Essays Before a Sonata

partly biological, partly cosmic, ever going on in ourselves, in nature, in all life. This may account for the difficulty of identifying desired qualities with the perceptions of them

a picture, or a song, may gain or lose in value beyond what the painter or composer knew, by the progress and higher development in all art. Keats may be only partially true when he says that "A work of beauty is a joy forever"-a thing that is beautiful to ME, is a joy to ME, as long as it remains beautiful to ME-and if it rema

normal, or at least, not uncommon. A man remembers, when he was a boy of about fifteen years, hearing his music-teacher (and father) who had just returned from a performance of Siegfried say with a look of anxious surprise that "somehow or other he felt ashamed of enjoying the music as he did," for beneath it all he was conscious of an undercurrent of "make-believe"-the bravery was make-believe, the love was make-believe, the passion, the virtue, all make-believe, as was the dragon-P. T. Barnum would have been brave enough to have gone out and captured a live one! But, that same boy at twenty-five was listening to Wagner with enthusiasm, his reality was real enough to inspire a devotion. The "Preis-Lied," for instance, stirred him deeply. But when he became middle-aged-and long before the Hohenzollern hog-marched into Belgium-this music had become cloying, the melodies thread

hus explaining artistic progress, is perhaps sustained. Thus would we show that the perpetual flow of the life stream is affected by and affects each individual riverbed of the universal watersheds. Thus would we prove that the Wagner period was normal, because we intuitively recognized whatever identity we were looking for at a certain period in our life, and the fact that it was so made the

nd quality and spirit of these two men, or other men of like character, if there be such, has not been affected by the flowing stream that has changed us? But if by the measure of this public opinion,

o Bach and Beethoven. If, in this common opinion, there is a particle of change toward the latter's art, our theory stands-mind you, this admits a change in the manner, form, external expression, etc., but not in sub

he chose consciously or unconsciously, it matters not,-the lower set of values in this dualism. These are severe accusations to bring-especially when a man is a little down as Wagner is today. But these convictions were present some time before he was banished from the Metropolitan. Wagner seems to take Hugo's place in Faguet's criticism of de Vigny that, "The staging to him (Hugo) was the important thing-not the conception-that in de Vigny,