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2 National Music of the World. |
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round the roots of which the earth has never been stirred by labour.
The subject, again, has been handled ingeniously and earnestly by antiquaries who have not been professional musicians. But antiquarianism is apt, as a pursuit, to seduce the keenest and calmest of observers; and in no respect more largely than in making them partisans. I am neither scientific nor antiquarian; but the characteristics and beauties of national music have long and deeply engaged me, and its charm has found its place in my every enjoyment of the complete art; has run like a thread through my every experience of home delight and foreign travel. Thus, what I have to offer are not a few impressions, scrambled together in the haste of the moment, but are the result of many years of comparison and experience.
I conceive that the best and most profound students of the subject can offer little beyond impressions; that national music is a product to which precise test can be applied only within very restricted limits; that observation, guess, and coincidence must often be allowed to overrule tradition. Because, first, we have to take into account the uncertainty of memory, which can in no case be more largely |
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