, but more a line, which, like the
rambling incurvations of a frieze, requires no rule to stop it, but
alone the will and taste of its engenderer."

Or is harmonization the important factor? Folk-songs are not
harmonized at all, and yet certain musicians, Cecil Sharp for example,
devote their lives to collecting them, while others, like Percy
Grainger, base their compositions on them. On the other hand such
music as Debussy's _Iberia_ depends for its very existence on its
beautiful harmonies. The harmonies of Gluck are extremely simple,
those of Richard Strauss extremely complex.

H. T. Finck says somewhere that one of the greatest charms of music is
modulation but the old church composers who wrote in the "modes" never
modulated at all. Erik Satie seldom avails himself of this modern
device. It is a question whether Leo Ornstein modulates. If we may
take him at his word Arnold Schoenberg has a system of modulation. At
least it is his very own.

Are long compositions better than short ones? This may seem a silly
question but I have read criticisms based on a theory that they were.
Listen, for example, to de Quincy: "A song, an air, a tune,--that is,
a short succession of notes revolving rapidly upon itself,--how could
that by possibility offer a field of compass sufficient for the
development of great musical effects? The preparation pregnant with
the future, the remote correspondence, the questions, as it were,
which to a deep musical sense are asked in one passage, and answered
in another; the iteration and ingemination of a given effect, moving
through subtile variations that sometimes disguise the theme,
sometimes fitfully reveal it, sometimes throw it out tumultuously to
the daylight,--these and ten thousand forms of self-conflicting
musical passion--what room could they find, what opening, for
utterance, in so limited a field as an air or song?" After this
broadside permit me to quote a verse of Gerard de Nerval:

_"Il est un air pour qui je donnerais
Tout Rossini, tout Mozart, et tout Weber,
Un air tres-vieux, languissant et funebre,
Qui pour moi seul a des charmes secrets."_

And now let us dispassionately, if possible, regard the evidence.
Richard Strauss's _Alpine Symphony_, admittedly one of his weakest
works and considered very tiresome even by ardent Straussians, plays
for nearly an hour while any one can sing _Der Erlkonig_ in three
minutes. Are short compositions better than l