Page:Postface to 114 Songs.djvu/6

POSTFACE quote from a book that is not read, "Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy-chair? Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason are we not too easily inclined to call them beautiful? . . . Possibly the fondness for personal expression—the kind in which self-indulgence dresses up and miscalls itself freedom—may throw out a skin-deep arrangement, which is readily accepted at first as beautiful—formulae that weaken rather than toughen the musical-muscles. If a composer's conception of his art, its functions and ideals, even if sincere, coincides to such an extent with these groove-colored permutations of tried-out progressions in expediency so that he can arrange them over and over again to his delight—has he or has he not been drugged with an overdose of habit-forming sounds? And as a result do not the muscles of his clientèle become flabbier and flabbier until they give way altogether and find refuge only in exciting platitudes—even the sensual outbursts of an emasculated rubber stamp, a 'Zaza,' a 'Salome' or some other money-getting costume of effeminate manhood? In many cases probably not, but there is this tendency."

If the interest under discussion is the whole, and the owner is willing to let it rest as the whole, will it not produce something less vital than the ideal which underlies, or which did underlie it? And is the resultant work from this interest as free as it should be from a certain influence of reaction which is brought on by, or at least is closely related to, the artist's over-anxiety about its effect upon others?

And to this, also, no general answer must be given—each man will answer it for himself, if he feels like answering questions. The whole matter is but one of the personal conviction. For, as Mr. Sedgwick says in his helpful and inspiring little book about Dante "in judging human conduct"—and the manner in which an interest in art is used has to do with human conduct—"we are dealing with subtle mysteries of motives, impulses, feelings, thoughts that shift, meet, combine and separate like clouds."