He may be satisfied with "Tipperary" or
he may yearn for Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Melba, and
Schumann-Heink. He may not be able to rise above the plane of ragtime,
or he may attain to the sublime plane of "The Dead March in Saul." He
has access to all the music from the discordant hand organ to the
oratorio and grand opera. In his introduction of a concert company, the
chairman said: "Ladies and gentlemen, the artists who are to favor us
this evening will render nothing but high-grade selections. If any of
you are inclined to be critical and to say that their music is above
your heads, I beg to remind you that it will not be above the place
where your heads ought to be." In substance he was saying that the
nature of the music depended not so much upon the singers as upon the
sensory foundation of the auditors.
=Music and life.=--Having a sensory foundation capable of reacting to
the best music, this man opens wide the portals of his world for the
reception of the orchestra, the concert, the opera, and the choir, and
his spirit revels in the "concord of sweet sounds." Through the toil of
the day he anticipates the music of the evening, and the next day he
goes to his work buoyant and rejuvenated by reason of the musical
refreshment. He has music in anticipation and music in retrospect, and
thus his world is regaled with harmony. His world cannot be a dead level
or a desert, for it is diversified by the alluring undulations of music
and made fertile by the perennial fountains of inspiring harmony, and
his world
"shall be filled with music
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
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