these masters today are great composers, a point of view which always awakens the murderous instinct within me, as it should be apparent to the veriest dolt that an artist in some way must reflect the spirit of his own epoch. Besides what one man has done naturally, another copies servilely and without reason. Bach employed the fugue because it was the natural form into which his ideas came to him. Subsequent composers, for the greater part, have used the fugue as an end in itself.
There are a few delightful writers about music, and you will find that all of them, in one way or another, bear out the point of my remarks. There are too many others who are hedging the most universal of the arts away from the people to whom it belongs, protecting it with their damp vapourings, their vapid technicalities, their worship of Clio, their stringent analyses, or, worse than anything else, their extensive explanations.[1] Let each judge for himself, and let every one be encouraged to judge. Let more think about music; to make that possible, curiosity must be stimulated, so that there may be a more general
- ↑ Le critique sceptique, toujours en defiance meme contre sa propre sensibilité, est mené par la peur d'être dupe; il adopte volontiers le ton de l'ironie ou même celui du badinage. Il craint l'enthousiasme comme une maladie et se tire de toutes les difficultés au moyen d'un sourire et parfois d'une grimace." Remy de Gourmont: Promenades Littéraires; I, 70.
