Excerpt from Rambles in Music-Land: Essays Upon Topics of Interest, to All Music-Lovers
Has Modern Music Any Originality?
The tonal art apparently culminated in Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, and a few other masters in composition, who have all passed away. Did originality cease with them, and are the works of their successors simply "reminiscences" - echoes of old stories told in modern phrases?
Solomon once observed that "the thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is nothing new under the sun" - a rather original remark, by the way, that was uttered by this blase and pessimistic king of old, who would doubtless have resented the imputation of his famous aphorisms having been reminiscences of older thought, just as any one in our day would be offended if another were to speak as disparagingly of him, as in mock humility he will speak in regard to himself. The matter of present and future originality in art and in literature is a much mooted question; and yet the recognition of a few undeniable facts would simplify if not settle the dispute. The whole argument is usually obscured by the thoughtless assumption that, if an idea is to be original, it must be totally, in every point and particular, original; that nothing in the entire scope of the idea that is already familiar can enter into it, without upsetting its claim to novelty. But this is unreasonable; we do not argue in that way on other subjects.
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