"QUOT homines, tot sententiæ" is a saw the application of which might well be extended beyond its current limits. It is not only upon our opinions that we cannot escape setting at least a faint stamp of our own individuality, though this impress may often seem obliterated by our modes of expressing them, — but our understanding, our perceptions, our very seeing and hearing are indefeasibly and inveterately our own. Language is at best a makeshift by which we seek to impart to others an approximate notion of our meaning; but, use it as we may, there is always room for doubt as to whether we have really made ourselves understood. That which we call a word is but the shadow of our thought; it may mean this to us, but that to another. Written language, unaided as it is by the plastic imagery of gesture and the innuendo of emphasis, is an especially rough tool; we write a word, and every reader makes of it what he can lucky for us if he have the honesty not to make of it what he please! The idea-conveying force of the word will be what it means to him, not what it means to us. If we would be distinctly understood, we must beat about the bush and explain ourselves; our word, left to itself, will have as many meanings as there are men who read it.

But, to quit generalities and come down to a definite point, how many different meanings in as many minds has not this one word "classicism"! Classic, classicism, classicist, have grown to be very vague terms. To those who look for the meaning of a word in its etymology they are impregnated with a flavor of the academy, they reek with associations with the categorical imperative, the "thou shalt " and "thou shalt

PART ONE.

not" of the schools. To others they convey an idea of authority based on a survival after long sifting and a gradual recognition of what is fine, worthy, and, as the Germans say, mustergiltig. To others, again, they imply merely something old, that was doubtless admirable once, but has had its day like other dogs, and should by rights be obsolete now. And who shall say that any of these interpretations is wholly without warrant? What we call a "classic" has become so in virtue of being recognized as fine and worthy by successive generations, and should be looked upon as a model in its way, as far as it goes; being a model, it naturally has been held up as such by the schools, and departure from its scheme has been deprecated, with more or less reason. Again, as it is of necessity old, inspired by the afflatus of a time when the conditions of life, thought, and even emotion were different from ours, when men had other ideals than ours, is there not unavoidably an element of obsolescence in it? May we not assume that its mature growth, like all mature growth, has brought with it the potentiality of decay? All these meanings of "classic and "classicism" have truth in them; it is only by holding too fast by one, to the exclusion of the others, that we run the risk of error.

Yet, although these interpretations of the word "classicism" are all more or less true, they are still too general and vague for my present purpose. If I have dwelt on them at all, it was to ward off at the outset any prejudice, any foregone conclusion, in the mind of my readers, — either in the way of partisanship or opposition, pro or con, - by showing that no single one of

them covers the whole ground; and that, consequently, so soon as we hold fast by the special truth contained or implied in one, discarding that implied in the others, we thereby place our chosen truth as it were in vacuo, thus inviting error to flow in and surround it. I would address myself here neither to the enthusiasm of the so-called classicist, nor to the militant scorn of the modern comeouter; I would as far as possible paint a faithful picture of something that has been and the true significance of which seems to me of lasting importance.

To my present purpose neither the authority, the Mustergiltigkeit ("modelworthiness"), nor the age and possible obsolescence of musical classicism is of any consequence whatever; I wish to look at the subject from a totally different point of view. I would specify what the true gist, the quintessence in the last analysis, of musical classicism was in its heyday, apart from all definitions, with all that was merely external and unessential eliminated. What I speak of is an æsthetic point of view which history shows us was the dominant one during the periods in which the great masterpieces were written which are by common consent called classic to-day. And, in examining this point of view, I trust far less to the evidence furnished by anything of the didactic sort written or read during the periods to which I refer than to the internal evidence of the masterworks themselves.

If it be true of any art that its real essence is the expression of emotion, this is doubly true of the art of music. And it may be well to state here that in all epochs in the history of music which have since been rated as classic the great Italian period of strict vocal counterpoint, from the immediate forerunners of Palestrina, the two Gabrielis, and Orlando Lasso down to such decadents as Orazio Benevoli (a period extending from early in the sixteenth century to near the close of the seven

teenth); the great "Neapolitan " period of opera and oratorio writing, from Alessandro Scarlatti down to Pergolesi and Sarti; and the great German period, from Sebastian Bach and Handel down to Beethoven - the art of music was unhesitatingly looked upon as distinctly an independent art. The idea that music was an art immediately dependent on poetry was that of the ancient Greeks; it cropped up again for a while under the Florentine Music Reform of the early part of the seventeenth century, and has since made its reappearance with Richard Wagner; but it had absolutely nothing to do with any period or school generally or properly known as classic. In all classic epochs the art of music was regarded as an art by itself, following its own course of development, and subject to its own inherent laws. This was one part of the classic point of view; it was axiomatic. But, based on this axiom, the true quintessence of the classic point of view was this: that in musicas in the other fine arts the expression of emotion must be realized through perfect beauty of form and a finely and stoutly organized construction. The recognition of the indispensableness of this, so to speak," architectural" side of music was the most distinctive and characteristic mark of the classical point of view; as I have said, it is the very quintessence of classicism.

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It is in this sense, and in this sense alone, that I shall use the words classic, classicism and classicist in the present article. In contradistinction to classicism, I would take musical " romanticism" to imply the aim to express emotion in music by more or less picturesque and suggestive means, by the imitation or suggestion of natural (extramusical) modes of expression, in short by any means in the power of the art not necessarily connected with beauty of form and stoutness or symmetry of organic structure. By this I do not mean

that the modes of expression peculiarly characteristic of musical romanticism are necessarily inimical to or discrepant with beauty of form or stoutness and symmetry of organism; the two circles of connotation of "classicism" and "romanticism" may intersect, and a certain domain be common to both; the two elements may pull together toward one and the same artistic goal. But, for the sake of clearness, I here limit the meaning of each of the two terms to that which is distinctively characteristic, and hence essential, in it. I take classicism to imply the endeavor to express emotion musically through beauty of form and stoutness and symmetry of organic construction; romanticism, the endeavor to express emotion by other musical means, for the present no matter what.

The last great classic master in music, universally recognized as such, was Felix Mendelssohn. It is true that he was more famous in his own day, and is to a great extent so still, as a romanticist than as a classicist; indeed he was both. But he was distinctly a classicist jusqu'au bout des ongles; strongly romantic as his native bent was, and full rein as he gave it for his time, he never indulged it at the expense of his classicism. With all his imaginative romanticism, he was and remains the last worldfamous classic composer, so far. His classicism and romanticism went hand in hand and were, like Sebastian Bach's, in perfect equilibrium. Robert Schumann cannot compare with him in this respect; with Schumann the romantic side preponderated over the classic. Even if we admit that his artistic aims may have been as classic in spirit as Mendelssohn's, which a careful study of his works gives some reason for believing,

the accident of lacking early training made him far less in condition to compass them than Mendelssohn, whose technical musical education was phenomenally thorough. Perfection of

musical form was something that Schumann always had to struggle for; with Mendelssohn it was a second nature.

But if Mendelssohn was the last universally recognized great musical classicist, there were two men, younger than he and less widely famous, whose lives were intimately associated with musical life in Boston, whose memory is green in the hearts of many of us, and in whom the spirit of the truest classicism still breathed in as perfect purity as in Mendelssohn himself: Robert Franz and Otto Dresel. They were stanch and life-long friends; their agreement on musical subjects was as complete as their friendship; they both worked together toward the same end, though they lived long apart; neither of the two gave anything to the world without its passing through the ordeal of the other's criticism; they died within two years of each other. It is well to speak of them together.

In both of these men was to be found, in its highest perfection, what I will call, for lack of a better name, the sense for musical beauty; the keenest sense for beauty of expression, beauty of form, proportion, and color. And, so strong was this sense in them, so imperative in its demands, that neither of them could be content unless the whole of his sense for beauty was satisfied. Beauty of form alone was not enough for them; truth and poignancy of expression, divorced from beauty of form, left them with the feeling that something indispensable was lacking; beauty of detail — in melody, harmony, or modulation - left them cold, unless there were also coherency of development and symmetry of design. Without beauty of color (a beautiful quality of tone) their delight in music was sorely marred. For them music must fulfill all the demands a complete and spherical æsthetic sense could make upon it. I must own that I was rather surprised to find in Dresel - whom I knew personally and

intimately, for with Franz I had only two or three years' intercourse by letter so keen a delight in musical color, to find him make such severe demands upon music in this respect. In Boston he had the name of being rather "grim" in his tastes, and I knew his sense for form was so keen and fastidious that I thought it likely enough his demands upon beauty of clang-tint might be less exorbitant. But no: a disagreeable voice, a dry-toned pianoforte, a poor violin, unbeautiful orchestration, offended his ear as unpardonably as it could that of the veriest color-epicure in music; Paderewski himself could not surpass him in fineness of musical color - sense. And speaking of the great Polish pianist (whom, by the way, he never heard) reminds me of something I heard Dresel say one day, in talking of pianoforte playing:

"I have heard almost all the great pianists; but of the whole lot I can think of only two whom I should call really remarkable for beauty of touch: Thalberg and Rubinstein."

"How about Gottschalk? gested.

I sug

"Ah! yes, I had forgotten him; he certainly belongs with the other two; his tone on the pianoforte was phenomenally fine!"

In a similar way I was somewhat surprised at first at the high value he set upon emotional expressiveness in music, especially upon the expression of individual emotion, upon the emotional personality and temperament of a composer. To be sure, these surprises came at a time when I knew him far less well than I did afterwards, near the beginning of our musical friendship, when I still had to take him largely for what his reputation with music-lovers in general painted him to be something of a 'dry" musical formalist. Yet even after I had become better acquainted with the emotional, romantic side of his nature, there were certain points in him

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that I still failed to understand; points which seemed to me not to harmonize well with the rest of him. Indeed, to his death, I could never explain the to me extraordinarily cool attitude he assumed toward Gluck's operas and the works of the older Italian contrapuntists, Palestrina, the Naninis, and others of that school. The Gluck matter, to be sure, did not trouble me overmuch; but, as for Palestrina and his contemporaries, it seemed to me to border on the illogical for an ardent Bach and Handel worshiper like Dresel to ignore this older music, which was really one of the main foundations of the great Germans' art. I never could get him to talk long enough on the subject, which evidently did not interest him in the least, to give me any clue to his inexplicable feelings in the matter. It was only after his death that Franz, to whom I had written on the subject, suggested an explanation that made me begin to see clearly into it. In a letter dated October 31, 1890, Franz answered my questions as follows:

"The questions you ask are not easy to answer. But I would remark before all things that it can not be required of a musician to bring an equal interest to bear upon all art-phenomena, a requirement which is no doubt a conditio sine qua non for the historian, not for the musician, for a lifetime would hardly suffice for the intensive study of them. Friend Dresel was, to be sure, guilty of many a harshness in his judgments, which unfortunately led superficial people to charge him with one-sided narrowness. I myself have not fared better! I never had any talk with Dresel about his attitude toward Gluck and the old Italian school, so I am in no condition to give you any information about his aversion. Yet I can very well imagine that he did not sympathize with the frequent over-estimates of Gluck's artistic expression. The somewhat cold objectiveness to which the subjects he

treated forced this master could not possibly be sympathetic to so subjectively disposed an individual as Dresel unquestionably was his cool sympathy is only thus to be explained. He seems to have assumed a similar, perhaps a harsher, attitude toward the old Italian school. In it the personal element withdraws almost wholly into the background, and is overwhelmed by the demands of the Catholic Church, which, as you know, does not consider the individual of any account. The expression of the masters of this school thus became so typical that one has some difficulty in distinguishing between, for example, the grand works of Palestrina. It was Protestantism that first loosed musicians' tongues; for in it the personal element, in contradistinction to the typical, gets its rights. The musical culmination of the liberated spirits is to be discerned in Bach and Handel · in both of them does the 'Ego' celebrate its most brilliant triumphs. Nowadays we are told to fall back solely upon ourselves, a fact which has already led to a subjectivism that makes one's flesh, creep. In my opinion the individual element should subordinate itself to the universal, in which the artistic spirit of the noblest sort attains to self-consciousness; and here it finds its limit. He who disregards this limit will sooner or later come to grief. The great crowd that rule the roast to-day should naturally be sharply distinguished from this universal;' for them everything is sensual pleasure, and they have no inkling of a katharsis in which, and in which alone, the true blessings of art are realized. After the crowd was emancipated, even in its relations to music, ... then began the downfall, about which only blindness can have any doubts.

"These cursory remarks to a certain extent explain Dresel's attitude. His negative judgment on Gluck and the old Italian school is but the outcome of a passionately mobile inner nature, for

which, in neither case, does the blood pulsate quickly enough, and one that could not possibly come to an understanding with the false objectiveness of our doctrinarians. Dresel's opposition to the NeoGermanic school, too, has its interesting side. Its intolerance of all barriers (ihre Schrankenlosigkeit) was necessarily antipathetic to his measure-loving nature; in which matter he may perhaps now and then have overshot the mark."

I quote this merely to show that Dresel was very far from being the " dry formalist" in music that many thought him. In truth, the romantic side of his nature was as fully developed as that in any of the musical" new lights" of to-day; only with him it went hand in hand with, and was counterpoised by, an equally well-developed spirit of classicism. And what was true of Dresel in this respect was quite as true of Franz; in many of his long musical talks with me, the former continually quoted Franz, not as authority, but to show that he himself was not alone in his views.

What separates the classicism, the sense for beauty of musical form and proportion, of Franz and Dresel from that of almost all "classicists" to-day, and the spirit of musical classicism, if possibly obsolescent, is by no means quite so dead yet as some persons would have us believe, what made them, in a sense, the last of the Mohicans of a now bygone period, is more a difference in kind than in degree. I do not think it any exaggeration to say that their perfect purity, chasteness, and nice discrimination of specifically musical sense are now a thing of the past. Our musical instincts nowadays run in other channels; we follow other ideals, and are not only willing, but eager, to sacrifice things to them that our fathers would not have consented to forego. For the absolute fineness and delicacy of musical sense of Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Cherubini, and Mendelssohn, we have no doubt substituted something else;