The veriest tyro in music feels the cheapness of imitative music, the imitation of the nightingale, the ripple of notes to imitate a rippling brook, the beating of a drum to imitate thunder, the tremolo of violins to represent fright, etc., etc. From such bald attempts at realism to the abstract beauty of a symphony by Beethoven is a vast interval. The severely logical composer will not name his symphony for fear of suggesting ideas that will interfere with the pure enjoyment of his abstract conception. There have been painters--like Whistler--who preferred to call their works “Harmonies” or “Arrangements” or “Studies” rather than subject their canvases to a clamoring horde of suggestions by choosing names that must inevitably divert the observer. However at times a name helps, it at least puts us on the right track, it enables us to measure the piece of music or the picture by the artist’s intention. If it is utterly impossible for the best and most sympathetic minds after long study to find any suggestion of the title in the work, it means either the artist has been unsuccessful in conveying his idea in sound or in line and color, or--what often happens--he has carelessly and arbitrarily chosen a title after his work was finished, a title that imperfectly fits his original impulse. * * * * * It is most disappointing to hear a man go into raptures over what he cannot explain. The greatest enemies of the moderns are their friends. But there have been published a number of books in German and French that are well worth reading if approached with an open mind. If read with preconceived notions and prejudices the result will be very irritating. Several artists, notably Kandinsky, have taken the utmost pains to explain in print what they believe and what they are trying to do. But it is often quite as difficult to understand some of the things the painters write about their work as it is to understand their pictures; but this is because some of the new men carry their theories so far it is hard for the layman to follow, however earnest and sympathetic his efforts. But because we do not understand what a man says is no good reason for calling him an ignoramus. The trouble _may_ be with him, it is _probably_ with us. At all events each re-reading, like each re-scrutiny of the pictures, yields clearer results. To a man _really and profoundly interested_ in art nothing has occurred in many a generation so full of significance, so worthy one’s earnest attention, as the present new movements--all the more interesting because changing so rapidly and because some of them are certain to be so fleeting. The art institute which does not secure and preserve some examples illustrative of the extraordinary upheaval in the art world is derelict--as derelict as a natural history museum would be if it passed over indifferently the evidence of some mysterious upheaval in nature. * * * * *