trouble to
invent. Modern polyphony with its power of expressing at the same time
different, even opposing, feelings is a marvelous instrument for a form
of imagination which, alien to the forms clear-cut in space, moves only
in time.

What furnishes us the best entrance into the psychology of this form of
imagination is the natural transposition operative in musicians. It
consists in this: An external or internal impression, any occurrence
whatever, even a metaphysical idea, undergoes change of a certain kind,
which the following examples will make better understood than any amount
of commentary.

Beethoven said of Klopstock's _Messiah_, "always _maestoso_, written in
_D flat major_." In his fourth symphony he expressed musically the
destiny of Napoleon; in the ninth symphony he tries to give a proof of
the existence of God. By the side of a dead friend, in a room draped in
black, he improvises the _adagio_ of the sonata in _C sharp minor_. The
biographers of Mendelssohn relate analogous instances of transposition
under musical form. During a storm that almost engulfed George Sand,
Chopin, alone in the house, under the influence of his agony, and half
unconsciously, composed one of his _Preludes_. The case of Schumann is
perhaps the most curious of all: "From the age of eight, he would amuse
himself with sketching what might be called musical portraits, drawing
by means of various turns of song and varied rhythms the shades of
character, and even the physical peculiarities, of his young comrades.
He sometimes succeeded in making such striking resemblances that all
would recognize, with no further designation, the figure indicated by
the skillful fingers that genius was already guiding." He said later: "I
feel myself affected by all that goes on in the world--men, politics,
literature; I reflect on all that in my own way and it issues outwards
in the form of music. That is why many of my compositions are so hard to
understand: they relate to events of distant interest, though important;
but everything remarkable that is furnished me by the period I must
express musically." Let us recall again that Weber interpreted in one of
the finest scenes of his _Freyschuetz_ (the bullet-casting scene) "a
landscape that he had seen near the falls of Geroldsau, at the hour when
the moon's rays cause the basin in which the water rushes and boils to
glisten like silver."[97] In short, the events go into the composer's
brain, mix ther