It is inevitable that all this huge development of artistic resources, which has taken so many centuries of patient and devoted concentration of faculties, should bewilder the ardent and eager latter-day composer who is longing to express himself at once.
In many cases his invention and spontaneity seem to be paralyzed by the amount there is to learn. On the one hand, it causes academicism in the more conscientious, and, on the other, it causes rebellion. All the ‘isms’ of contemporary art of all kinds are the result of a kind of indigestion which is the outcome of the superabundance of resources of all kinds. The highest manifestations of art can only be produced by those who have survived the long process of learning to understand the meaning and purpose of artistic procedures and still have some vitality left. But the public is by this time quite incapable of distinguishing between what is built upon genuine foundations and what is pure recklessness. They like recklessness, and the power to recognize the mind which builds so difficult an edifice of individuality on loyalty to his art requires too much education. So many contrive the appearance of originality by the easy process of merely doing what they have been advised not to do. They cry out against the soul-subduing labor of having to learn how to do the things that are worth doing in the best way. So artistic progress becomes mainly the process of learning from making mistakes, which brings it into line with all the ordinary forms of social progress. It becomes a wild hurly-burly of impetuous adventurousness, in which the ardent explorers do not even allow themselves time to find out whether the new country they propose to explore is worth exploring. But without doubt there is a residue of the real quality when the disposition of the composer is also of fine quality. The ‘new paths’ now entail the motive of the composer being more identifiable than ever. They betray themselves in spite of themselves. The pedant cannot escape from his pedantry, the conventional-minded from his conventions, the sentimentalist from his sentimentalities, the vain man from his vanities, the sensualist from his cravings, the insolent from his insolence, or the commercial from his advertisements. The general repudiation of standards leaves them all without disguise, and the man who understands music can identify the individual and his type of society and what it is worth through the music he puts forward as representing him.
It entails a change in the position of musical art which took place in the painting art centuries earlier, and shows what a modern thing music is. Men no longer expect music to be the expression of noble and exalted thoughts only, but accept it as the expression of all kinds of moods, emotions, feelings and aspirations, whether they be little and intimate, satyric and strange, wildly extravagant, genially humorous, pugnacious, pacific, pastoral, even uproariously domestic. It is a new kind of differentiation in which there is inevitably a new kind of waste. But the ideal public, which is infinitely longer than it is broad, will ultimately apply the judgment based on the experience of generations, and will sift out the products of the genuinely artistic beings from the follies of the heedless ones. The purists are in despair, but those whose optimism is invulnerable can look forward in the unshaken belief that art will go on expanding healthily, in spite of the confusion of tongues, through the inextinguishable passion of true composers to find the most perfect and complete expression of their own personalities.
C. Hubert H. Parry.
October, 1914.
CONTRIBUTORS AND COLLABORATORS
FOR VOLUMES I, II AND III
| Franz Bellinger, Ph.D. | F. B. |
| M.-D. Calvocoressi | M.-D. C. |
| W. Dermot Darby | W. D. D. |
| Cecil Forsyth | C. F. |
| Henry F. Gilbert | H. F. G. |
| Leland Hall | L. H. |
| G. W. Harris | G. W. H. |
| Edward Burlingame Hill | E. B. H. |
| A. Walter Kramer | A. W. K. |
| Edward Kilenyi | E. K. |
| Benjamin Lambord | B. L. |
| Frederick H. Martens | F. H. M. |
| Eduardo Marzo | E. M. |
| Daniel Gregory Mason | D. G. M. |
| Hiram Kelly Moderwell | H. K. M. |
| Ivan Narodny | I. N. |
| Ernest Newman | E. N. |
| Sir C. Hubert H. Parry | C. H. H. P. |
| Francis Rolt-Wheeler | F. R.-W. |
| César Saerchinger | C. S. |
| Amelia von Ende | A. v. E. |
| William Wallace | W. W. |
| Leslie Whittlesey | L. W. |