Music: An Art and a Language

which for obvious reasons is not to be commended. On the other
hand, music is the most complicated of all the arts from the
nature of its constituent parts—intangible, evanescent sounds
and rhythms—and from the subtle grammar and structure by
which these factors are used as means of personal communica-
tion. This grammar of music,i.e., its methods of structure and
of presentation, has been worked out through centuries of free
experimentation on the part of some of the best minds in the
world, and thus any great musical composition is an intellectual
achievement of high rank. Behind the sensuous factors, sound
and rhythm, lies always the personal message of the composer,
and if we are to grasp this and to make it our own, we must go
with him hand in hand so that the music actually lives again
in our minds and imaginations. The practical inference from
this dual nature of the art we are considering is clear; everyone
can derive a large amount of genuine pleasure and even spiri-
tual exaltation, can feel himself under the influence of a strong
tonic force, merely by putting himself in contact with music,
by opening his ears and drinking in the sounds and rhythms in
their marvellous variety. The all-sufficient reason for the lack of
a complete appreciation of music is that so many people stop
at this point,i.e. for them music is a sensuous art and noth-
ing more. Wagner himself, in fact, is on record in a letter to
Liszt as saying, in regard to the appreciation of his operas: “I
require nothing from the public but healthy senses and a human
heart.” Although this may be particularly true of opera, which
is a composite form of art, making so varied an appeal to the
participant that everyone can get something from its picture of
life—historical, legendary, even fictitious—as well as from the
actors, the costumes and the story, the statement is certainly
not applicable to what is called absolute music, where music is
disassociated from the guiding help of words, and expressed by
the media of orchestra, string quartet, pianoforte, and various
ensemble groups. For in addition to its sensuous appeal, music
is a language used as a means of personal expression; sometimes
in the nature of an intimate soliloquy, but far more often as a
direct means of communication between the mind and soul of
the composer and of the listener. To say that we understand the
message expressed in this language just because we happen to
like beautiful sounds and stimulating rhythms is surely to be our
own dupes. We might as well say that because we enjoy hear-
ing Italians or Frenchmen speak their own beautiful languages