Spanish, and Provençal. The principal elements of these stories were
the marvellous and the supernatural. The composers whose names first
spring into our minds when we think of the Romantic School are men
like Mendelssohn and Schumann, who drew much of their inspiration from
the young writers of their time who were making war on stilted
rhetoric and conventionalism of phrase. Schumann touches hands with
the Romantic poets in their strivings in two directions. His artistic
conduct, especially in his early years, is inexplicable if Jean Paul
be omitted from the equation. His music rebels against the formalism
which had held despotic sway over the art, and also seeks to disclose
the beauty which lies buried in the world of mystery in and around us,
and give expression to the multitude of emotions to which unyielding
formalism had refused adequate utterance. This, I think, is the chief
element of Romanticism. Another has more of an external nature and
genesis, and this we find in the works of such composers as Von Weber,
who is Romantic chiefly in his operas, because of the supernaturalism
and chivalry in their stories, and Mendelssohn, who, while distinctly
Romantic in many of his strivings, was yet so great a master of form,
and so attached to it, that the Romantic side of him was not fully
developed.

[Sidenote: _A definition of "Classical" in music._]

[Sidenote: _The creative and conservative principles._]

[Sidenote: _Musical laws of necessity progressive._]

[Sidenote: _Bach and Romanticism._]

[Sidenote: _Creation and conservation._]