n their
audience. Yet their programme was full of "tunes." Is any tune in itself
"beastly"? Or is it that the brain-recognition, to which we have
alluded, decks out the tune in sordid or sweet trappings according to
its own nature? We certainly know that in other directions we are apt to
see things according to the colour of our own mental vision.

These tunes, however, that have become so popular, have the three
essentials of music strongly marked: they have decided rhythm,
attractive melody, and harmony at times quite good. Are we to try and
attract the multitude to music by muddling up or emasculating rhythm, or
by eschewing melody and banishing anything that intrigues the ear, and
by supplying an harmonic scheme that awakens no brain-recognition and
cannot in consequence be understood? Well, the conventional suburbanite
may gush over such indeterminate and invertebrate music, saying, "Yes,
isn't it just too lovely," but the rough and tumble individuals who make
up most of the world will plump for the "tune" every time. Give him what
he wants, and then induce him to want something better, but avoid the
mistake of trying to turn him into a musical vegetarian while his
meat-eating appetite has no liking for the diet.

The incongruity of some of the songs we hear sung is truly appalling: we
find a charming maid, love for whom might honour any man yet born,
singing "Less than the dust,... even less am I," and so on. Lies, all
lies, even though she lie melodically with charm and with apparent
conviction. We have passionate love-songs sung by guileless individuals
who would be inexpressibly shocked if you explained to them the meaning
of the sentiment to which they had been giving utterance. There are
operatic scenas, dealing with abduction and all sorts of uncomfortable
situations, and again youngsters declaim of their somewhat indecorous
emotions with gusto and--let us hope--a sublime insensibility of all
that they imply. They are warbling words to music, but they are not
singing, for the meaning is not there. The fault, of course, lies in the
traditional idea that all aspiring vocalists must learn certain things,
just as that all pianists should go through a corresponding round of
instrumental compositions. Why should they? Many of these classical
examples that we accept as the right things to sing or play are
hopelessly antiquated and out of date: they would not stand a chance as
new compositions to-day. Antiquity its