He is most bitter in his denunciation of Wagner, who
fought for a democratic art, but who wished to attain it by raising the
lowliest of his fellow-creatures to an ever loftier plane of high
thinking and feeling.
According to Tolstoi, art began to degenerate when it separated itself
from religion. There must have been dense mist before the Russian sage's
mental vision when he fancied this separation possible. Art, especially
musical art, is a vital part of religion, and cannot be put asunder from
it. Like thought, music, since the bonds of church and state have been
broken, has spread wide its pinions and soared to hitherto unsuspected
heights. All noble music is sacred.
Amid the marvelous material progress of to-day music is more needed than
ever. Unburdened by the responsibility of fact, it brings relief to the
soul from the grinding pressure of constant grappling with knowledge.
The benefits of knowledge are great, but it is also beneficial to be
uplifted, as we may be by music, from out the perplexing labyrinth of
the work-a-day world toward the realm of the Divine Ideal.
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