e_ as
the most significant dramatic work of recent years.

It is evident, we trust, from the foregoing somewhat condensed
estimates that the modern French school is very much alive, that it
has to its credit numerous distinct achievements and that it contains
the promise of still further growth. The French nature, which is
highly emotional and yet, at its best, always controlled[304] by a
regard for fitness and clarity of thought, is particularly suited to
express itself worthily in music, for in no other form of artistic
endeavor is this balance more requisite. Music without emotion is, to
be sure, like "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal" and dies in short
order. On the other hand, music which is a mere display of crude
emotion soon palls. The works of modern French composers deserve
enthusiastic study for their charm, their finish and their refined
emotional power.

[Footnote 304: Witness the wonderful manifestation of these qualities
by the French in the recent war.]

CHAPTER XIX

NATIONAL SCHOOLS--RUSSIAN, BOHEMIAN AND SCANDINAVIAN

Before beginning an account of Tchaikowsky, the most noted though not
necessarily the greatest of the Russian composers, a few words may be
said concerning nationalism in music, the chief representatives of
which are the Russians, the Bohemians, the Scandinavians and the
Hungarians. Of these, however, the present-day Russian School is the
most active and contributes constantly new factors to musical
evolution. This grafting of forms of expression derived from the
outlying nations on to the parent-stock of music--which for some
three hundred years had been in the exclusive control of Italy,
Germany and France--has been a stimulating factor in the development
of the last half-century. For the idiom of music was becoming somewhat
stereotyped, and it has been noticeably revitalized by the
incorporation of certain "exotic" traits, of which there run through
all national music these three: (1) the use, in their folk-songs, of
other forms of scale and mode than are habitual with ourselves; (2)
the preference given to the minor mode and the free commingling of
major and minor; (3) the great rhythmic variety and especially the use
of groups foreign to our musical sense, such as measures of 5 and 7
beats, and the intentional placing of the accent on parts of the
measure which with us are ordinarily unaccented. Every country has its
folk-songs--the product of national rather than