The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 375, March 5, 1887

Synopsis

ELSEWHERE in the pages of The Girl’s Own Paper a writer has explained the laws of form governing and underlying what we call “classical” music. To those who love art, in whatever guise it comes to us—as symphony, picture, or poem—a very slight amount of careful study of its accepted laws will repay a thousandfold the trouble taken. Having grasped even the faintest idea of the reason for the special shape of a sonata or a sonnet, the interest in the work itself becomes more keen. Then, too, it will be seen why literary men and artists choose the higher forms of their art to clothe their ideas.

There is too often a feeling that the chief difference between popular and classical art is that the one is “dry,” while the other is pleasing. This is in part true, but only when scholastic rules are obtruded too prominently. For while it may be at once conceded that too great an attention to form produces dry bones, yet genius can make these live, for subject as they are to laws, and having clear sequence of form, they have inherent vitality and strength, relying on more than mere fashion to keep their hold on the people, in spite of the varying taste of each passing year.

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