on the contrary, must be aroused from the written, or printed page to
living tone by the hand or voice of the interpreter, and but a fragment
at a time can be made perceptible to the listener's ear. Like a
panorama, it comes and goes before the imagination, its kaleidoscopic
tints and forms now sharply contrasted, now almost imperceptibly
graduated one into the other, but all shaping themselves into a logical
union, stamped with the design of a creative mind. Properly to inspect
the successive musical images, and grasp their significance, in parts
and as a whole, demands keen mental alertness.

Many are content to listen to music for the mere sensuous impression it
creates as it wraps itself about the inner being, lulling a perturbed
spirit to rest, or awakening longing and aspiration, joy and sadness,
according to the nature of the music and the hearer's mood. Some even
take pleasure in formulating into words the sensations evoked by the ebb
and flow of the tonal waves, and fancy they are thus deriving
intellectual profit from music.

From both ways of listening helpful results may accrue, but by no means
the greatest. Music is far beyond words, and in attempting to translate
it into these we miss its musical meaning, the best that is in it. As
listeners we derive our highest æsthetic and intellectual satisfaction
from the ability to follow, even anticipate, the composer's intention,
now finding our expectations fulfilled, now being agreeably
disappointed. Failure to catch the opening phrase and preliminary
rhythms of the composition makes it impossible to appreciate the tonal
forms into which they develop. Nor may the mind linger over any one
part, if we would grasp the work as an unbroken whole. That musical
creation alone can afford the noblest delights that prompts and rewards
the act of thus closely following the composer's thought.