ions of pain, grief, melancholy, it will remain, for us at least,
happy music, voices of a house of peace. Is there, in the future of
music, after it has expressed for us all our emotions, and we are tired
of our emotions, and weary enough to be content with a little rest, any
likelihood of a return to this happy music, into which beauty shall come
without the selfishness of desire?

THE DRAMATISATION OF SONG

All art is a compromise, in which the choice of what is to be foregone
must be left somewhat to the discretion of nature. When the sculptor
foregoes colour, when the painter foregoes relief, when the poet
foregoes the music which soars beyond words and the musician that
precise meaning which lies in words alone, he follows a kind of
necessity in things, and the compromise seems to be ready-made for him.
But there will always be those who are discontented with no matter what
fixed limits, who dream, like Wagner, of a possible, or, like Mallarme,
of an impossible, fusion of the arts. These would invent for themselves
a compromise which has not yet come into the world, a gain without loss,
a re-adjustment in which the scales shall bear so much additional weight
without trembling. But nature is not always obedient to this too
autocratic command. Take the art of the voice. In its essence, the art
of the voice is the same in the nightingale and in Melba. The same note
is produced in the same way; the expression given to that note, the
syllable which that note renders, are quite different things. Song does
not in itself require words in order to realise even the utmost of its
capacities. The voice is an instrument like the violin, and no more in
need of words for its expression than the violin. Perhaps the ideal of
singing would be attained when a marvellous voice, which had absorbed
into itself all that temperament and training had to give it, sang
inarticulate music, like a violin which could play itself. There is
nothing which such an instrument could not express, nothing which exists
as pure music; and, in this way, we should have the art of the voice,
with the least possible compromise.

The compromise is already far on its way when words begin to come into
the song. Here are two arts helping one another; something is gained,
but how much is lost? Undoubtedly the words lose, and does not the
voice lose something also, in its directness of appeal? Add acting to
voice and words, and you get the ultimate comp