content and form are more
closely linked in music than in any other art. Suppose, however, we
imagine the development of melody, counterpoint, harmony, modulation,
etc., to be symbolized by a series of concrete materials like clay
bricks, silver bricks, gold bricks, diamond bricks; a beautiful thought
might take as exquisite a form in bricks of clay as it would in diamond
bricks, or diamond bricks might be flung together without any informing
thought so that they would attract only the thoughtless by their
glitter. But it also follows that, with the increase in the kinds of
bricks, there is an increase in the possibilities for subtleties in
psychic expression, therefore music to-day is coming nearer and nearer
to the spiritual reality of feeling. It requires the awakened soul that
Maeterlinck talks about, that is, the soul alive to the spiritual
essences of things to recognize this new realm which composers are
bringing to us in music.

There are always, at least three kinds of appreciators of music, those
who can see beauty only in the masters of the past, those who can see
beauty only in the last new composer, and those who ecstatically welcome
beauty past, present and to come. These last are not only psychically
developed themselves, but they are able to retain delight in simpler
modes of feeling. They may be raised to a seventh heaven of delight by a
Bach fugue played on a clavichord by Mr. Dolmetsch, feeling as if angels
were ministering unto them, or to a still higher heaven of delight by a
Tschaikowsky symphony or a string quartet of Grieg, feeling that here
the seraphim continually do cry, or they may enter into the very
presence of the most High through some subtly exquisite and psychic song
of an American composer, for some of the younger American composers are
indeed approaching "Truth's very heart of truth," in their music.

On the whole, one gets rather the impression that the poet has here
tackled a problem upon which he did not have great insight. He passes
from one mood to another, none of which seem especially satisfactory to
himself, and concludes with one of the half-truths of nineteenth-century
thought. It is true as far as it goes that forms evolve, and it is a
good truth to oppose to the martinets of settled standards in poetry,
music and painting; it is also true that the form is a partial
expression of a whole truth, but there is the further truth that, let a
work of art be really a work of geni