MUSICAL COMPOSITION

CHAPTER IXEXTRANEOUS INFLUENCES IN INSTRUMEN­TAL MUSICMUSIC may be divided into two classes - absolutemusic, when the art speaks for itself by sound alone,and descriptive music, when it illustrates words ordrama. There has always been a tendency, which inrecent times has grown into a cult, to allow the secondclass to trespass upon the first. This type is necessarilya hybrid, but it has grown to such proportionsthat it requires the fullest consideration in any treatisedealing with composition. There can be no questionthat music which speaks for itself is not only thepurest, but also the most all-embracing form of theart. Being intangible and indefinable, it suggests todifferent minds different trains of thought, and anydefined programme of a movement given by onelistener may be miles apart from one given by another.For example, Grove's picturesque conception of thefinale of Schubert's Symphony in C, as an illustrationof the ride of Phaethon, may be entirely antipathetic toa listener of different mood and temperament. Toabolish this indefinable element in music is to detractfrom its universal appeal, and to impose limitationsupon what is inherently illimitable. Tennyson's155