ould discover in his Pierrot was Richard Wagner
(toujours Wagner, whether Franck or Humperdinck or Strauss or
Debussy), and of him, the first page of the Introduction to the last
act of Tristan und Isolde, more the mood than the actual themes.
Schoenberg is always atmospheric. So is a tornado. He is the poet
whose flowers are evil; he is the spirit that denies; never a
realist, like Strauss, ingeniously imitating natural sounds, he may be
truthfully described as a musical symbolist.

II

MUSIC OF TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Despite the fact that he played the flute and ranked Rossini above
Wagner, Arthur Schopenhauer said some notable things about music. "Art
is ever on the quest," is a wise observation of his, "a quest, and a
divine adventure"; though this restless search for the new often ends
in plain reaction, progress may be crab-wise and still be progress. I
fear that "progress" as usually understood is a glittering "general
idea" that blinds us to the truth. Reform in art is not like reform in
politics; you can't reform the St. Matthew Passion or the Fifth
Symphony. Is Parsifal a reformation of Gluck? This talk of reform is
only confusing the historic with the aesthetic. Art is a tricksy
quantity and like quicksilver is ever mobile. As in all genuine
revolutions the personal equation counts the heaviest, so in dealing
with the conditions of music at the present time one must study the
temperament of our music-makers and let prophecy sulk in its tent as
it may.

If Ruskin had written music-criticism, he might have amplified the
meaning of his once-famous phrase, the "pathetic fallacy," for I
consider it a pathetic fallacy--though not in the Ruskinian sense--in
criticism to be over-shadowed by the fear that, because some of our
critical predecessors misjudged Wagner or Manet or Ibsen, we should be
too merciful in criticising our contemporaries. Here is the "pathos of
distance" run to sentimental seed. The music of to-day may be the
music of to-morrow, but if it is not, what then? It may satisfy the
emotional needs of the moment, yet to-morrow be a stale formula. But
what does that prove? Though Bach and Beethoven built their work on
the bases of eternity (employing this tremendous term in a limited
sense), one may nevertheless enjoy the men whose music is of slighter
texture and "modern." Nor is this a plea for mediocrity. Mediocrity we
shall always have with u