s. Their vigorous rhythms, wealth of color,
and sonority would make these fragments far more impressive to a
savage than the suave beauty of a symphony by Haydn; yet do we not all
know that while whole-hearted, intelligent enjoyment of a Haydn
symphony is conditioned upon a considerable degree of culture, an
equally whole-hearted, intelligent appreciation of Wagner's music
presupposes a much wider range of sympathy, a much more extended view
of the capabilities of musical expression, a much keener discernment,
and a much profounder susceptibility to the effects of harmonic
progressions? And is the conclusion not inevitable, therefore, that on
the whole the ready acceptance of Wagner's music by a people is
evidence that they are not sufficiently cultured to feel the force of
that conservatism which made the triumph of Wagner consequent on many
years of agitation in musical Germany?

[Sidenote: _"Ahead of one's time."_]

In one case the appeal is elemental; in the other spiritual. He who
wishes to be in advance of his time does wisely in going to the people
instead of the critics, just as the old fogy does whose music belongs
to the time when sensuous charm summed up its essence. There is a good
deal of ambiguity about the stereotyped phrase "ahead of one's time."
Rightly apprehended, great geniuses do live for the future rather than
the present, but where the public have the vastness of appetite and
scantness of taste peculiar to the ostrich, there it is impossible for
a composer to be ahead of his time. It is only where the public are
advanced to the stage of intelligent discrimination that a Ninth
Symphony and a Nibelung Tetralogy are accepted slowly.

[Sidenote: _The charlatan._]

[Sidenote: _Influencing the critics._]

Why the charlatan should profess to despise the critic and to pay
homage only to the public scarcely needs an explanation. It is the
critic who stands between him and the public he would victimize. Much
of the disaffection between the concert-giver and the
concert-reviewer arises from the unwillingness of the latter to enlist
in a conspiracy to deceive and defraud the public. There is no need of
mincing phrases here. The critics of the newspaper press are besieged
daily with requests for notices of a complimentary character touching
persons who have no honest standing in art. They are fawned on,
truckled to, cajoled, subjected to the most seductive influences,
sometimes bribed with woman's smiles