no one will be found who will deny
that it is supermusic, but Mahler's _Symphony of the Thousand_ is
likewise grand and noble, and futile and bombastic to boot. _Or sai
chi l'onore_ is a grand air, but _Robert je t'aime_ is equally grand
in intention, at least. _Der Tod und das Madchen_ is sad; so is _Les
Larmes_ in _Werther_.... But a very great deal of supermusic is
neither grand nor sad. Haydn's symphonies are usually as light-hearted
and as light-waisted as possible. Mozart's _Figaro_ scarcely seems to
have a care. Listen to Beethoven's _Fourth_ and _Eighth Symphonies_,
_Il Barbiere_ again, _Die Meistersinger_.... But do not be misled:
Massenet's _Don Quichotte_ is light music; so is Mascagni's
_Lodoletta_....

Is music to be prized and taken to our hearts because it is
contrapuntal and complex? We frequently hear it urged that Bach (who
was more or less forgotten for a hundred years, by the way) was the
greatest of composers and his music is especially intricate. He is the
one composer, indeed, who can _never_ be played with one finger! But
poor unimportant forgotten Max Reger also wrote in the most
complicated forms; the great Gluck in the simplest. Gluck, indeed, has
even been considered weak in counterpoint and fugue. Meyerbeer, it is
said, was also weak in counterpoint and fugue. Is he therefor to be
regarded as the peer of Gluck? Is Mozart's _G minor Symphony_ more
important (because it is more complicated) than the same composer's,
_Batti, Batti_?

We learn from some sources that music stands or falls by its melody
but what is good melody? According to his contemporaries Wagner's
music dramas were lacking in melody. _Sweet Marie_ is certainly a
melody; why is it not as good a melody as _The Old Folks at Home_? Why
is Musetta's waltz more popular than Gretel's? It is no better as
melody. As a matter of fact there is, has been, and for ever will be
war over this question of melody, because the point of view on the
subject is continually changing. As Cyril Scott puts it in his book,
"The Philosophy of Modernism": "at one time it (melody) extended over
a few bars and then came to a close, being, as it were, a kind of
sentence, which, after running for the moment, arrived at a full stop,
or semicolon. Take this and compare it with the modern tendency: for
that modern tendency is to argue that a melody might go on
indefinitely almost; there is no reason why it should come to a full
stop, for it is not a sentence