When the sculptor
foregoes colour, when the painter foregoes relief, when the poet
foregoes the music which soars beyond words and the musician that
precise meaning which lies in words alone, he follows a kind of
necessity in things, and the compromise seems to be ready-made for him.
But there will always be those who are discontented with no matter what
fixed limits, who dream, like Wagner, of a possible, or, like Mallarme,
of an impossible, fusion of the arts. These would invent for themselves
a compromise which has not yet come into the world, a gain without loss,
a re-adjustment in which the scales shall bear so much additional weight
without trembling. But nature is not always obedient to this too
autocratic command. Take the art of the voice. In its essence, the art
of the voice is the same in the nightingale and in Melba. The same note
is produced in the same way; the expression given to that note, the
syllable which that note renders, are quite different things. Song does
not in itself require words in order to realise even the utmost of its
capacities. The voice is an instrument like the violin, and no more in
need of words for its expression than the violin.
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