Musical Æsthetics

Extract

Many writers, nowadays, in treating of any subject, have the greatest difficulty in finding something new to say, so much having been said before them upon almost every variety of theme. In the subject of this paper I am, to some extent, free of this embarrassment; but my task is, I feel, not the less difficult on that account. When I say that writers have not given much attention to the subject of musical æsthetics, I allude more especially to English writers. The Germans have, indeed, busied themselves more than we have in this way, as might, perhaps, be well supposed from the somewhat abstract nature of the subject. But even they have not done so much with the particular branch of æsthetics relating to the musical art as one would have expected. If I myself enter this field, it is not, by any means, that I consider myself one most fitted for the labour; but I do so rather in the hope of inducing those to follow better able than I am to clear the ground of its difficulties.