It is because so many of us have been taught by poets and romancers to
think that there is a picture of some kind, or a story in every piece
of music, and find ourselves unable to agree upon the picture or the
story in any given case, that confusion is so prevalent among the
musical laity. Composers seldom find difficulty in understanding each
other. They listen for beauty, and if they find it they look for the
causes which have produced it, and in apprehending beauty and
recognizing means and cause they unvolitionally rise to the plane
whence a view of the composer's purposes is clear. Having grasped the
mood of a composition and found that it is being sustained or varied
in a manner accordant with their conceptions of beauty, they occupy
themselves with another kind of differentiation altogether than the
misled disciples of the musical rhapsodists who overlook the general
design and miss the grand proclamation in their search for petty
suggestions for pictures and stories among the details of the
composition. Let musicians testify for us. In his romance, "Ein
Glücklicher Abend," Wagner says:

[Sidenote: _Wagner's axiom._]

"That which music expresses is eternal and ideal. It does
not give voice to the passion, the love, the longing of this
or the other individual, under these or the other
circumstances, but to passion, love, longing itself."

Moritz Hauptmann says:

[Sidenote: _Hauptmann's._]

"The same music will admit of the most varied verbal