Now we must step backward beyond that point where science begins to shed her light upon natural laws. What agency produces life, starts and keeps in motion the machinery of our bodies, and places a soul behind our features? The same agency must guide us in the conception of musical ideas, or they will lack all living elements. This power is God: God in us,--a well-spring of inspiration for those whose susceptibilities are sufficiently acute to feel its influence.
Science can teach us to produce rich harmonic successions and instrumental colors, but it cannot impart the magical power of spontaneous and sequential growth that characterizes great compositions, nor can it show us how to identify the spirit which pervades such works. Any one can prepare himself to weigh the intellectual properties of a musical work, but the spirit which these properties are supposed to clothe will not materialize for unsympathetic souls. Herein exists the reason for differences of opinion entertained by cultured and honest critics.
Some works possessing all the attributes of greatness must be often heard before they begin to enlist our sympathies. Others, equally inspired, fail to awaken responsiveness in certain persons. Differently constituted natures cannot be expected to vibrate in unison, and as real music is soul vibration made audible, it seeks responsiveness in our natures, as any given tone lays hold of objects whose vibrations are sympathetic, causing them to emit consonant sounds.
The impression made by music can only be similar even--in character and intensity--where the hearers are equally endowed and cultured, and are equally conditioned mentally to surrender themselves to its influence. As long as each member of the human family is distinguished by individuality, so long will the impressions made by the intangible elements in art be diverse.
Suggestiveness is the highest quality with which a poet, an orator, a painter, a sculptor, or a musician can endow his productions. Its existence implies a clear conception, rooted in sentiment and adequately expressed through adaptable means, but well within the line of demarcation which separates logical terseness from redundancy.
Who can listen to Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, or Wagner and not find himself in a dreamland, peopled not so much by children of the great master's brain, as by the offspring of his own fancy? These results are the fruits of suggestiveness.