e
has received, when he attempts to fix and hold the ethereal
essence of music, to utter the unutterable."

[Sidenote: _Mendelssohn's._]

[Sidenote: _The "Songs without Words."_]

Mendelssohn inculcated the same lesson in a letter which he wrote to a
young poet who had given titles to a number of the composer's "Songs
Without Words," and incorporated what he conceived to be their
sentiments in a set of poems. He sent his work to Mendelssohn with the
request that the composer inform the writer whether or not he had
succeeded in catching the meaning of the music. He desired the
information because "music's capacity for expression is so vague and
indeterminate." Mendelssohn replied:

"You give the various numbers of the book such titles as 'I
Think of Thee,' 'Melancholy,' 'The Praise of God,' 'A Merry
Hunt.' I can scarcely say whether I thought of these or
other things while composing the music. Another might find
'I Think of Thee' where you find 'Melancholy,' and a real
huntsman might consider 'A Merry Hunt' a veritable 'Praise
of God.' But this is not because, as you think, music is
vague. On the contrary, I believe that musical expression is
altogether too definite, that it reaches regions and dwells
in them whither words cannot follow it and must necessarily
go lame when they make the attempt as you would have them
do."

[Sidenote: _The tonal language._]

[Sidenote: _Herbert Spencer's definition._]

[Sidenote: _Natural expression._]

[Sidenote: _Absolute music._]

If I were to try to say why musicians, great musicians, speak thus of
their art, my explanation would be that they have developed, farther
than the rest of mankind have been able to develop it, a language of
tones, which, had it been so willed, might have been developed so as
to fill the place now occupied by articulate speech. Herbert Spencer,
though speaking purely as a scientific investigator, not at all as an
artist, defined music as "a language of feelings which may ultimately
enable men vividly and completely to impress on each other the
emotions they experience from moment to moment." We rely upon speech
to do this now, but ever and anon when, in a moment of emotional
exaltation, we are deserted by the articulate word we revert to the
emotional cry which antedates speech, and find that that cry is
universally understood because it is universally felt. More than
speech,