s, _et cetera_. Clear enunciation and forceful
declamation in choral music are also included, and in it all, the
performer or conductor must so subordinate his own personality that
the attention of the listeners will be centered upon the composition
and not upon the eccentricities of dress or manner of the artist.

[Sidenote: THE BOUNDARIES OF MUSIC]

It is inevitable that there should be considerable difference of
opinion among composers, critics, listeners, and performers, as to
just what music may or may not legitimately be expected to express.
Some modern composers are apparently convinced that it ought to be
possible through music to suggest pictures, tell stories, or depict
moral and intellectual struggles on the part of the individual. Others
contend that music exists solely because of its own inherent beauty,
that it can arouse _general_ emotional states only, and that if it is
good music, it needs no further meaning than this. Even "pure music,"
the champions of this latter idea urge, may express an infinite
variety of emotional tones, from joy, encouragement, excitement,
tenderness, expectancy, invigoration, and tranquillity, to dread,
oppression of spirit, hesitation, harshness, and despondency. A modern
writer on esthetics treats this matter at length, and finally
concludes:[11]

Is the symbolization pervasive enough to account for the
steady continuing charm of lengthy compositions?... The
symbolizations ... mostly resemble patches; they form no
system, no plot or plan accompanying a work from beginning
to end; they only guarantee a fitful enjoyment--a fragment
here, a gleam there, but no growing organic exaltation like
that actually afforded by musical compositions.

[Footnote 11: Gehring, _The Basis of Musical Pleasure_, p. 89.]

At another point in the same work, this writer again discusses this
same matter (page 120):

Music is presentative in character, not representative.
Measure, to be sure, may correspond to the beating of the
pulse, and the final cadence may picture the satisfaction of
desires; the coda may simulate a mental summary; but the
composition in its totality, with its particular melodies,
harmonies, and rhythms, and with the specific union of all
these elements characteristic of this composition, does not
represent any definite psychical or material fact.

The majority of us would doubtless take a middle-