at we are used to, do not bother us, and for that reason, we are
inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently,--possibly almost
invariably,--analytical and impersonal tests will show, we believe,
that when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its
first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the
mind to sleep. A narcotic is not always unnecessary, but it is seldom a
basis of progress,--that is, wholesome evolution in any creative
experience. This kind of progress has a great deal to do with
beauty--at least in its deeper emotional interests, if not in its moral
values. (The above is only a personal impression, but it is based on
carefully remembered instances, during a period of about fifteen or
twenty years.) Possibly the fondness for individual utterance may throw
out a skin-deep arrangement, which is readily accepted as
beautiful--formulae that weaken rather than toughen up the
musical-muscles. If the composer's sincere conception of his art and of
its functions and ideals, coincide to such an extent with these
groove-colored permutations of tried out progressions in expediency,
that he can arrange them over and over again to his transcendent
delight--has he or has he not been drugged with an overdose of
habit-forming sounds? And as a result do not the muscles of his
clientele become flabbier and flabbier until they give way altogether
and find refuge only in a seasoned opera box--where they can see
without thinking? And unity is too generally conceived of, or too
easily accepted as analogous to form, and form (as analogous) to
custom, and custom to habit, and habit may be one of the parents of
custom and form, and there are all kinds of parents. Perhaps all unity
in art, at its inception, is half-natural and half-artificial but time
insists, or at least makes us, or inclines to make us feel that it is
all natural. It is easy for us to accept it as such. The "unity of
dress" for a man at a ball requires a collar, yet he could dance better
without it. Coherence, to a certain extent, must bear some relation to
the listener's subconscious perspective. For example, a critic has to
listen to a thousand concerts a year, in which there is much
repetition, not only of the same pieces, but the same formal relations
of tones, cadences, progressions, etc. There is present a certain
routine series of image-necessity-stimulants, which he doesn't seem to
need until they disappear. Instead of listeni