one side a determined fellow sits with his
elbows on his knees grasping his head with both hands, resolved to
endure unto the end. Not even in the faces of the performers is there
the slightest manifestation of the soothing, the elevating, or even the
pleasurably exciting influence which belongs peculiarly to music. With
dogged determination they are working out a knotty intellectual problem.
They do not exhibit even the tickled vanity of musical virtuosity; they
are there--to use a cant phrase of musical criticism--to "interpret"
what the composer has with infinite toil and trouble put upon paper; and
very tough work they find it; somewhat like reading mathematics written
in the Basque language. And their souls are unmoved. The musical sounds
go through their ears straight to their brains, leaving their hearts
untouched. They are engaged in an intellectual process.

Of these designs, the last two, although they are laughable
caricatures, express with very little exaggeration (allowing for the
notes made visible in the second) the character, the quality, and the
effect of certain schools of musical composition. The first is not a
caricature, as any one will see; but although it is quite the contrary,
it is not on the other hand idealized. It merely represents with
skilful touch and felicitous arrangement what might have actually
occurred and what doubtless did many times occur in drawing-rooms at
the end of the last century and the first years of this; indeed, what
might happen and even does happen now. There has been a change in
costume and in manners; but there is none in the effect upon musical
souls of a melody by Mozart.

And these designs illustrate three periods in modern music: two through
which it has passed and one upon which it seems now to be entering. By
modern music I mean music since the days of Palestrina. What was
written before that time, nearly or remotely, although it may have
historical importance and interest, is of little or no value as music.
Indeed, it hardly is music as we know and feel it. Not that I would
imply that Palestrina invented modern music, or even that he alone of
contemporary composers was a gifted and accomplished master of his art.
Roland de Lattre, called Orlandus Lassus, chief of the Gallo-Belgic
school, might dispute the palm with him.[4] But this conceded, it
remains that in Orlandus Lassus we have the best product of the ancient
school, adhering to the ancient style and bri