nius) as the immediate expression of his own feelings
and moods, or as the interplay of his environment and the inner
faculties of musical phantasy.

In this sense there is a difference between the music of Bach and
Mozart, on the one hand, and that of Beethoven and Schubert, on the
other. Beethoven was essentially a romantic composer, especially
after he had passed middle life, and the period of the "Moonlight"
sonata. From that time on, his works are more and more free in form,
and their moods are more strongly marked and individual. This is true
of Beethoven, in spite of his having been born, as we might say, under
the star of the classic. He writes freely and fantastically, in spite
of his early training. The mood in the man dominated everything, and
it is always this which finds its expression in the music.

The romantic, therefore, represents an enlargement of the domain of
music, by the acquisition of provinces outside its boundaries, and
belonging originally to the domains of poetry and painting. And so by
romantic is meant the general idea of representing in music something
outside, of telling a story or painting a picture by means of music.
The principle was already old, being involved in the very conception
of opera, which in the nature of the case is an attempt to make music
do duty as describer of the inner feelings and experiences of the
_dramatis personae_. Nevertheless, while leading continually to
innovations in musical discourse for almost two centuries, it was
prevented from having more than momentary entrances into instrumental
music until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the general
movement of mind known as the romantic was at its height. In France
the writers of this group carried on war against classic
tradition--the idea that every literary work should be modeled after
one of those of the ancient writers; subjects of tragedy should be
taken from Greek mythology or history; and the characters should think
like the classics, and speak in the formal and stilted phraseology of
the vernacular translations out of the ancient works. These writers,
also, were those who upheld the rights of man, and produced
declarations of independence. In short, it was the principle of
individualism, as opposed to the merely general and conventional, for
we may remember that the conventional had a large place in ancient
art. Plato says (see p. 38) that the Egyptians had patterns of the
good in all forms