Music holds so important a place in the modern world, that we ought to
begin with that. There is plenty of gay music, easy to understand, which
is in harmony with the laws of art, and the people ought to hear it
instead of the horrors which they cram into our ears under the pretence
of satisfying our tastes. What pleases people most is sentimental music,
but it need not be a silly sentimentality. Instead, they ought to give
the people the charming airs which grow, as naturally as daisies on a
lawn, in the vast field of opera-comique. That is not high art, it is
true, but it is pretty music and it is high art compared with what is
heard too often in the cafes. I am not ignorant of the fact that such
establishments employ talented people. But along with the good, what
frightful things one hears! And no one would listen to their
instrumental repertoire anywhere else!

Every time anyone has tried to raise the standards and employ real
singers and real _virtuosi_, the attendance has increased. But, very
often, even at the theatres, the managers satisfy their own tastes under
the pretence of satisfying that of the public. That is, of course,
intensely human. We judge others by ourselves.

A famous manager once said to me, as he pointed to an empty house, "The
public is amazing. Give them what they like, and they don't come!"

One day I was walking in a garden. There was a bandstand and musicians
were playing some sort of music. The crowd was indifferent and passed by
talking without paying the slightest attention. Suddenly there sounded
the first notes of the delightful _andante_ of Beethoven's _Symphony in
D_--a flower of spring with a delicate perfume. At the first notes all
walking and talking stopped. And the crowd stood motionless and in an
almost religious silence as it listened to the marvel. When the piece
was over, I went out of the garden, and near the entrance I heard one of
the managers say,

"There, you see they don't like that kind of music.

And that kind of music was never played there again.

CHAPTER IX

ANARCHY IN MUSIC

Music is as old as human nature. We can get some idea of what it was at
first from the music of savage tribes. There were a few notes and
rudimentary melodies with blows struck in cadence as an accompaniment;
or, sometimes, the same primitive rhythms without any accompaniment--and
nothing else! Then melody was perfected and the rhythms became more
complicated. Later came