pre-eminent as music; nor can Haydn’s Creation, nor any of the music that, intentionally or unintentionally, is not single-hearted, but calls up visual images as well as depending on them. This statement does not constitute an indictment of programme-music. The _Adagio_ of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony cannot be thus lightly dismissed[46]. In Tchaikovsky’s introspective letters we find most interesting accounts of the inspiration from which he worked, and an eloquent defence of programme-music in general, and his own Fourth Symphony in particular[47]. To N. F. von Meck he writes[48]: “Laroche is entirely opposed to a programme. He thinks the composer should leave the hearer to interpret the meaning of the work as he pleases; that the programme limits his freedom; that music is incapable of expressing the concrete phenomena of the physical and mental world.... If you care to hear my opinion on the subject, I will give it in a few words.... I think the inspiration of a symphonic work can be of two kinds: subjective or objective. In the first instance it expresses the personal emotion of joy or sorrow, as when a lyric poet lets his soul flow out in verse. Here a programme is not only unnecessary, but impossible. It is very different when the composer’s inspiration is stirred by the perusal of some poem, or by the sight of a fine landscape, and he endeavours to express his impressions in musical forms. In this case a programme is indispensable.... To my mind, both kinds of music have their _raison d’être_, and I cannot understand those who will only admit one of these styles. Of course every subject is not equally suitable for a symphony, any more than for an opera; but, all the same, programme-music can and must exist. Who would insist, in literature, upon ignoring the epic and admitting only the lyric element?” Tchaikovsky seems to me to ignore the deepest side of music, however; that intuition of an ordered, universal harmony which gives to Bach his pre-eminence. Programme-music, then, is not necessarily limited to any great extent by that which it represents, provided the representation is sufficiently generalised to allow the music free scope. But it is always in danger of losing touch with the universal in over-emphasis of the particular, becoming constrained by its subject. Moreover it loses something of the freedom, and independence of phenomenal existence, which is the peculiar privilege of music and its unique prerogative among the arts, taking on something that belongs to painting or language. In so far as the wrong technical medium is used, just so far aesthetic expression fails.