etrating into their most
varied combinations, and the knowledge of harmonious relations is for
him what design and the knowledge of color are for the painter:
intervals and harmony, rhythm and tone-qualities are, as it were,
standards to which he relates his present perceptions and which he
causes to enter into the marvelous constructions of his fancy."[95]

These sound-elements and their combinations are the words of a special
language that is very clear for some, impenetrable for others. People
have spoken to a tiresome extent of the vagueness of musical expression;
some have been pleased to hold that every one may interpret it in his
own way. We must surely recognize that emotional language does not
possess the precision of intellectual language; but in music it is the
same as in any other idiom: there are those who do not understand at
all; those who half understand and consequently always give wrong
renderings; and those who understand well--and in this last category
there are grades as varying as the aptitude for perceiving the delicate
and subtle shades of speech.[96]

The materials necessary for this form of imaginative construction are
gathered slowly. Many centuries passed between the early ages when man's
voice and the simple instruments imitating it translated simple
emotions, to the period when the efforts of antiquity and of the middle
ages finally furnished the musical imagination with the means of
expressing itself completely, and allowed complex and difficult
constructions in sound. The development of music--slow and belated as
compared to the other arts--has perhaps been due, in part at least, to
the fact that the affective imagination, its chief province (imitative,
descriptive, picturesque music being only an episode and accessory),
being made up, contrary to sensorial imagination, of tenuous, subtle,
fugitive states, has been long in seeking its methods of analysis and of
expression. However it be, Bach and the contrapuntists, by their
treatment in an independent manner of the different voices constituting
harmony, have opened a new path. Henceforth melody will be able to
develop and give rise to the richest combinations. We shall be able to
associate various melodies, sing them at the same time, or in
alternation, assign them to various instruments, vary indefinitely the
pitch of singing and concerted voices. The boundless realm of musical
combinations is open; it has been worth while to take the