BY EDWARD CLARENCE FARNSWORTH PORTLAND SMITH & SALE, PRINTERS MDCCCCXII COPYRIGHT 1912 BY EDWARD CLARENCE FARNSWORTH CONTENTS...

Bearing in mind Emerson's saying that every action admits of being outdone, and around every circle another may be drawn, we none the less believe that a comparison of Sebastian Bach, Frederic Chopin and Richard Strauss, will show that, because of excellences peculiar to his day, and also individual excellences, no one of these three epoch-makers wholly outdoes, wholly encircles either of the others. Rather is he a link of a chain in which Beethoven, Wagner, and certain others are indispensable.

Far down the vista of history stands the Grecian Homer, unique, and, save for Hesiod, alone amidst the memorable years. Alone we say, but from the view-point of his contemporaries was visible in the background—even to the dim horizon of civilization—many an eminence inferior only when compared with that colossal peak of Ionic song. To every philologist, to every classical scholar, the development and finish of the Homeric hexameter argues convincingly a poetical ancestry of which the Iliad and t

By virtue of his high endowment, Bach possessed that wisdom of genius which, to the thrifty and so-called practical, is but the foolishness of the visionary. Except in the case of a few works engraved by his own hands, he gave no thought to the immediate outcome of his labors; and yet, amidst the accumulation of his great, unpublished compositions, he wrote on as if all the engravers and compositors of Saxony were crying for copy. A lesser man, a man of talent, would have seen to it that his mas

Monteverde in his day dared to introduce the unprepared seventh of the dominant triad; but, in boldness he was not alone. In fact, the development of polyphony from the wholly unembellished and quite faulty chord progressions of early mediæval music, has been but a series of innovations at first condemned, then suffered, and then adopted. The earliest polyphonic writers founded their music wholly on the ecclesiastical scales derived from the Greek modes, and approved by Ambrose and Gregory. With

The measure of a man is the measure of his impress upon the world, not solely and of necessity the world of his day, but, in fact, the world of all days henceforth to be. Should we define that impress as something outwardly apparent like his doing who delves in the mine, or ploughs in the field, the statement is inadequate and even false. Our world is a manifold condition wherein, as one ascends, things material eventuate in things mental and things spiritual. This globe, vast and teeming with l

Genius is essentially sympathetic and would draw all men into rapport with its world of light and love. Companioned it must be, aye, close companioned! But descend it will never because to Genius its world embodies more of reality than does all this terrestrial globe. Happy the master gathering around him his little following! Happy indeed the genius, the solitary being, who finds among men an ideal friend; one to whom self-explanation, so hateful to Genius, is needless; one who knows instinctiv

Chopin's compositions, aside from his Waltzes, were in his day too novel and strange to attract more than the discerning and progressive few. Obtuse and ignorant critics vented their wrath upon them. Even Moscheles found them full of abrupt and harsh modulations, and the attitude of Mendelssohn was one of mingled like and loathing. Liszt alone accepted them in their entirety. Because of all this, their inevitably small sale made Chopin's office of composer comparatively an unremunerative one. Un

During this study of Frederic Chopin, the musician, certain incidents in his career, those favorably or unfavorably affecting his artistic development, have been touched on. Notable among them was his friendship with Liszt; but we have now to record the effects of another coming together, that of Chopin and George Sand. This latter was not the marriage of two minds musically preëminent, but, in fact, the result of the drawing near, until under one sky, of two related worlds: that of the musician

Because of the superabundance of producers in every department of art and literature, and because the actual needs of the world are small in proportion to the total output, a sifting results whereby is preserved only that most typical of its kind. Thus of a thousand melodies popular in their hour, one is added to a people's treasury of song. A stirring, national anthem, or a perfect poem of tender feeling or contagious flame, may alone preserve the memory of a prolific author. Much of what the w

The years now with us are prophetic of a century notable from its beginning; a century destined to achieve perhaps beyond our boldest imagining. Already is the century achieving, as, like a youthful but formidable being, it assaults that citadel of mystery wherein Truth must relinquish, one by one, her most valued and guarded possessions. To the observant, the present is a time of shaken foundations, a time of much actual overthrow, and even a time of planning that broader and deeper bases shall

The belief that for them only is the pure and high vision of Truth, and that the world should look with their eyes and abide by their interpretation, is the folly of many of the wisest reformers. Over-enthusiasm inflames the minds of such, and disturbs their sanity of judgment. The reformer in art is usually a philosopher pledged to some system into which, as into a mould, he pours at fluid heat his artistic imaginings. Because no system of philosophy yet elaborated finds general acceptance, or

The subject of long experiment, Music, as we know it, at length emerged from the centuries, virtually a modern art. The fate of its founders and their followers for long after, is that the names of these are well-nigh forgotten, and their works are heard no more. Because of them the later comers have survived rich through inheritance, but perhaps no richer by nature. Again has music reached the experimental stage. Sweeping upward in mighty spiral, and so conforming to creation's universal trend,