"Our
interval," writes Walter Pater, "is brief." Few pass it
recollectedly and with full understanding of its larger rhythms
and more urgent colors. Many endure it in frivol and violence,
the majority in bored, sullen submission. Chopin, the New Chopin,
is a foe to ennui and the spirit that denies; in his exquisite
soul-sorrow, sweet world-pain, we may find rich impersonal
relief.
V. POET AND PSYCHOLOGIST
Music is an order of mystic, sensuous mathematics. A sounding
mirror, an aural mode of motion, it addresses itself on the
formal side to the intellect, in its content of expression it
appeals to the emotions. Ribot, admirable psychologist, does not
hesitate to proclaim music as the most emotional of the arts. "It
acts like a burn, like heat, cold or a caressing contact, and is
the most dependent on physiological conditions."
Music then, the most vague of the arts in the matter of
representing the concrete, is the swiftest, surest agent for
attacking the sensibilities. The CRY made manifest, as Wagner
asserts, it is a cry that takes on fanciful shapes, each soul
interpreting it in an individual fashion.
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