Bearing in mind Emerson's saying that every action admits of being
outdone, and around every circle another may be drawn, we none the
less believe that a comparison of Sebastian Bach, Frederic Chopin
and Richard Strauss, will show that, because of excellences peculiar
to his day, and also individual excellences, no one of these three
epoch-makers wholly outdoes, wholly encircles either of the others.
Rather is he a link of a chain in which Beethoven, Wagner, and certain
others are indispensable.
That chain had beginning in the remote past, but, because inadequate,
many early links are now broken. Of musicians prior to Bach, Gregory
and Palestrina alone have endured the strain of time. The inadequacy
of the old, true of not another art, proves music to be virtually
an achievement of the last two and one-half centuries. This brief
term, a mere fraction of that which must be allowed to certain of the
sister arts, argues for music a very considerable period of future
development.
Comparison of the Gregorian Chants with the Wagnerian scores may bring
doubt upon this statement, but, since the advent of Richard Strauss,
it seems probable that the musician of the future will smile at the
ideals of our contemporary composers. What were the tendencies whose
centering in one master mind produced the great classical beginnings
of modern music, we would show in our estimate of Bach. The tendencies
eventuating in the free style of the romanticist, and the abandon of
the ultra school, we would indicate in our estimate of Chopin. And,
because of present tendencies, what direction tonal development will
yet take, we shall endeavor to ascertain in our estimate of Richard
Strauss.