nly enriched
the store of the world's tone poetry, but changed the general
direction of musical ideals in many ways.

The great feature of the third quarter of the century was the
conception and execution of the Wagnerian music-drama, with its wealth
of sense incitation and its somber appeal to accumulated experiences
of the race. The "Ring of the Nibelungen" was completed during this
period and received its first performance at Bayreuth in 1876. During
the same period Franz Liszt had conceived a modification of the
symphony form, bringing its four movements into a single one, or
uniting the different movements (if such there were) by means of
motives common to all or several of them. In this way a certain
novelty was attainable in the most important province of instrumental
music; and while the new compositions generally acknowledged their
indebtedness to external incitation by titles, such as: "What One Sees
from a Mountain," the "Battle of the Huns," "Romeo and Juliette," and
the like, there was nothing to prevent them being in the fullest sense
musical works, having a musical life as such wholly independent of the
suggestion given by the title. Berlioz had been the founder of
programme music, and his leading works had been produced during the
second quarter of the century, but their full force was not recognized
until later. It was a follower of Liszt, the brilliant Frenchman,
Camille Saint-Saens, who stated the central thesis of the whole
romantic school, when he said that a composer had the same right to
affix a title to his work, in order to give a pleasing standpoint for
judging it, as a painter had to name his picture. And in the case of
music, he added, as in that of painting, the real question finally was
not whether the suggestion of the title had been fully satisfied, but
whether the picture were good painting and the composition good music.
If it were good music, no flaw in the title and no disagreement
between the title and the work could impair its value and lasting
quality.

When carefully scrutinized, the progress of music during the present
century has been governed by certain leading principles which are not
contradictory, although at first glance they might appear so. Since
the time of the Netherlandish contrapuntists, the primary impulse in
musical creation has been the _musical_ ideal--the creation of tonal
fancies, novel, inspiring, musical, satisfactory. Out of this desire
has arisen the enti