134 Lecture on Music
if we consider present-day reviews of the compositions
of Arnold Schonberg and Darius Milhaud, it often seems
as though chromatism and atonality on the one hand, and
diatonism versus polytonality on the other, were the only
significant traits of these two artists; nevertheless, in either
case, it often seems as though such a judgment would reveal
but the garb concealing or adorning their emotional sensi-
tiveness, and we should always remember that sensitiveness
and emotion constitute the real content of a work of art.
Furthermore, the acute and subtle perception guiding the
artist in his creative work is itself in continuous evolution,
for, just as any of the ordinary senses may be trained and
made to perceive better to-day than yesterday, so this per-
ception within the individual and national heritage of atmos-
phere and tradition may become keener and keener year
after year, leaving no place for standardized and perma-
nent classification.
I may be able to express my thought more perfectly if
we consider briefly these ideas of nationalism and individual-
ism in their relations to music. And what I hazard to ex-
press in this connection is my individual understanding of
the more striking characteristics of contemporary music
as exhibited in the works of some of my friends. At all
events, I hope in this way to illustrate my thought more
adequately.
For example, in the works of Darius Milhaud, probably
the most important of our younger French composers, one
is frequently impressed by the vastness of the composer’s
conceptions. This quality of Milhaud’s music is far more
individual than his use, so frequently commented upon, and
often criticised, of polytonality (a conception of the simul-
taneous use of several tonalities, of which we may find
embryonic examples as early as the chorals of J. S. Bach,