He was sincere, and his survival, when nearly all
of Mendelssohn, much of Schumann and half of Berlioz have
suffered an eclipse, is proof positive of his vitality. The fruit
of his experimentings in tonality we see in the whole latter-day
school of piano, dramatic and orchestral composers. That Chopin
may lead to the development and adoption of the new enharmonic
scales, the "Homotonic scales," I do not know. For these M. A. de
Bertha claimed the future of music. He wrote:
"Now vaporously illumined by the crepuscular light of a magical
sky on the boundaries of the major and minor modes, now seeming
to spring from the bowels of the earth with sepulchral
inflexions, melody moves with ease on the serried degrees of the
enharmonic scales. Lively or slow she always assumed in them the
accents of a fatalist impossibility, for the laws of arithmetic
have preceded her, and there still remains, as it were, an
atmosphere of proud rigidity. Melancholy or passionate she
preserves the reflected lines of a primitive rusticity, which
clings to the homotones in despite of their artificial origin.
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