view that music is the objectification of the will. Herbert
Spencer followed with the thesis that music has its essential
source in the cadences of emotional speech. In opposition
primarily to Wagner, the so-called formalists were represented
by Hanslick, who wrote his well-known "The Beautiful in Music"
to show that though music ha a limited capacity of expression,
its aim is formal or logical perfection alone. The expressionist
school could not contradict the undoubted fact that chords and
intervals which are harmonious show certain definite physical
and mathematical relationships, that, in other words, our
musical preferences appear to be closely related to, if not
determined by, these relationships. Thus each school seemed
to be backed by science. The emotional-speech theory has been
held in a vague way, indeed, by most of those theorists whose
natural conservatism would have drawn them in the other
direction, and is doubtless responsible for the attempts at
mediation, first made by Ambros,<1> and now met in almost all
musical literature. Music may be, and is, expressive, it is
said, so long as each detail allows itself to be entirely
derived from and justified by the mere formal element. The
"centre of gravity" lies in the formal relations.

<1> _The Boundaries of Music and Poetry._

To this, after all, Hanslick himself might subscribe. Other
writers seek to balance form and expression, insisting on
"the dual nature of music," while resting ultimately on the
emotional-speech theory. "The most universal composers,
recognizing the interdependence of the two elements, produce
the highest type of pure music, music in which beauty is based