ked up it....Roman architecture is classic to become in
its Byzantine developments completely decadent, and St. Mark's is the
perfected type of decadence in art. ... We have to recognize that
decadence is an aesthetic and not a moral conception. The power of
words is great but they need not befool us. ... We are not called upon
to air our moral indignation over the bass end of the musical clef." I
recommend the entire chapter to such men as Lombroso Levi, Max Nordau
and Heinrich Pudor, who have yet to learn that "all confusion of
intellectual substances is foolish."

Oscar Bie states the Chopin case most excellently:--

Chopin is a poet. It has become a very bad habit to place this
poet in the hands of our youth. The concertos and polonaises
being put aside, no one lends himself worse to youthful
instruction than Chopin. Because his delicate touches
inevitably seem perverse to the youthful mind, he has gained
the name of a morbid genius. The grown man who understands how
to play Chopin, whose music begins where that of another
leaves off, whose tones show the supremest mastery in the
tongue of music--such a man will discover nothing morbid in
him. Chopin, a Pole, strikes sorrowful chords, which do not
occur frequently to healthy normal persons. But why is a Pole
to receive less justice than a German? We know that the
extreme of culture is closely allied to decay; for perfect
ripeness is but the foreboding of corruption. Children, of
course, do not know this. And Chopin himself would have been
much too noble ever to lay bare his mental sickness to the
world. And his greatness lies precisely in this: that he
preserves the mean between immaturity and decay. His greatness
is his aristocracy. He stands among musicians in his faultless
vesture, a noble from head to foot. The sublimest emotions
toward whose refinement whole generations had tended, the last
things in our soul, whose foreboding is interwoven with the
mystery of Judgment Day, have in his music found their form.

Further on I shall attempt--I write the word with a patibulary
gesture--in a sort of a Chopin variorum, to analyze the salient
aspects, technical and aesthetic, of his music. To translate into
prose, into any language no matter how poetical, the images aroused by
his music, is impossible. I am forced to employ the technical
terminology of other arts, but against my judgment. Read Mr. W. F.
Apthorp's dishe