136 Lecture on Music
Honegger he expresses without reserve. From his musical
education, received at the hands of French teachers on
French soil, Honegger seems to have conserved a facility
in writing which he uses for self-expression along the lines
of German expansiveness, and his music remains true to his
racial consciousness—that is to say, the German conscious-
ness, for he was born of German-Swiss parentage. The lat-
ter statement is meant neither in a derogatory sense, nor
in one of praise; it simply says that, while we can reconcile
the various tendencies expressed by Milhaud, Poulenc, and
Auric, as being all equally rooted in French national con-
sciousness, it is from the German national consciousness
that the art of Honegger springs. If we should consider
still other young French musicians, we should find this phase
of racial consciousness again in evidence; for we should not
find the German character in the curiously dramatic quali-
ties of M. Delannoy1S music, or in the refined and intimate
music of Roland Manuel.
This national consciousness of musicians distinctively
German is expansive, while our French consciousness is one
of reserve. In virtue of the indissoluble ties binding each
to his respective national consciousness, it is, of course, in-
conceivable that either one should be able to express him-
self adequately in the language of the other. Nationalism
does not deprive the composer either of his personal soul
or of its individual expression, for each creative artist has
within him laws peculiar to his own being. These laws,
peculiar to the artist himself, are, perhaps, the most mo-
mentous elements at play in the whole process of musical
creation; they seem to be determined through an interplay
of national and individual consciousness; and they can be
imparted to the artist by no teacher, for they spring from
his own heritage, and are first perceived only by himself.