Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/423

 musical theory in all its parts, and the publication of varied works of history and criticism, continue with steadily augmenting influence.

The conspicuous note of the age was a new individualism, with an irrepressible instinct for personal freedom in thought and feeling as well as in political and social relations. Hence the formalism of the 18th century began to be disrupted by the unconventional ideas of innovators and reconstructors. The emphasis began to be transferred from regularity to originality, from studied restraint or indifference to free, passionate, even lawless feeling, from conformity to academic rule to outspoken self-revelation. This mighty movement toward vital truth, which recalls that of the 16th century, naturally found its immediate expression in music. Indeed, it is from this period that we may date the close association of musical art with the inner spirit of modern society.

Vienna continues to be on the whole the chief musical centre, with Paris not far behind, especially as regards the opera. But the signs multiply that presently various German capitals are to become more conspicuous, since the leadership in musical progress is now passing emphatically into German hands.

168. Beethoven's Historic Place.—Beethoven is commonly counted one of the three supreme musical geniuses, by many the greatest of the three. To perceive how phenomenal he was one must needs place him against the background of the later 18th century and in the atmosphere of the stirring decades of the opening 19th. We must recall that he was not forty years younger than Haydn and not fifteen years younger than Mozart, so that his early maturity came just when their sway was at its height. We must also recall that in him wrought, even from youth, the progressive instincts of a mighty seer and leader, an idealist and a creator. Only so can we understand with what a shock he shook the whole musical world, or why from him is dated a new era, so that for more than half a century after his death masters in the upper ranks were proud to call themselves his disciples.

Beethoven was emphatically an innovator, the founder of a new order. Of this, however, he himself was probably at first unaware. He set up no revolutionary program in advance. His own thought was doubtless "not to destroy, but to fulfill."