I should be sorry if what is said here and elsewhere were taken to imply
depreciation of all attempts at the interpretation of works of art. As
regards poetry, such attempts, though they cannot possibly express the
whole meaning of a poem, may do much to facilitate the poetic
apprehension of that meaning. And, although the attempt is still more
hazardous in the case of music and painting, I believe it may have a
similar value. That its results _may_ be absurd or disgusting goes
without saying, and whether they are ever of use to musicians or the
musically educated I do not know. But I see no reason why an exceedingly
competent person should not try to indicate the emotional tone of a
composition, movement, or passage, or the changes of feeling within it,
or even, very roughly, the 'idea' he may suppose it to embody (though he
need not imply that the composer had any of this before his mind). And I
believe that such indications, however inadequate they must be, may
greatly help the uneducated lover of music to hear more truly the music
itself.