this fetish were archangelic interpreters of a heavenly song. I might have said: "The string quartet is an overrated art form. Certainly, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms have poured some of their finest inspiration into this mould, some of their most musical feeling, and yet the nature of this music is such that its interpreters derive more pleasure from its performance than its auditors." It is possible that these sentences might have been read, and if so, understood . . . and forgotten. If every time I expressed a personal feeling, and all my feelings and tastes are intensely personal, I followed with something like this, "it seems to me," or "this may or may not be true," or "according to my taste," or "Mr. Thing does not agree with me," my utterances would lose whatever charm or force they possess, and they would be so clogged with extraneous qualifications that no one would think of reading them. "It is the fault of our rhetoric," Emerson once wrote, "that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other." What I did say about string quartets provoked attention.[1] Philip Hale remarked that the
- ↑ The curious may discover what I did say by reading a paper entitled, Music for Museums. Initially printed in a now defunct periodical of some parts, called Rogue (May 15, 1915), this paper later became the only section I can recall with any patience of a vile book (my first), Music After the Great War; G. Schirmer; 1915. I dare say some edition is still in print.
