Proceedings of the Musical Association (Volume 6) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: February 2, 1880. OTTO GOLDSCHMIDT, Esq., Vice-president, In The Chair. MUSICAL AESTHETICS. By Eustace J. Breakspeare, Esq. Many writers, nowadays, in treating of any subject, have the greatest difficulty in finding something new to say, so much having been said before them upon almost every variety of theme. In the subject of this paper I am, to some extent, free of this embarrassment; but my task is, I feel, not the less difficult on that account. When I say that writers have not given much attention to the subject of musical aesthetics, I allude more especially to English writers. The Germans have, indeed, busied themselves more than we have in this way, as might, perhaps, he well supposed from the somewhat abstract nature of the subject. But even they have not done so much with the particular branch of aesthetics relating to the musical art as one would have expected. If I myself enter this field, it is not, by any means, that I consider myself one most fitted for the labour; but I do so rather in the hope of inducing those to follow better able than I am to clear the ground of its difficulties. The reason of this assumed want of attention may be that artists, and particularly English artists, are, as a rule, impatient of any art-teaching of a non-practical kind; or, if theoretical, any such that does not bear directly upon the practice of their art. They are inclined to regard, with some feeling of disgust perhaps, all art-philosophising, and especially if such comes from any not much acquainted with the technical side of art. This, of course, will not be taken as imputing any blame to the artist; for if we consider how very little a certain class of art-literature can possibly influence or affect art-practice?how much of this writing is, in fact, nothing but s...