lled. France is waiting, and is getting a little
impatient. But the impatience is unnecessary; for to found an art we
must bring time to our aid; art must ripen tranquilly. Yet tranquillity
is what is most lacking in Parisian art. The artists, instead of working
steadily at their own tasks and uniting in a common aim, are given up to
sterile disputes. The young French school hardly exists any longer, as
it has now split up into two or three parties. To a fight against
foreign art has succeeded a fight among themselves: it is the
deep-rooted evil of the country, this vain expenditure of force. And
most curious of all is the fact that the quarrel is not between the
conservatives and the progressives in music, but between the two most
advanced sections: the _Schola_ on the one hand, who, should it gain the
victory, would through its dogmas and traditions inevitably develop the
airs of a little academy; and, on the other hand, the independent party,
whose most important representative is M. Debussy. It is not for us to
enter into the quarrel; we would only suggest to the parties in question
that if any profit is to result from their misunderstanding, it will be
derived by a third party--the party in favour of routine, the party that
has never lost favour with the great theatre-going public,--a party
that will soon make good the place it has lost if those who aim at
defending art set about fighting one another. Victory has been
proclaimed too soon; for whatever the optimistic representatives of the
young school may say, victory has not yet been gained; and it will not
be gained for some time yet--not until public taste is changed, not
while the nation lacks musical education, nor until the cultured few are
united to the people, through whom their thoughts shall be preserved.
For not only--with a few rare and generous exceptions--do the more
aristocratic sections of society ignore the education of the people, but
they ignore the very existence of the people's soul. Here and there, a
composer--such as Bizet and M. Saint-Saens, or M. d'Indy and his
disciples--will build up symphonies and rhapsodies and very difficult
pieces for the piano on the popular airs of Auvergne, Provence, or the
Cevennes; but that is only a whim of theirs, a little ingenious pastime
for clever artists, such as the Flemish masters of the fifteenth century
indulged in when they decorated popular airs with polyphonic
elaborations. In spite of the advance of