The Scope of Programme Music

Extract

In discussing Programme Music one may consider it in relation to those principles which apply to the conception and the expression of an art, whether that art be music or painting or sculpture. But as such a survey of æsthetical questions would demand for its consideration a space of time far exceeding that at our disposal at present, it seems more appropriate that we should limit ourselves to the purely musical aspects of the matter. I will content myself with saying in this connection, that while the most advanced school of music of to-day—that which begins where Wagner left off—insists on the paramount importance of a literary idea being the basis of the composition, the most advanced schools of sculpture and painting, those of Rodin and Whistler and Degas, assert that the literary idea is the least matter to be considered in plastic or pictorial art, and that the chief if not the only end is the display of technique. I may point out a very curious inconsistency in this connection—namely, that among musicians I constantly find men who, while proclaiming the supremacy of absolute music, see no beauty in absolute painting and sculpture, and admire the most flagrant instances of a programme in these arts.