Terpander; or, Music and the future

The mechanical inventions of recent years have provided us with increased facilities for the diffusion of music. The present era may come to be regarded as similar in historical importance to those which first benefited by the invention of the stave and by the invention of music-printing. To some extent these changes represent merely the adaptation of practical conditions to the increase in population. But whereas the invention of the stave and the invention of music-printing must in all probability have increased the number of persons who could read music at sight, the modern reproductive machinery cannot do more than increase the number of those who confine themselves to listening. It remains to be seen what proportion of those who acquire the habit of listening will be stimulated to learn something of the art of performing. We hear much of the enthusiasm for music amongst “the masses.” Apparently they are now singing Bach, whereas their grandparents sang Handel; does it make much difference?

It is said that modern music has lost contact with “the people.” Had it ever any contact with them, if by “the people” is meant those whose musical education is not more than elementary? By all means let us do our utmost to raise the standard of musical education in all classes of society; but we cannot get away from the fact that at all periods of musical history the music which really made that history was in its own day the possession only of a limited circle of highly cultivated enthusiasts. This is inevitable. The moment we recognize music to be an art and not merely the instrument of magic we have to apply our intellectual faculties to the understanding of it. Architects and painters complain bitterly enough of the public’s unwillingness to meet them halfway. For the musician the case is still worse; the practical difficulty of grasping a piece of music in the transitory moment of performance is one reason, and another is the intensity with which musical sounds act upon human emotions. It is small wonder if large numbers of people still regard music as almost magical.

It is the remnant of these primitive beliefs which leads so many serious-minded and otherwise reasonable persons to take an apprehensive view of modern music, even though they may consider themselves more enlightened than those who view the music of all ages with moral apprehension. The danger, if it exists now, has always existed; people have always feared that which they do not understand.

“It is difficult,” says Dr. Burney of Plato, “to refrain from numbering this philosopher, together with Aristotle, Aristoxenus and Plutarch, though such illustrious characters, and, in other particulars, such excellent writers, among the musical Grumblers and Croakers of antiquity. They all equally lament the loss of good music, without considering that every age had, probably, done the same, whether right or wrong, from the beginning of the world; always throwing musical perfection into times remote from their own, as a thing never to be known but by tradition. The Golden Age had not its name from those who lived in it.”