ension of
and taste in music," and Matheson says, not satirically, but in earnest:
"Formerly only two things were demanded of a composition, namely, melody
and harmony; but nowadays one would come off badly if one did not add
the third thing, namely, gallantry, which, however, can in no wise be
learned or set down in rules but is acquired only by good taste and
sound judgment. If one wished for an example, and were the reader
perhaps not gallant enough to understand what gallantry means in music,
it might not come amiss to use that of a dress, in which the cloth could
represent the so necessary harmony, the style; the suitable melody, and
then perhaps the embroidery might represent the gallantry."

With such tailor-like artistic taste prevalent in the gallant world of
that day, it is all the more astonishing that a solitary great spirit
like Sebastian Bach dared to develop his best thoughts and most peculiar
forms also in concert music. To be sure, as a natural consequence he had
to remain solitary.

The above mentioned music "for the diversion of the mind and wit" loved
short pieces, concise composition, minor measures, frequent repetitions
of the same thought. The intellectual ear grasps all that easily, and
amuses itself with the comparison of themes which are repeated in the
same or in changed forms. We, on the contrary, nearly always listen to
music with a dreamy, seldom with an intellectually comparative ear;
therefore modern music is much more influential, but also much more
dangerous, than the old. Musical pieces increase in length from year to
year, in order that, during the performance of them, one may have the
requisite time to dream. The composition has become infinitely more
complicated. Formerly four measures sufficed for a simple melodic
phrase, then six, then eight, now twelve and sixteen are hardly enough.
Worthy old Schicht called young Beethoven a musical pig when he first
learned to know the broad architectonic composition in the latter's
works. He listened to the man of the future with the ear of his own past
age, and in so far was quite right. To the people of the earlier period
of the eighteenth century Beethoven's works would certainly have seemed
unspeakably confused and bombastic, indeed like the products of musical
insanity and, moreover, swarming with the worst kind of stylistic and
grammatical blunders, as they did indeed appear at times even to the
older contemporaries of the master. Littl