r the walls of our inner consciousness, and yet we call music a
divine art! I love the written notes, the symbols of the musical idea.
Music, like some verse, sounds sweeter on paper, sweeter to the inner
ear. Music overheard, not heard, is the more beautiful. Palimpsestlike
we strive to decipher and unweave the spiral harmonies of Chopin, but
they elude as does the sound of falling waters in a dream. Those violet
bubbles of prismatic light that the Sarmatian composer blows for us are
too fragile, too intangible, too spirit-haunted to be played. [All this
sounds as if I were really trying to write after the manner of the busy
Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, who helped Liszt to manufacture his book on
Chopin; indeed, it is suspected, altered every line he wrote of it.]

O, for some mighty genius of color who will deluge the sky with
pyrotechnical symphonies! Color that will soothe the soul with
iridescent and incandescent harmonies, that the harsh, brittle noises
made by musical instruments will no longer startle our weaving fancies.
Yet if Shelley had not sung or Chopin chanted, how much poorer would be
the world today. But that is no reason why school children should scream
in chorus: "Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, stains the white
radiance of eternity," or that tepid misses in their 'teens should
murder the nocturnes of Chopin. Even the somnolent gurgle of the
bullfrog, around the ponds of Manayunk, as he signals to his mate in the
mud, is often preferable to music made by earthly hands. Let it be
abolished. Electrocute the composer and banish the music-critic. Then
let there be elected a supervisory board of trusty guardians, men
absolutely above the reproach of having played the concertina or plunked
staccato tunes on a banjo. Entrust to their care all beautiful music and
poetry and prohibit the profane, vulgar, the curious, gaping herd from
even so much as a glance at these treasures. For the few, the previous
elect, the quintessential in art, let no music be sounded throughout the
land. Let us read it and think tender and warlike silent thoughts.

And now, having too long detained you with my vagaries, let me say "good
night," for it is getting dark, and before midnight I must patrol the
keyboard for at least four hours, unthreading the digital intricacies of
Kalkbrenner's Variations on the old melody, _Sei ruhig mein Herz, or the
Cat will hear you_.

XVIII

OLD FOGY WRITES A SYMPHONIC POEM

"D