And amid a
wealth of Slavic legend and of kindred Oriental lore, he would turn to
the rhythms of distant Spain for a poetic theme.]

The national idea, so eminent in modern music, is not everywhere equally
justified. And here, as in an object-lesson, we see the true merits of
the problem. While one nation spontaneously utters its cry, another,
like a cock on the barnyard, starts a movement in mere idle vanity, in
sheer self-glorification.

In itself there is nothing divine in a national idea that needs to be
enshrined in art. Deliberate segregation is equally vain, whether it be
national or social. A true racial celebration must above all be
spontaneous. Even then it can have no sanction in art, unless it utter a
primal motive of resistance to suppression, the elemental pulse of life
itself. There is somehow a divine dignity about the lowest in human
rank, whether racial or individual. The oppressed of a nation stands a
universal type, his wrongs are the wrongs of all, and so his lament has
a world-wide appeal. And in truth from the lowest class rises ever the
rich spring of folk-song of which all the art is reared, whence comes
the paradox that the peasant furnishes the song for the delight of his
oppressors, while they boast of it as their own. Just in so far as man
is devoid of human sympathy, is he narrow and barren in his song. Music
is mere feeling, the fulness of human experience, not in the hedonic
sense of modern tendencies, but of pure joys and profound sorrows that
spring from elemental relations, of man to man, of mate to mate.

Here lies the nobility of the common people and of its song; the
national phase is a mere incident of political conditions. The war of
races is no alembic for beauty of art. If there were no national lines,
there would still be folk-song,--merely without sharp distinction. The
future of music lies less in the differentiation of human song, than in
its blending.

Thus we may rejoice in the musical utterance of a race like the Russian,
groaning and struggling through ages against autocracy for the dignity
of man himself,--and in a less degree for the Bohemian, seeking to hold
its heritage against enforced submergence. But we cannot take so
seriously the proud self-isolation of other independent nations.

_BALAKIREW.[A] SYMPHONY IN C_

[Footnote A: Mili Alexeivich Balakirew was born at Nizhni-Novgorod in
1836; he died at St. Petersburg in 1911. He is regarded as the founder
of