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Contemporary Music 133

perhaps, with that inner motion which purposely sets our
intelligence and perception to seek its own development in
its own atmosphere and tradition—not its historical tradi-
tion, but the tradition which heredity makes one feel to be
true to one’s nature. Such search may be intensively selective,
and then becomes a clearing process applied to our natural
gifts and supervised by our individual consciousness. Here,
again, I insist that no stated laws can be given whereby to
judge the degree of perfection attained in this process on
the part of the individual, inasmuch as what we are attempt-
ing to discover is only sensed and as yet unknown. So were
I able to explain and demonstrate the value of my own
works, it would then prove, at least from my personal point
of view, that they are constructed altogether of obvious,
superficial, tangible elements within easy reach of formal
analysis, and, therefore, that these works of mine are not
perfect works of art. The difficulty remains when one at-
tempts either to classify or to state definitely relative esti-
mates of one’s contemporaries in music, not excepting those
among one’s own countrymen. Indeed, from this point of
view, any attempt to arrive at a definite judgment with
respect to a work of art seems to me to be folly.

On the initial performance of a new musical composition,
the first impression of the public is generally one of reac-
tion to the more superficial elements of its music, that is to
say, to its external manifestations rather than to its inner
content. The listener is impressed by some unimportant
peculiarity in the medium of expression, and yet the idiom
of expression, even if considered in its completeness, is only
the means and not the end in itself, and often it is not until
years after, when the means of expression have finally sur-
rendered all their secrets, that the real inner emotion of the
music becomes apparent to the listener. Thus, for example,

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