model when he breaks into song?

_He_--Why do you not grasp the subject higher up? What is song?

_I_--That, I confess, is a question beyond my powers. That's the way
with us all. The memory is stored with words only, which we think we
understand because we often use them and even apply them correctly,
but in the mind we have only indefinite conceptions. When I use the
word "song," I have no more definite idea of it than you and the
majority of your kind have when you say reputation, disgrace, honor,
vice, virtue, shame, propriety, mortification, ridicule.

_He_--Song is an imitation in tones, produced either by the voice or
by instruments, of a scale invented by art, or if you will,
established by nature; an imitation of physical sounds or passionate
utterances; and you see, with proper alterations this definition could
be made to fit painting, oratory, sculpture, and poetry. Now to come
to your question, What is the model of the musician or of song? It is
the declamation, when the model is alive or sensate; it is the tone,
when the model is insensate. The declamation must be regarded as a
line, and the music as another line which twines about it. The
stronger and the more genuine is this declamation, this model of song,
the more numerous the points at which the accompanying music
intersects it, the more beautiful will it be. And this our younger
composers have clearly perceived. When one hears "Je suis un pauvre
diable," one feels that it is a miser's complaint. If he didn't sing,
he would address the earth in the very same tones when he intrusts to
its keeping his gold: "O terre, recois mon tresor." ... In such works
with the greatest variety of characters, there is a convincing truth
of declamation that is unsurpassed. I tell you, go, go, and hear the
aria where the young man who feels that he is dying, cries out, "Mon
coeur s'en va." Listen to the air, listen to the accompaniment, and
then tell me what difference there is between the true tones of a
dying man and the handling of this music. You will see that the line
of the melody exactly coincides with the line of declamation. I say
nothing of the time, which is one of the conditions of song; I confine
myself to the expression, and there is nothing truer than the
statement which I have somewhere read, "Musices seminarium
accentus,"--the accent is the seed-plot of the melody. And for that
reason, consider how difficult and important a matter it is to be able
to