How far is anyone justified, be he an
authority or a layman, in expressing or trying to express in
terms of music (in sounds, if you like) the value of anything,
material, moral, intellectual, or spiritual, which is usually ex-
pressed in terms other than music? How far afield can music go
and keep honest as well as reasonable or artistic? Is it a matter
limited only by the composer's power of expressing what lies in
his subjective or objective consciousness? Or is it limited by any
limitations of the composer? Can a tune literally represent a
stonewall with vines on it or with nothing on it, though it (the
tune) be made by a genius whose power of objective contem-
plation is in the highest state of development? Can it be done
by anything short of an act of mesmerism on the part of the
composer or an act of kindness on the part of the listener? Does
the extreme materializing of music appeal strongly to anyone
except to those without a sense of humor-or rather with a sense
of humor?--or, except, possibly to those who might excuse it,
as Herbert Spencer might by the theory that the sensational ele-
ment (the sensations we hear so much about in experimental
psychology) is the true pleasurable phenomenon in music and
that the mind should not be allowed to interfere? Does the suc-
cess of program music depend more upon the program than
upon the music? If it does, what is the use of the music, if it
does not, what is the use of the program? Does not its appeal
depend to a great extent on the listener's willingness to accept
the theory that music is the language of the emotions and only
that? Or inversely does not this theory tend to limit music to
programs?--a limitation as bad for music itself--for its whole-
some progress,--as a diet of program music is bad for the lis-
tener's ability to digest anything beyond the sensuous (or
physical-emotional). To a great extent this depends on what is
meant by emotion or on the assumption that the word as used
above refers more to the expression, of, rather than to a mean-

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