ctivity in art and science. In art it is ever true, as
_Faust_ concludes, that "In the beginning was the deed." The laws of
composition are the products of compositions; and, being such, they
cannot remain unalterable so long as the impulse freshly to create
remains. All great men are ahead of their time, and in all great
music, no matter when written, you shall find instances of profounder
meaning and deeper or newer feeling than marked the generality of
contemporary compositions. So Bach frequently floods his formal
utterances with Romantic feeling, and the face of Beethoven, serving
at the altar in the temple of Beauty, is transfigured for us by divine
light. The principles of creation and conservation move onward
together, and what is Romantic to-day becomes Classic to-morrow.
Romanticism is fluid Classicism. It is the emotional stimulus
informing Romanticism which calls music into life, but no sooner is it
born, free, untrammelled, nature's child, than the regulative
principle places shackles upon it; but it is enslaved only that it may
become and remain art.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," p. 22.

[C] "Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies," by George Grove, C.B., 2d
ed., p. 191.

IV

_The Modern Orchestra_

[Sidenote: _The orchestra as an instrument._]

[Sidenote: _What may be heard from a band._]

The most eloquent, potent, and capable instrument of music in the
world is the modern orchestra. It is the instrument whose employment
by the classical composers and the geniuses of the Romantic School in
the middle of our century marks the high tide of the musical art. It
is an instrument, moreover, which is never played upon without giving
a great object-lesson in musical analysis, without inviting the eye to
help the ear to discern the cause of the sounds which ravish our
senses and stir up pleasurable emotions. Yet the popular knowledge of
its constituent parts, of the individual value and mission of the
factors which go to make up its sum, is scarcely greater than the
popular knowledge of the structure of a symphony or sonata. All this
is the more deplorable since at least a rudimentary knowledge of these
things might easily be gained, and in gaining it the student would
find a unique intellectual enjoyment, and have his ears unconsciously
opened to a thousand beauties in the music never perceived before. He
would learn, for instance, to distinguish the characteristic timbre of
e