[Sidenote: _A warning against writers._]

[Sidenote: _Pedants and rhapsodists._]

Ungracious as it might appear, it may yet not be amiss, therefore, at
the very outset of an inquiry into the proper way in which to listen
to music, to utter a warning against much that is written on the art.
As a rule it will be found that writers on music are divided into two
classes, and that neither of these classes can do much good. Too often
they are either pedants or rhapsodists. This division is wholly
natural. Music has many sides and is a science as well as an art. Its
scientific side is that on which the pedant generally approaches it.
He is concerned with forms and rules, with externals, to the
forgetting of that which is inexpressibly nobler and higher. But the
pedants are not harmful, because they are not interesting; strictly
speaking, they do not write for the public at all, but only for their
professional colleagues. The harmful men are the foolish rhapsodists
who take advantage of the fact that the language of music is
indeterminate and evanescent to talk about the art in such a way as to
present themselves as persons of exquisite sensibilities rather than
to direct attention to the real nature and beauty of music itself. To
them I shall recur in a later chapter devoted to musical criticism,
and haply point out the difference between good and bad critics and
commentators from the view-point of popular need and popular
opportunity.




II