132 Lecture on Music
or judge a work of musical art; indeed, I have the same
feeling about other works of art whether in painting, sculp-
ture, or architecture. Would it be, then, that I do not accept
the so-called classical laws of harmony, counterpoint, and
so on? Whether I recognize their validity or not is of little
importance to me in judging contemporary compositions,
for these classical laws originated in works of the past;
they have been formulated and adopted by teachers in their
efforts to find a permanent basis, solid and suitable, for
their courses of instruction; and this body of doctrine has
undergone change after change in accommodating itself to
new laws peculiar to new compositions appearing from
time to time. No academic attempt to establish permanent
laws, however, ever helped or hindered the advancement
of work in art. The matter might be summed up by saying
that in musical treatises there are no such laws as would
be of any avail in judging a contemporary musical work
of art. Apparently the uselessness of all such arguments
must come from the fact that such would-be laws are deal-
ing only with the obvious and superficial part of the work
of art without ever reaching those infinitely minute roots
of the artist’s sensitiveness and personal reaction. The elu-
sive roots, or sources, are often sensed as two in character:
one might be called the national consciousness, its territory
being rather extensive; while the other, the individual con-
sciousness, seems to be the product of an egocentric process.
Both defy classification and analysis as well, yet every sen-
sitive artist perceives the value of their influence in the
creation of a real work of art. The manifestation of these
two types of consciousness in music may break or satisfy
all the academic rules, but such circumstance is of insig-
nificant importance compared with the real aim, namely,
fullness and sincerity of expression. We have here to do,