"The great German song composers, such as Schubert, Schumann, Franz and Brahms, working in profound sympathy with the 'Volkslied,' have arrived at a conception of the song infinitely richer, more refined, and more genial than is to be found elsewhere. With Franz and Schumann we find that, in the best cases, the music positively furnishes a sort of literary criticism on the text, with such exquisite exactness does the composer appreciate the text and supply the appropriate musical counterpart.
"We often hear of the music being wedded to the words of a song, and it is very curious to find so wonderfully neat and perfect a metaphor being used by people who are far from suspecting its perfection. This is in fact, precisely what takes place when a good song is composed—the music is wedded to the verse, though the expression is often used by those who think that the music has nothing to do but to express again, more forcibly perhaps, whatever feeling is expressed by the verse, who think, in other words, that the music is enslaved, not wedded, to the poetry.
"But music is not restricted to the expression of the feeling of certain verses or of any other feeling or feelings. The poetry and the music have each their independent character and their measure of independent beauty, and this independent beauty and character is in no sense destroyed by the union. The music has far more to do than merely express again or emphasise whatever feeling is expressed by the verse. It may accompany the verse, adorn the verse, brighten the verse, show up the character of the verse in a new light, and, in turn, be much improved by the association; but on the other hand, if destitute of independent beauty, the music can never become beautiful by being wedded to something.
"It will now have become clear, what according to the view of music that I have endeavoured to explain, is the task of a song composer. He has far more to do than to express again in tones the feeling of the song. He has to furnish a composition that, in the first place, has life; and, in the domain of art, to have life is to have beauty.
"Secondly, it must have no incompatibility of temperament with the text, but must be such as can once for all be wedded to the text with happy results.
"It is needless to say that a composer who takes this view, or has a subconscious appreciation of the facts on which this view is based, will not, if he cares for his text, be satisfied with the first outworn rubbish that comes to hand, by way of musical setting. He will regret whatever is totally wanting in naturalness and freshness.
"He will not, like the composer of drawing-room ballads, capture some wretched cadence, threadbare with much use, and trick it out, dragging up the melody into long high notes, crowing and shouting as though he had discovered America, whereas all he has really discovered is an old shoe lying by the roadside that once, perhaps, belonged to a prince, but after being stolen by the valet was given to a beggar, and so through a succession of beggars, the last of whom left it by the side of the high road."
Johnstone's interest in music was becoming more and more intense. In the intervals of his school work he composed a Gavotte which had a quaint origin. He was one day in a music publisher's shop in Edinburgh, when he saw a gavotte on the counter which had won a prize of £5 or £10 offered by the firm for the best composition in gavotte form submitted to them. "And is this your prize gavotte?" said Johnstone, "Well, if I couldn't compose a better gavotte than that in the time it takes to write it down I should think even worse of myself than I do." "Why then," said the representative of the firm, "go home and compose your gavotte, we will publish it if we take it and give you the same money as this prize-winner got." Johnstone went home and composed it, and the firm carried out their promise.
His few compositions were nearly always actually produced and completed under some sudden pressure from outside. Left to himself, his critical impulse was always stronger than his productive; he became dissatisfied and dropped the thing he was working at. His friend, the well-known singer, Fritz Hedmondt, having obtained from him a promise to arrange a certain song, let matters drop until the concert date was fixed and the programmes printed with the song announced "arranged by Mr. Arthur Johnstone." He then forwarded the programme to Johnstone with the observation that, of course, the thing had to be done. And it was done, in twenty-four hours, and was a beautiful and original bit of harmonization. He also set several songs, which, like the gavotte, met with the approval of Prof. F. Niecks, and were the main subjects of a fairly regular correspondence with Vantyn. In one of these letters he gives an appreciation of the pianoforte piece he most admired.
"About Schumann's Etudes Symphoniques I can only say this: For a long time past I have privately held the opinion that the work is on the whole, the finest composition for pianoforte solo in existence. This will no doubt seem to you exaggerated, but such is my feeling about it. The extraordinary wealth of imaginative beauty in those variations I believe to be quite without parallel. Just think of that last variation before the finale. There is nothing else in music which bears even the faintest resemblance to it."