But I doubt very much whether this is true. It is possible that the
music of Wagner may eventually become serene like the music of Handel;
but was the music of Handel ever morbid like the music of Wagner?
I do not base my belief on any preference from Handel's
contemporaries. We may, as we are constantly being told, be
_degenerates_; but there was no special grace whence to degenerate in
our perruked forefathers. Moreover, I believe that any very
spontaneous art is to a very small degree the product of one or even
two or three generations of men. It has been growing to be what it is
for centuries and centuries. Its germ and its necessities of organism
and development lie far, far back in the soul's world-history; and it
is but later, if at all, when the organic growth is at an end, that
times and individuals can fashion it in their paltry passing image.
No; we may be as strong and as pure as Handel's audiences, and our
music yet be less strong and pure than theirs.
My reason for believing in a fundamental emotional difference between
that music and ours is of another sort. I think that in art, as in all
other things, the simpler, more normal interest comes first, and the
more complex, less normal, follows when the simple and normal has
become, through familiarity, the insipid. While pleasure unspiced by
pain is still a novelty there is no reason thus to spice it.