LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
usic is the youngest of the arts. Modern music dates back about four hundred years. It is not so old as the invention of printing. As an art it began with the work of the priests of the Roman Catholic Church in endeavoring to arrange a liturgy.
The medieval chant and the popular folk-song came together, and the science of music was born. Sculpture reached perfection in Greece, painting in Italy, portraiture in Holland; but Germany, the land of thought, has given us nearly all the great musicians and nine-tenths of all our valuable musical compositions.
Holland has taken a very important part in every line of art and handicraft, and in way of all-round development has set the pace for civilization.
Art follows in the wake of commerce, for without commerce there is neither surplus wealth nor leisure. The artist is paid from what is left after men have bought food and clothing; and the time to enjoy comes only after the struggle for existence.
When Venice was not only Queen of the Adriatic but of the maritime world as well, Art came and established there her Court of Beauty. It was Venice that mothered Giorgione, Titian, the Bellinis, and the men who wrought in iron and silver and gold, and those masterful bookmakers; it was beautiful Venice that gave sustenance and encouragement to Stradivari (who made violins as well as he could) up at Cremona, only a few miles away.
But there came a day when all those seventy bookmakers of Venice ceased to print, and the music of the anvils was stilled, and all the painters were dead, and Venice became but a monument of things that were, as she is today; for Commerce is King, and his capital has been moved far away.