Contemporary Composers

CONTEMPORARY COMPOSERS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO
Vincent d'Indy
DANIEL GREGORY MASON
AUTHOR OF BEETHOVEN AND HIS FORERUNNERS, THE ROMANTIC COMPOSERS, FROM GRIEG TO BRAHMS, ETC.
NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1918 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Copyright, 1918, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1918.
Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE
We live, wrote Stevenson to Will H. Low in 1884, in a rum age of music without airs, stories without incident, pictures without beauty, American wood-engravings that should have been etchings, and dry-point etchings that ought to have been mezzo-tints.... So long as an artist is on his head, is painting with a flute, or writes with an etcher's needle, or conducts the orchestra with a meat-axe, all is well; and plaudits shower along with roses. But any plain man who tries to follow the obtrusive canons of his art, is but a commonplace figure.... He will have his reward, but he will never be thought a person of parts.