An art that in some form is found in the varied activities of all people, at all times, must be the common heritage of humanity.  “It does not speak to one class but to mankind,” said Robert Franz, the German song writer.  Alexander Bain called it the most available, universal and influential of the fine arts, and Dr. Marx, the musical theorist, thought music beneficial to the moral and spiritual estate of the masses.

Truly indeed has it been said that its universality gives music its high worth.  Mirroring neither your inner life alone nor mine, but the world’s essence, the transfiguration of what seems real, the divine Ideal, some spark of which glows in every bosom, each individual may feel in it whatever he is capable of feeling.  The soul’s language, it takes up the thread dropped by words and gives utterance to those refined sentiments and holy aspirations words are inadequate to awaken or express.  Its message is borne from heart to heart, revealing to each things unseen, according as it is prepared to receive them.

In the Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare made Lorenzo speak to Jessica of the harmony that is in immortal souls and say that “whilst this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close it in we cannot hear it.”  To refine this muddy vesture, to render the spirit attentive, to bring light, sweetness, strength, harmony and beauty into daily life is the central function of music which, from the cradle to the grave, is man’s most intimate companion.

Richard Wagner devoutly believed it would prepare the way for an unspoiled, unfettered humanity, illumined by a perception of Truth and Beauty and united by a bond of sympathy and love.  This ideal union is the goal at which Tolstoi aims in his “What is Art?” He defines art as a human activity to be enjoyed by all, whose purpose is the transmission of the most exalted feelings to which men have arisen; but the union he proposes would have to be consummated by a leveling process.  All art that cannot without preparation reach the uncultured classes is denounced by him.  He is most bitter in his denunciation of Wagner, who fought for a democratic art, but who wished to attain it by raising the lowliest of his fellow-creatures to an ever loftier plane of high thinking and feeling.

According to Tolstoi, art began to degenerate when it separated itself from religion.  There must have been dense mist before the Russian sage’s mental vision when he fancied this separation possible.  Art, especially musical art, is a vital part of religion, and cannot be put asunder from it.  Like thought, music, since the bonds of church and state have been broken, has spread wide its pinions and soared to hitherto unsuspected heights.  All noble music is sacred.

Amid the marvelous material progress of to-day music is more needed than ever.  Unburdened by the responsibility of fact, it brings relief to the soul from the grinding pressure of constant grappling with knowledge.  The benefits of knowledge are great, but it is also beneficial to be uplifted, as we may be by music, from out the perplexing labyrinth of the work-a-day world toward the realm of the Divine Ideal.