so many people stop
at this point, _i.e._ for them music is a sensuous art and nothing
more. Wagner himself, in fact, is on record in a letter to Liszt as
saying, in regard to the appreciation of his operas: "I require
nothing from the public but healthy senses and a human heart."
Although this may be particularly true of opera, which is a composite
form of art, making so varied an appeal to the participant that
everyone can get something from its picture of life--historical,
legendary, even fictitious--as well as from the actors, the costumes
and the story, the statement is certainly not applicable to what is
called absolute music, where music is disassociated from the guiding
help of words, and expressed by the media of orchestra, string
quartet, pianoforte, and various ensemble groups. For in addition to
its sensuous appeal, music is a language used as a means of personal
expression; sometimes in the nature of an intimate soliloquy, but far
more often as a direct means of communication between the mind and
soul of the composer and of the listener. To say that we understand
the message expressed in this language just because we happen to like
beautiful sounds and stimulating rhythms is surely to be our own
dupes. We might as well say that because we enjoy hearing Italians or
Frenchmen speak their own beautiful languages we are understanding
what they say. The question, therefore, faces us: how shall we learn
this mysterious language so as readily to understand it? And the
answer is equally inevitable: by learning something of the material of
which it is composed, and above all, the fundamental principles of its
structure.

[Footnote 6: Just as some people are color-blind there are those who
are tone-deaf--to whom, that is, music is a disagreeable noise--but
they are so few as to be negligible.]

In attempting to carry out this simple direction, however, we are
confronted by another of the peculiar characteristics of music. Music,
in distinction from the static, concrete and imitative arts, is always
in motion, and to follow it requires an intensity of concentration and
an accuracy of memory which can be acquired, but for which, like most
good things, we have to work. We all know the adage that "beauty is in
the eye of the beholder" and that any work of art must be recreated
in the imagination of the participant. The difficulty of this process
of recreation, as applied to music, is that we have, derived from our
or