signification.  The parallel no doubt holds well enough even if we answer, as we certainly may, that in much vocal music the words are so unimportant that it really does not musically matter if they are unintelligible or inaudible.  But this latter-day demand on the listener is considerable.  The listener to Strauss’s Don Quixote, for example, must, in order to appreciate in full measure any section of this long work, have a fairly close acquaintance with Cervantes’ book—­whether derived from an analytical programme or from personal reading:  there are neither words nor acting to give a clue, nor does the printed music itself give the slightest assistance, except in so far that a couple of themes are labelled with the names of the ’Knight of the sorrowful countenance’ himself and Sancho Panza.  Sometimes, no doubt, a composer helps at any rate the purchaser of his music more; but to the listener he gives nothing, and leaves his thought, as embodied in the mere title, to be reached as best it may.  The modern composer makes these demands on the listener continually; and he does so simply because the sphere of the music-lover’s imaginativeness and general culture has become so greatly enlarged that he thinks he can fairly afford to take the risk.

But we may well ask whether the music of suggestion has not, in its restless anxiety to correlate itself with non-musical culture, reached or perhaps even overstepped the limits of musical possibility.  It is no question of a composer’s rights:  he has a right to do anything he can, provided that he preserves a due proportion between essentials and unessentials.  And judicious criticism will turn, if not a blind, at any rate a short-sighted eye towards a great composer’s occasional realistic escapades, which, however irritating they may perhaps be to others, are to him only a part of the general background of his texture; after all, in their different media, Bach and most of the other giants have occasionally allowed themselves similar little flings.  It is a question not of rights, but of powers.  The poet and the painter and the novelist, not to mention all the non-human agents in the universe, are bound to do a good many things much better than the composer can; and even if he may personally aspire to be a kind of spectator of all time and existence, he has no means of making his listeners see eye to eye with himself.  The risk he runs may be too great.  Realizing as we must that all this ferment of suggestion-seeking has undoubtedly vivified and enriched musical development in not a few aspects, we may nevertheless feel, and feel profoundly, that there is a cardinal weakness inherent in it.  A composer may so easily be tempted to forget that it is after all by his music, and by his music alone, that he stands or falls.  If he asks too much extra-musical sympathy from the listener, he defeats his own end.  The listener will inevitably concentrate on the unessentials, and will as likely