s submitted to
man, and has abdicated her power into his hands. The stormy reign of
instinctive feeling has come to an end; the serene reign of art has
begun.

In order to see these sensuous elements of music in their unmixed
purity, in their unbridled strength, we must descend to the lowest
stages of the art, compared with whose emotional effects those of modern
music are as nothing, and least of all in the classic periods of the
art; but even in modern music, what really strong emotional effects
there may be are due to a momentary suspension of artistic activity, to
a momentary return to the formless, physically touching music of early
ages. The most emotional thing ever written by Mozart is the exclamation
of Donna Elvira, when, after leaving Don Giovanni at his ill-omened
supper, she is met on the staircase by the statue of the commander; this
exclamation is but one high, detached note, formless, meaningless, which
pierces the nerves like a blade; submit even this one note to artistic
action, bid the singer gradually swell and diminish it, and you at once
rob it of its terrible power. This is Mozart's most emotional stroke;
but was a Mozart, nay, was any musician, necessary for its conception?
Would not that cry have been the same if surrounded by true music? A
contrary example, but to the same effect, is afforded by Gluck in his
great scene of Orpheus at the gate of Hades, which may have moved our
great-grandfathers, accustomed to fugues and minuets and _rigaudons_,
but which seems coldly beautiful as some white antique group to us,
accustomed as we are to romantic art. The _No!_ of the Furies loses
all its effects by being worked into a definite musical form, by being
locked into the phrase begun by Orpheus; it is merely a constituent note
and no more, until after some time it is repeated detached, and without
any reference to the main melody sung by Orpheus: at first it is part of
a work of art, later it becomes a mere brute shout, and then, and then
only, does it obtain a really moving character.

When these potent physical elements are held in subjection by artistic
form, emotion may be suggested, more or less vaguely, but only
suggested: we perceive them in the fabric which imprisons them, and we
perceive their power, but it is as we should perceive the power of a
tiger chained up behind a grating: we remember and imagine what it has
been and might be, but we no longer feel it; for us to again feel it,
the a