencies, a counterpart and ally 
 of all the reflective and passionate moods which 
 the intensely self-conscious life of the present age 
 induces. It has become the guiding task of mu- 
 sical study on the appreciative side to search beyond 
 forms and sensuous impressions, and fmd the ex- 
 planation of music's special character in something 
 that existed before the music and is striving to 
 communicate itself through this almost infinitely 
 flexible and suggestive vehicle. 
 
 It need not be said that all musical works are 
 not so to be interpreted. To read a representative 
 character into all the products of musical inven- 
 tion would be to fail to discriminate among music's 
 various functions. It is the broad and deep view 
 of musical art in its relation to the emotional hfe 
 with which we are concerned, for the acceptance of 
 this belief and the pursuit of all the t/ails through 
 228
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 which it leads produces a certain state of mind, 
 compounded of reverence and curiosity, which 
 will help to prepare a cordial acceptance to every 
 work of marked originality and beauty. This is 
 perhaps the most that we can do to increase the 
 activity of the musical emotion and direct it to 
 profitable ends, and it is enough. Accept music as 
 expressive not in a detached and petty way, but 
 in the deepest and fullest sense of the term. Seek 
 for its background, its motive, the soul within it. 
 In proportion as we feel love, pity, or admiration 
 for a certain composer, and as we perceive that his 
 music is a sincere appeal for the sympathy of the 
 world, the more will our souls be fed and strength- 
 ened by his work. It will mean more life to us 
 because it contains life. So with music that con- 
 veys ideas of nationaUty, of nature, of poetry, ro- 
 mance, the joys or sorrows of genuine humanity. 
 Even in the most absorbed musical experience the 
 reason is not utterly annihilated; from the known 
 our consciousness leaps away to the unknown, and 
 this unknown assumes a positive shape and color. 
 All art employs what is seen or heard to bring to us 
 a sense of what is unseen and unheard. That is 
 the entire function of art — of music no less than 
 her sisters. Step by step we may broaden Mrs. 
 Rogers's discovery into an allegory. As the voice 
 of an immature singer may take on an access of 
 purity and volume when the mind is stimulated by 
 a supremely beautiful model, so the emotional na- 
 ture of every Javer of music is quickened by every 
 229
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 contact with music that is the sincere utterance of 
 the mind of a master. 
 
 All that is needed is faith and reliance upon the 
 experience of others as well as upon one's own. 
 This faith it is the business of the instructor in the 
 appreciation of music to impart by every means, 
 direct and indirect, that his wisdom and knowledge 
 may suggest. No exhortation to his pupils to feel 
 this or that in music will avail. His chief reliance 
 must be in exciting the imagination in order that 
 it may run out and gather in the manifold causes, 
 associations, stimuli, moulding forces, which, in 
 periods, nations, institutions, and the life and habit 
 of any given composer, work to direct music along 
 definite lines of expression. These efficient influ- 
 ences may be found in poetry, religious systems, 
 social movements, individual joys and sorrows, 
 tastes and passions. Never can one proceed far 
 along the track of musical interpretation without 
 finding somewhere an attachment to some phase 
 of life which imparts to the music a certain specific 
 style, color, or form. The biographies of composers 
 assure us that their life of feeling is not confined 
 to their special art, and furthermore that their 
 musical creation blends with a flood of feeling which 
 runs back and forth between the outer world of 
 action and their inner world of contemplation and 
 desire. Let the music lover, therefore, live in 
 imagination the life which the masters lived, try 
 to understand their motives and the conditions 
 that directed their work, become as their contem- 
 
 230
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 poraries, cultivate the appreciation of everything 
 in art, nature, and human feeling which may prop- 
 erly find voice in musical strains, and he will dis- 
 cover that to understand is to feel, and to feel 
 rightly is to love. Chief of all evidence to music's 
 reality and spiritual expressiveness will be the silent, 
 irresistible evidence that rises convincingly in the 
 heart as one lives day by day in the presence of 
 the masterpieces of creative genius. Every master 
 in art says to us implicitly as Beethoven said of 
 his ''Missa Solemnis": "It came from the heart, to 
 the heart may it go." The mind is moulded into 
 the likeness of the things it knows intimately and 
 comes to love. In art, as in all the greatest things 
 in life, love is the condition of genuine growth. 
 Love is the fulfilment of the intellectual as well as 
 of the moral law. 
 
 This, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter. 
 We may believe or we may not believe that music 
 has the power of expressing precise, definable emo- 
 tions, and that therein is its ultimate purpose. It 
 is of little consequence. Its history, our knowledge 
 of the motives and experience of the great com- 
 posers, its influence upon the heart as betrayed in 
 the records of all mankind, prove that it is no mere 
 diversion amid the serious concerns of Hfe, but is 
 itself a serious concern. The readiness with which 
 it springs to the reinforcement of those other most 
 comprehensive and searching expressions of the 
 life of feeling, namely poetry and religion, indicates 
 a close kinship with them in source and function. 
 231
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 "It is the function of poetry and religion," says 
 James Martineau, "to rebaptize us in floods of 
 wonder." The fact that these two consummate 
 expressions of the life of feehng cannot long re- 
 main apart from music throws upon music the 
 light that we seek for its interpretation. And when 
 it puts forth its powers in isolation, in proud reli- 
 ance upon itself, it still moves us as nothing could 
 move us which was not the revelation of that 
 underlying, perpetual element in human life, from 
 which all particular emotions and activities spring, 
 and into which they eventually subside. 
 
 Music is interpreted, in the last resort, by the 
 same element from which it proceeds. The appre- 
 ciation of it in the deepest sense is the result of the 
 preparation of all the passageways by which music 
 . gains access to the understanding and the emotional 
 nature — most of all the enrichment of the latter 
 by the aid of every influence that may make the 
 mind more easily worked upon by that spirit of 
 Beauty whose "priestlike task of pure ablution" 
 is always the same, whether it ministers in the ves- 
 ture of visible form, or color, or sound. 
 
 Thus the lecturer on the history and criticism 
 of music, by long groping amid the mazes of his 
 own experience and sweeping over the vast and 
 fertile fields where music has bloomed in the ages 
 of the past, justified his work and took renewed 
 courage because there had come to him, as never 
 before, a vision in which music and life walked to- 
 232
 
 TEACHER AND CRITIC 
 
 gether hand in hand. He had heard long ago that 
 music is unreal, apart from life, shut within a 
 lonely sphere where spirit is lost to view, and re- 
 lationship with the intellect and truth a figment 
 of the fancy. But the question came with the 
 sternness of rebuke, What is Reality, and what is 
 Life? Is it not the grand function of music to 
 correct and deepen our definition of these entities ? 
 Is it possible to explain the power of sound which 
 has been cherished by mankind in direct propor- 
 tion to the enlargement of knowledge of the higher 
 laws of nature and the spiritual life — is it possible 
 to explain this on any other belief than that music 
 is the voice of reaHty, and that in its appeal to the 
 sense, the understanding, and the feeling it has a 
 necessary part to play in education? That it is 
 a source not only of delight but of benefit to all, 
 whether young or old, who would five in the larger 
 life of the reason? 
 
 "All music," writes the "good gray poet" of 
 democracy, 
 
 " is what awakes from you when you are reminded by 
 the instruments. 
 
 " It is not the violins and cornets, it is not the oboe 
 nor the beating drums, nor the score of the baritone 
 singer singing his sweet romanza, nor that of the men's 
 chorus, nor that of the women's chorus. 
 
 " It is nearer and farther than they." 
 
 When we are beguiled out of ourselves by the 
 spells which music weaves around us, and all our 
 
 233
 
 MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 previous life seems swept away and the present is 
 a glorious dream, we are not outside the soul's 
 active domain. The thread that binds this instant 
 life to the constant is not broken. The mind is 
 not only invigorated, but enlightened — strength- 
 ened too, for we have been touched by an effluence 
 that carries with it a healing power. And so, with 
 the poet, as he awoke from his vision of the music 
 of the world, we may say in issuing from our trance: 
 
 " Come, for I have found the clew I sought so long; 
 Let us go forth refreshed amid the day, 
 Cheerfully tallying life, walking the world, the real, 
 Nourished henceforth by our celestial dream." 
 
 234
 
 JAN 28 1946 
 
 ^^ , 
 
 JAN 5 1952 
 JAN 18 1357 
 
 I^^ZS 1953 
 
 MLM^ mi 
 
 rorm L 9-15m-7,'82 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 NOV 1^ ^-^ vni 
 
 ''f e 2 5 1981} 
 
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 Music and 
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