Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 85, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1917 — WHERE MUSIC IS SUPREME [ARTICLE]

WHERE MUSIC IS SUPREME

Elevated Above the Other Arts Because It Is the Most Detached of Them AH. • The strength of every art lies chiefly inr the completeness of its detachment i f rom reality. Sculpture does'not gain t by being realistic, picturesque, or decorative; on the contrary it is at Its highest when it is ideql, detached and superhuman. Painting does* not gain by being categorical, but is greatest when it seeks something beyond the outward, physical view. The novel or the essay depends for its greatness on its power of relating real persons, things, and pleas to that greater and 1 deeper reality of which they are a part. In this sense music stands supreme above the other arts because i t is the most detached; The elements i of thought and Reeling and action are, in music, presented as elements. The thought is not thought even in the abstract, for it is not “about” anything; the feeling is not actual feeling and the action is not real action. Each of these properties, or states, of the human beings is expressed in its essence, detached from all actual manifestation. None but the highest tj’pe of mind, none but a heart full of deep human sympathy, none but a vigorous, militant spirit, could have conceived and brought forth such compositions, for example, as the third and ninth symphonies of Beethoven; yet they are nothing but sound —neither the intelligence, nor the feeling, nor the action is real. —Thomas W. Surette, in the Atlantic.