ptive music. The notes are
reprinted in Nottebohm's "Zweite Beethoveniana," but I borrow Sir
George Grove's translation:

[Sidenote: _Beethoven's notes on descriptive music._]

"The hearers should be allowed to discover the situations."

"Sinfonia caracteristica, or a recollection of country
life."

"All painting in instrumental music, if pushed too far, is a
failure."

"Sinfonia pastorella. Anyone who has an idea of country life
can make out for himself the intentions of the author
without many titles."

"People will not require titles to recognize the general
intention to be more a matter of feeling than of painting in
sounds."

"Pastoral symphony: No picture, but something in which the
emotions are expressed which are aroused in men by the
pleasure of the country (or), in which some feelings of
country life are set forth."[C]

As to the relation of programme to music Schumann laid down an
admirable maxim when he said that while good music was not harmed by a
descriptive title it was a bad indication if a composition needed one.

[Sidenote: _Classic and Romantic._]

There are, among all the terms used in music, no words of vaguer
meaning than Classic and Romantic. The idea which they convey most
widely in conjunction is that of antithesis. When the Romantic School
of composers is discussed it is almost universally presented as
something opposed in character to the Classical School. There is
little harm in this if we but bear in mind that all the terms which
have come into use to describe different phases of musical development
are entirely artificial and arbitrary--that they do not stand for
anything absolute, but only serve as platforms of observation. If the
terms had a fixed meaning we ought to be able, since they have
established themselves in the language of history and criticism, to
describe unambiguously and define clearly the boundary which separates
them. This, however, is impossible. Each generation, nay, each
decade, fixes the meaning of the words for itself and decides what
works shall go into each category. It ought to be possible to discover
a principle, a touchstone, which shall emancipate us from the
mischievous and misleading notions that have so long prompted men to
make the partitions between the schools out of dates and names.

[Sidenote: _Trench's definition of "classical."_]

The terms were borrowed from l