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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2023
Arts School?, Cambridge, January 1871?
I purpose in my first lecture this term to begin at the very beginning & root of the matter we have in hand; and therefore, before we proceed to speak about the technicalities of music, and the different works of the great masters, it will be better for us to consider what the present state of the musical world really is, and in what way the minds of musical people are trained to receive the education offered to them in the art.
Never in the history of music was there a period of greater interest than the present. The rapidity with which the various phases of the art are developing themselves (whether in a right or wrong direction), the ceaseless activity of composers, performers & publishers, the enormous increase of the musical public, all these things point out to us the fact that the musical art is in a state of transition&that we may assuredly look for an early & radical change.
Now today let us examine more closely some of the various signs by which this change is most surely indicated, and first let us look to the present German school of music.
The German school <always> ﹛in the last century﹜ had an enormous influence on the young composers who strove to model themselves to the forms built for them by Haydn; but now the young composers of the day are struggling to become original & to find out new forms & to free themselves from those upon which even Beethoven&Mendelssohn were content to work.
Perhaps this state of things may be traced to the influence of such a composer as Wagner <over the present state of music>, who possesses an influence hardly to be calculated. His power is extreme; the fascination which he throws over the musicians of his own country & the musicians of other countries goes even beyond that which Weber in this same department ﹛(I mean the music of the theatre)﹜ was ever able to exercise.
Night after night the same opera and the same audience! and the same deep and mysterious approbation! I have often asked this question but without an answer: In what consists the enchantment of the music?
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