The Masters and their Music

nt force to inspire the creation of the works we have. The most important of these motives is the Musical Sense itself, since it is to t

the scene. Accordingly, the composer carefully selects those combinations and sequences of tones which in his opinion best correspond with the dramatic moment they are intended to accompany. And since many of these moments are of extre

nstrumental music-viz., the Expression of the Individual Mood of the Composer; and the further

upon all grades of musical consciousness according to the ability of the individual musician. For example, the desire to realize in tones agreeable symmetries of rhythm and strong antitheses of melodic seque

epetition goes on indefinitely without any answer or conclusion. In other cases a second phrase follows along the track of a closely related chord, but I have never noticed a case in which a third phrase appeared, corresponding to the first, after a digression of the second phrase into another chord. Generally the rhythm runs out with a series of what might be ca

hest stage, it is a reverie of the beautiful or the pathetic, pure and simple. The existence of the harmonic sense in rude natures, where music has not been heard, seems very difficult to account for, since, while it is true that any resonant tone contains the partial tones constituting the common chord, a resonant

f rhythmic proportion and harmonic relation. The vast difference in the grade of the results attained is due to the capacity of the composers. The simple man giving himself up to reverie and being gifted with a certain amount of musical f

ught with much diligence and imperfect success), he goes on for a series of periods, and perhaps develops a quite long discourse, all having relation to the simple conception with which he started and to a fundamental mood. It is evident that, owing to the time consumed in writing out a musical discourse, the high composer will not have been able to complete his composition, or at

unexpected motives, rhythms, or chords, and the result, consequently, will be of a very different character from that attained by the composer of sim

stantly toward the complex, and toward the bringing together of relations so subtle as to have been unintelligible to earlier musicians, and unintelligible now, at first hearing, to common ears, lacking in these finer perceptions of advanced musical endowment. It is to be noticed, however, that these extraordinary combinations and relati

e sounding; in other words, the beautiful as to proportion, charm of melody, and the satisfactory in harmony. In symphony the tragic and the extremely dramatic have had

in setting to music such lyric texts as interested them. In this way Schubert, for example, wrote something like 700 songs, Schumann a considerable number, and there have been various other composers who have written extensively in this line. The experience of the song-writer has, on the whole, been of great use to instrumental music, since it has tended not alone to diversify the music by encouraging a freer and more graphic employment of tonal

he same time, the currency which the music of these masters has gained in the world, and still maintains, goes to show that the instinct which governed them in putting together tonal forms for expressing delight, and for operating upon the feelings of the hearer, is not different in essence from that of the common listener; since experience shows that all this music affords gratification to the great majority of individuals who can be brought to listen to it a few times. Of course, it is not to be expected that a casual hearer, inattentive, it may be, and unaccustomed to remembering what he has heard, will be impressed by a long instrumental composition to the same degree as a practised hearer, and especially a hearer who has already followed the composition thr

finer sensibilities connected with music. A certain chord, or succession of chords, or especially a certain melo-harmonic phrase, touches the sensitive ear with a peculiar thrill, and this happens over and over again, and continually in the more fortunate works of all the great masters, when followed by sympathetic hearers. The point in this connection which we have to notice is that the capacity of feeling to be touched and awakened by tonal incitations is practically universal as regards civilized man. The extent of the influence which music will exert varies enormously in individual cases, but from the fact that every normal hearer will be touched more and more by music with a little practice in hearing it; that the number of tho

dividual charms of the works of the masters represented, and also, incidentally, to afford the listener a certain education in the art of hearing, and, by bringing together strongly contrasted musical moments, to afford t

t is the instinctive following out of musical ideas which has operated through the greater part of

melodic phrase, this phrase being partly answered, followed by a third phrase like the first, and then a final answer, is the general type of the lyric moment. The thematic is generally based upon a short phrase or melodic figure, and this figure is repeated over and over in a variety of ways and

f with the effort to recognize all the various devices and artifices of the composer, and to follow the form as such, or who occupies himself mainly with the idea of the story which the composer is trying to tell, puts himself in a wrong attitude for deriving the most complete gratification from the work. In a cultivated realization of the beauty of a great musical masterwork, these perceptions of technical skill on the part of the composer no doubt enter to some degree, but they are always more or less in the background, and form a part of the actual pleasure of hearing the symphony or the sonata scarcely more than the capital initials and punctuation marks enter into the enjoyment of a poem. All