bugaboos and voodoos of the academy, freely offering incense and the freshly slain sacrifices of baby composers to the false gods of their fathers. Often, indeed, their crime is feticide. Far from urging the layman to enter the sacred temples, rather they frighten him away. "Come and listen" is a phrase that is never on their lips, never flows from their pens. On the contrary, they write: "Turn about. I have spent my whole life, and I am an old man, trying to learn what you never can hope to know. Any pleasure you may derive from listening to music is a false pleasure, because it is not based on knowledge. Pleasure, indeed, is forbidden; the initiated do not enjoy themselves. Retreat, young man; go back to your books and pictures; the gods of music desire none such as you to draw near to their altars." Instead, indeed, of sending the reader to the nearest concert hall, they have made him take an oath that never, if he knows it, will he voluntarily set foot in such a place. I am presupposing readers! The truth is that these men, after a time, are not even read, save by sopranos and fiddlers, and their early readers, sceptical thereafter regarding all literature devoted to a discussion of music, never again will peruse a line of what they have been led to consider, through these unfortunate examples, as hopeless drivel. Thereby they shut themselves off, unwittingly, not only from further
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