ontrol the muscular system, which effects
the necessary and desired movements. Thus the spirit in music is sensed
by the artist in solitude and communion, and is given out by him to the
multitude in public.

The artist thus necessarily has two sides to his work, the inner and the
outer, the artistic and the technical. No amount of technique alone will
ever make an artist, nor will artistic or spiritual perception by itself
enable the message to secure adequate treatment. Both sides are
indispensable. But there has been far too much worship of mere technique
in Music, until at times even the fact that there has been any message
at all has been overlooked. In times, happily now gone by, a simple
melody which perhaps by itself might have conveyed a homely message, has
been smothered under showers of variations, decked out in wearisome
arpeggios, and entangled in meaningless scales, until it has reminded
one of nothing so much as a vulgar and greatly over-dressed woman: and
yet this has been looked upon as music. Technique is indeed necessary,
but only as a means to an end. Directly it begins to obscure the
meaning, or is developed for its own sake without reference to its task,
it is missing the mark. It puts itself on a par with the stupidity that
leads a man to undertake to play the piano for twenty-four hours without
stopping.

So many hours' scales per diem would be warranted to drive the spirit of
music to distraction: the utmost perfection in scales does not of
necessity lead to any illuminating message. It cannot be too strongly
urged that the feeling and the emotion are the real things, and that the
object of technique is simply that these may be expressed in the best
and most intelligible manner. Indeed the artist himself is secondary in
importance to the message, it is the spirit that works in and through
him that must ever come first. The true artist never seeks to obtrude,
or to make his own personality the first thing. He will, of course,
endeavour to make his technique fully equal to all demands that can be
made of him, but he will realise that he is doing his work in trust. "No
MAN ever did any great work yet: he became a free channel through which
the eternal powers moved."[11] In thus working the artist shines, as
does the electric bulb, by reason of the unlimited power which according
to his own measure may flow through him: and this limitless power may be
relied upon to secure its own effect, if only th