rtistic form must be torn down; the physical elements unchained,
and then, and then only, shall we tremble once more before them. Mozart
may be on his door-step as a regiment passes: he may feel the inspiring,
courage-awakening effect of its rough rhythm and discordant, screeching
trumpets: he may go upstairs, sit down to his piano, make use of all
those sensuous elements, of the rhythm and of the wind instruments,
which have stirred him in that regimental music: he may use them in a
piece professedly suggested by that music; the piece will be "Non piu
andrai," and a masterpiece. We shall be reminded of military music by
it, and we shall be aware of the fact that its rhythm and accompaniment
are martial; we shall even call it a martial piece; but will it stir us,
will it make us step out and feel soldier-like as would the coarsest
regimental trumpets? Jommelli may enter a cathedral as the bells are
tolling to mass, and all seems undulating and heaving beneath their
swing; he may feel the awful effect of those simple, shapeless sounds:
he may listen to their suggestion and frame the opening of his Mass for
the Dead on that deep monotonous sway; he will produce a masterpiece,
the wondrous _Introitus_ of his Requiem, in which we shall indeed
recognize something of the solemn rhythm of the bells, something that
will awaken in us the recollection of that moment when the cathedral
towers seemed to rock to their movement, and the aisles re-echoed their
roar, and when even miles away in the open country the clear deep toll
floated across the silent fields; but that effect itself we shall never
hear in the music. The artist has used the already existing emotional
elements for his own purposes, but those purposes are artistic ones;
they aim at delighting the mind, not at tickling the nerves.

The composer, therefore, inasmuch as he deprives the emotional elements
of music of their freedom and force of action, cannot possibly produce
an effect on the emotions at all to be compared with that spontaneously
afforded by nature; he can imitate the rush of waters or the sob of
despair only so distantly and feebly that the effect of either is
well-nigh lost, and even for such an imitation he must endanger the
artistic value of his work, which is safe only when it is the artist's
sole aim and object. The most that the composer can legitimately do is
to suggest a given emotion by employing in his intellectual structure
such among the physic