The Boundaries of Music and Poetry - A Study in Musical Æsthetics #227984

Let us not ignore the fact that in music we have reached a critical point. Hardly any one knows. What he should or should not do, can or cannot. Of creative tone-artists, a part (by far the smaller part) has taken refuge in earlier conceptions and forms, and cultivates its modest field after the principles of the so-called classical period. It would be too bad to attempt to disturb this idyllic happiness; but it is quite certain that everything such well-meaning people can say to us has already been said better by others before them. This scanty after-crop, fortu mately scarcely noticed by the world, pushes up para sitically among the genuine, authentic plants which once flourished in this soil precisely when it was the right season for them. But the greater part of creative tone-artists, and precisely the more gifted part.