r, such assumptions as that of the 'Union of
Graduates in Music' to take rank as a definitely ecclesiastical, indeed
an Anglican society. Again, it so happens that a somewhat exceptional
proportion of English musicians hold, or have held, as conditions of
livelihood, posts to which not all of them would have aspired had other
channels, open to their foreign fellow-artists, been open to them also;
and, as a necessary consequence, there is more probability here than
elsewhere of the musical profession presenting practical problems for
the intellectual conscience to solve. So far as the musician is a
personal non-conformer and also a teacher (even if not a church
organist), he is often compelled into a tacit agreement with the
Cowper-Temple clause, at the least: and so far as he is a convinced
conformer, he is often compelled to strain, far beyond the meaning of
the parable, the principle of letting the wheat and the tares grow
together. This is called a practical age: and the compromisers, in
religion and in religious music, are a powerful force. But I would
venture to think that the future lies, in the long run, in other hands
than theirs.

To the mediaeval musician, religion and science were the twin
foundations of his art. But while the influence of religious development
can without difficulty be traced in musical history, the influence of
scientific development is much more contestable. It may indeed, I
think, be said that post-mediaeval music has gone its own way without
considering science at all. Theorists of course there have been, and
still are, who try to discover scientific foundations for the art of
music as we moderns know it: they do their best to correlate
mathematical physics with practical composition. But during the past
generation these attempts, never very hopeful, have become much less so.
It is only too easy to play scientific havoc with the foundations of
modern music: but, arbitrary and scientifically indefensible though they
may be, they are our inheritance. Music has come to be what it is by
methods that will not bear accurate investigation: our tonal systems are
mere makeshifts, and no composer can completely express his thoughts in
our clumsy notation. I doubt if, throughout all this last generation
that has seen such overwhelming scientific advance, music has really
been scientifically affected (in the strict sense of the word) in the
slightest degree, if we exclude some interesting experiment