CHAPTER II - ART; MUSICAL ART AND ITS COMPONENTS

Summary

Music! daughter of the Muses! how shall we penetrate thy nature deeply enough to arrive at a clear perception of the purpose and duties of our calling, and to lead with certainty those that are confided to our guidance?

Or are we already fully acquainted with the powers and destiny that dwell in this heavenly child? Do we know all that it can offer and give, all that it will demand and take from us? Is it sufficient that music has been made and heard centuries before we were born, and that all of us have heard and made music from our earliest childhood?

If this ordinary external observation is sufficient to lead us to a clear and full understanding, whence all the doubts and uncertainties of which we are witness? whence that narrowness of plan and idea which we cannot even conceal from ourselves? Whence all this contradiction, these bitter quarrels, about the most simple and most pressing questions that relate to our calling? Whence the internal uncertainty of so many honest teachers and artists; this disinclination to acknowledge the merits of others, this exclusiveness and secret enmity of which we see such frequent examples in the musical world?