A
position viewed as hazardous and unsuitable in one age, becomes the
accepted position of the next, and those who have been denounced as
musical heretics come to be regarded as musical heroes. Very often the
untutored public, trusting to natural instincts, will be in advance of
the learned critic in accepting some startling innovation. Old laws may
pass away, new laws may come, but the eternal verities on which all
manifestations of Truth and Beauty are based can never cease to be.
"The scientific laws of music are transitory, because they have been
tentatively constructed during the gradual development of the musical
faculty," says W. H. Hadow, in his valuable "Studies in Modern Music."
"No power in man is born at full growth; it begins in germ, and
progresses according to the particular laws that condition its nature.
Hence it requires one kind of treatment at one stage, another at
another, both being perfectly right and true in relation to their proper
period. But there are behind these special rules certain psychological
laws which seem, so far as we can understand them, to be coeval with
humanity itself; and these form the permanent code by which music is to
be judged.
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