“ A sufficient number of sufficiently similar cases of this kind may conveniently, though dangerously, be regarded as establishing an art-form; and most art-forms coincide to a striking degree with practical and local limitations, for in these a great artist can almost always find suggestions for the character of his material instead of mere hindrances to its development. Thus art-forms become the vehicle for perfectly natural works in the hands of great artists, even when in the abstract they are highly artificial and conventional. ”

“ But new art must, if it is to live, be produced, like the classics, on conditions which the artist himself understands; and it is improbable that these conditions (if they admit of healthy art at all) will be of a less common-sense character than those of older art. ”

“ Hence the frequent ability of great composers to set inferior words to music which is not only great but evidently based upon those words. Hence the digust of great composers at even the cleverest unauthorized literary interpretations of their works. ”

“ New art-forms are not born mature, and in their infancy their parent arts naturally invite other arts to stand godfather. If the rise of the sonata style was not accompanied by as much “programme music” as the new art of the present day (and as a matter of fact it was accompanied by a good deal) , it at all events coincided with highly Wagnerian discussions of dramatic music on literary grounds. What is certain is, firstly, that no amount of theorizing can prevent a musician from developing his musical ideas ”

“ Yet the Greek chorus becomes natural enough when we realize the necessary material circumstances of Greek drama; indeed in the best examples it becomes the only natural (or even, in a certain religious aspect, realistic) treatment of a natural set of materials. In the same way we are taught that Shakespeare's dramatic technique becomes perfectly natural when we realize his equally natural type of stage, which was so constructed and situated in regard to the audience that scenery would obstruct the view just as it would in a circus. ”

“ In the absence of musical criteria for a future art, perhaps the analogy of drama may be useful here. The chorus of Greek tragedy can by no stretch of imagination be said to behave like a corresponding group of persons in real life. ”

“ And it is probable that the final condition of an art will always tend to approximate to such an idea. In the same way it cannot be doubted that the sonata form, with its subtle balance between independence of form and interdependence of contrast, is far too artificial to be such a final form of instrumental music as would commend itself in the,abstract to ordinary common sense. ”

“ At the same time the condition of the modern stage obviously approximates far more closely to such an idea of the art of imitating human life by human speech and action, as would most naturally occur to a common-sense mind at any period. ”