"Thou shalt find that many who profess the art, confess not to that which they yet endure,—a sort of shame in their profession, as if they should ennoble it, and not it them. Such professors thou shalt ever discover are slaves, not sons; their excellence as performers owing to the accidental culture of their imitative instinct; and they are the ripieni of the universal orchestra, whose chief doth appear but once in every age.
"Thou shalt be set on to study by thine instructors, and, as I before hinted, wilt ever repose upon their direction. But in applying to the works they select for thine edification, whether theoretic or practical, endeavor to disabuse thyself of all thy previous impressions and prepossessions of any author whatsoever, and to absorb thyself in the contemplation of that alone thou busiest thyself upon.
"Thus alone shall thine intelligence explore all styles, and so separate each from each as finally to draw the exact conclusion from thine own temperament and taste of that to which thou dost essentially incline.
"In treating of music specifically, remember not to confound its elements. As in ancient mythology many religious seeds were sown, and golden symbols scattered, so may we apply its enforcing fables where the new wisdom denies us utterance, and the nearer towards the expression of the actual than if we observed the literal forms of speech. Thus ever remembering that as the 'aorasia' was a word signifying the invisibility of the gods, and the 'avatar' their incarnation, so is time the aorasia of music the god-like, and tone its avatar.
"Then, in time, shalt thou realize that in which the existence of music as infallibly consists as in its manifestation, tone, and thine understanding shall become invested with the true nature of rhythm, which alike doth exist between time and tone, seeming to connect in spiritual dependence the one with the other inseparably.
"In devoting thine energies to the works of art in ages behind thine own, thou shalt never be liable to depress thy consciousness of those which are meritorious with thee, and yet to come before thee. For thou wilt learn that to follow the supreme of art with innocence and wisdom was ever allotted to the few whose labors yet endure; while as to the many whose high-flown perfections in their day seduced the admiration of the myriads to the neglect of the few, except by few, find we nothing of them at present, but the names alone of their operas, or the mention of their having been, and being now no more. And this is while the few are growing and expanding their fame, as the generations succeed, ever among the few of every generation, but yet betokening in that still, secluded renown, the immortal purpose for which they wrote and died not.
"Be assured that in all works that have endured there is something of the nature of truth; therefore acquaint thyself with all, ever reserving the right to honor with peculiar investigation those works in which the author by scientific hold upon forceful imagination intimates that he wrote with the direct intention to illustrate his art, not alone for the love of it, but in the fear of its service. Thus apply thyself to the compositions of Palestrina, of Purcell, of Alessandro Scarlatti, and the indefatigable Corelli; thus lend thyself to the masterpieces of Pergolesi, of Mozart, and Handel; thus lean with thine entire soul upon the might and majesty of John Sebastian Bach. All others in order, but these in chief; and this last generalissimo, until thou hast learnt to govern thyself."
He paused and stayed, and the summer evening-gold crowned him as he sat. That same rich gleam creeping in, for all the deep shade that filled the heavenly vault, seemed to touch me with solemn ecstasy alike with his words. He was folding up that paper, and had nearly settled it before I dared to thank him; but as he held it out, and I grasped it, I also kissed the ivory of his not unwrinkled hand, and he did not withdraw it. Then I said, "My dear master, my dear, dear Herr Aronach, is that for me to keep?"
"It is for thee," he answered; "and perhaps, as there is little of it, thou wilt digest it more conveniently than a more abundant lecture. Thou art imaginative, or I should not set thee laws, and implicit, or thou wouldst not follow them."
"I should like to know, sir, whether those are the sort of rules you gave the Chevalier Seraphael when he was a little boy?"