[Sidenote:  The quail.]

The quail’s song is merely a monotonic rhythmical figure to which
German fancy has fitted words of pious admonition: 

[Music illustration:  Fuerch-te Gott!  Lo-be Gott!]

[Sidenote:  Conventional idioms.]

[Sidenote:  Association of ideas.]

[Sidenote:  Fancy and imagination.]

[Sidenote:  Harmony and emotionality.]

The paucity of examples in this department is a demonstration of the statement made elsewhere that nature does not provide music with models for imitation as it does painting and sculpture.  The fact that, nevertheless, we have come to recognize a large number of idioms based on association of ideas stands the composer in good stead whenever he ventures into the domain of delineative or descriptive music, and this he can do without becoming crudely imitative.  Repeated experiences have taught us to recognize resemblances between sequences or combinations of tones and things or ideas, and on these analogies, even though they be purely conventional (that is agreed upon, as we have agreed that a nod of the head shall convey assent, a shake of the head dissent, and a shrug of the shoulders doubt or indifference), the composers have built up a voluminous vocabulary of idioms which need only to be helped out by a suggestion to the mind to be eloquently illustrative.  “Sometimes hearing a melody or harmony arouses an emotion like that aroused by the contemplation of a thing.  Minor harmonies, slow movements, dark tonal colorings, combine directly to put a musically susceptible person in a mood congenial to thoughts of sorrow and death; and, inversely, the experience of sorrow, or the contemplation of death, creates affinity for minor harmonies, slow movements, and dark tonal colorings.  Or we recognize attributes in music possessed also by things, and we consort the music and the things, external attributes bringing descriptive music into play, which excites the fancy, internal attributes calling for an exercise of the loftier faculty, imagination, to discern their meaning."[B] The latter kind is delineative music of the higher order, the kind that I have called idealized programme music, for it is the imagination which, as Ruskin has said, “sees the heart and inner nature and makes them felt, but is often obscure, mysterious, and interrupted in its giving out of outer detail,” which is “a seer in the prophetic sense, calling the things that are not as though they were, and forever delighting to dwell on that which is not tangibly present.”  In this kind of music, harmony, the real seat of emotionality in music, is an eloquent factor, and, indeed, there is no greater mystery in the art, which is full of mystery, than the fact that the lowering of the second tone in the chord, which is the starting-point of harmony, should change an expression of satisfaction, energetic action, or jubilation into an accent of pain or sorrow.  The major mode is “to do,” the minor, “to suffer:”