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"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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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-
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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-
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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-
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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.
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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-
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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-
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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-
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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-
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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,
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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-
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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
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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-
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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