Excerpt from The Singing of the Future
"The soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or artist, or some musical and loving nature." I do not now follow Socrates into his subsequent divisions; for the moment it is enough that, as one who "has seen most of truth," he has included the Musician: and in this rich-sounding word I include all - composers, executants and critics alike - who labour, not for any selfish ends, but for the good of the art of music.
But musicians have not always shewn to the world, when their works have come to the birth, that they have seen the most of truth. The art easily lends itself to make passing amusement for the frivolous and the unthinking; in this there is nothing to deplore: we should rather rejoice in knowing that music can be an amusement, for it, in itself, is never ignoble; this it can only be when allied to unworthy words or to degrading spectacle. The manysidedness of an art is a chief joy to its possessors, but the ineptitudes, and worse, of the creators of the material on which executants and critics live, have too frequently tended to degrade the two last-named in the exercise of their duties in their branches of the complete art.
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