the reader to understand the later chapters in this book, is but a
step.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] "Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies," p. 374.




III

_The Content and Kinds of Music_


[Sidenote: _Metaphysics to be avoided herein._]

Bearing in mind the purpose of this book, I shall not ask the reader
to accompany me far afield in the region of æsthetic philosophy or
musical metaphysics. A short excursion is all that is necessary to
make plain what is meant by such terms as Absolute music, Programme
music, Classical, Romantic, and Chamber music and the like, which not
only confront us continually in discussion, but stand for things which
we must know if we would read programmes understandingly and
appreciate the various phases in which music presents itself to us. It
is interesting and valuable to know why an art-work stirs up
pleasurable feelings within us, and to speculate upon its relations to
the intellect and the emotions; but the circumstance that
philosophers have never agreed, and probably never will agree, on
these points, so far as the art of music is concerned, alone suffices