To the
musicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, music was an art
which had to be carefully guarded from the too disturbing presence of
emotion; emotion is there always, whenever the music is fine music; but
the music is something much more than a means for the expression of
emotion. It is a pattern, its beauty lies in its obedience to a law, it
is music made for music's sake, with what might be called a more
exclusive devotion to art than that of our modern musician. This music
aims at the creation of beauty in sound; it conceives of beautiful sound
as a thing which cannot exist outside order and measure; it has not yet
come to look upon transgression as an essential part of liberty. It does
not even desire liberty, but is content with loving obedience. It can
express emotion, but it will never express an emotion carried to that
excess at which the modern idea of emotion begins. Thus, for all its
suggestions of pain, grief, melancholy, it will remain, for us at least,
happy music, voices of a house of peace. Is there, in the future of
music, after it has expressed for us all our emotions, and we are tired
of our emotions, and weary enough to be content with a little rest, any
likelihood of a return to this happy music, into which beauty shall come
without the selfishness of desire?
THE DRAMATISATION OF SONG
All art is a compromise, in which the choice of what is to be foregone
must be left somewhat to the discretion of nature.
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