an composer but the utmost musical
beauty that he, as an individual man, with his own qualities and
defects, is capable of understanding and striving towards?--forsaking
all else except those types of musical beauty that come home to him,"
[footnote: Contemporary Composers, D. G. Mason, Macmillan Co., N. Y.]
and that his spiritual conscience intuitively approves.

"It matters not one jot, provided this course of personal loyalty to a
cause be steadfastly pursued, what the special characteristics of the
style of the music may be to which one gives one's devotion."
[footnote: Contemporary Composers, D. G. Mason, Macmillan Co., N. Y.]
This, if over-translated, may be made to mean, what we have been trying
to say--that if your interest, enthusiasm, and devotion on the side of
substance and truth, are of the stuff to make you so sincere that you
sweat--to hell with manner and repose! Mr. Mason is responsible for too
many young minds, in their planting season to talk like this, to be as
rough, or to go as far, but he would probably admit that, broadly
speaking--some such way, i.e., constantly recognizing this ideal
duality in art, though not the most profitable road for art to travel,
is almost its only way out to eventual freedom and salvation. Sidney
Lanier, in a letter to Bayard Taylor writes: "I have so many fair
dreams and hopes about music in these days (1875). It is gospel whereof
the people are in great need. As Christ gathered up the Ten
Commandments and redistilled them into the clear liquid of the wondrous
eleventh--love God utterly and thy neighbor as thyself--so I think the
time will come when music rightly developed to its now little forseen
grandeur will be found to be a late revelation of all gospels in one."
Could the art of music, or the art of anything have a more profound
reason for being than this? A conception unlimited by the narrow names
of Christian, Pagan, Jew, or Angel! A vision higher and deeper than art
itself!

7

The humblest composer will not find true humility in aiming low--he
must never be timid or afraid of trying to express that which he feels
is far above his power to express, any more than he should be afraid of
breaking away, when necessary, from easy first sounds, or afraid of
admitting that those half truths that come to him at rare intervals,
are half true, for instance, that all art galleries contain
masterpieces, which are nothing more than a history of art's beautiful
mist