There are, among all the terms used in music, no words of vaguer
meaning than Classic and Romantic. The idea which they convey most
widely in conjunction is that of antithesis. When the Romantic School
of composers is discussed it is almost universally presented as
something opposed in character to the Classical School. There is
little harm in this if we but bear in mind that all the terms which
have come into use to describe different phases of musical development
are entirely artificial and arbitrary--that they do not stand for
anything absolute, but only serve as platforms of observation. If the
terms had a fixed meaning we ought to be able, since they have
established themselves in the language of history and criticism, to
describe unambiguously and define clearly the boundary which separates
them. This, however, is impossible. Each generation, nay, each
decade, fixes the meaning of the words for itself and decides what
works shall go into each category. It ought to be possible to discover
a principle, a touchstone, which shall emancipate us from the
mischievous and misleading notions that have so long prompted men to
make the partitions between the schools out of dates and names.

[Sidenote: _Trench's definition of "classical."_]

The terms were borrowed from literary criticism; but even there, in
the words of Archbishop Trench, "they either say nothing at all or say
something erroneous." Classical has more to defend it than Romantic,
because it has greater antiquity and, in one sense, has been used with
less arbitrariness.

"The term," says Trench, "is drawn from the political
economy of Rome. Such a man was rated as to his income in