e read and have pondered; but I never have been able to
detect musical genius in its working, as I have, or have fancied that I
have, done in other arts. I can find no reason for the existence of
this beauty except that it is beautiful. I can see clearly, and I have
sometimes thought that I could with some satisfactory approach to
clearness tell in words, what the composer has done; but the how, and
above all the why, is as much hidden from me as it was from him. For
that it was unknown to him I am sure, not because I could not discover
it, but from the very nature of the case.

Beauty of form in music is absolute, independent, self-existent. This
is true of all natural beauty. There is no obligation upon beauty as
there is, for instance, upon mathematical truth or moral goodness. But
in all imitative art there is an obligation of conformity at least to
an ideal type of what is represented. But music the moment it becomes
imitative becomes ridiculous; it steps out of the proper limits of the
art. For example, Haydn's "cheerful roaring lion" and "flexible tiger"
in the "Creation." But it should be remembered that what is imitative
and false in that aspect may have an essential beauty given by the
genius of the composer. For example, the second and the fourth
movements of the "Pastoral Symphony," and Haydn's own illustration of
the passage, "softly purling glides through silent glades the limpid
brook," in Raphael's song, "Rolling in foaming billows."

Music in its higher forms--I will not say its highest, but those which
bring it within the pale of consideration in aesthetics--is without
relations of any kind, except those which it bears to the soul of the
composer and to that of the hearer. Even words are only the occasion of
it, the suggestion. An embroidery of music with words is like the
semi-pictorial explanatory addition to the Egyptian temples. The
hieroglyphics tell us the story indeed, but if we are near enough to
distinguish them, they only mar the effect of the architecture. So if
in song the words are for any reason sufficiently salient to attract
attention to themselves, they mar the music. In sacred music
innumerable foolish and canting verses have become associated with
fervor of feeling and sublimity of aspiration because of the music of
which they have been made the vehicle. We do not really think of the
words. And so in "Don Giovanni," in "Fidelio," we overlook the
childishness of the poetry, if it mus