The controversy is now at an end, and it is generally conceded that a modern composer may fully choose whether he will embody his romantic thought in the classic sonata form, as Brahms did, or make new forms to suit his purpose, after the manner of Liszt and Tschaikowsky. The contest between classicism and romanticism began as soon as musical science had formulated sufficient law to enable composers to work according to some system. The very development of the classical era itself was due to the impulses of romanticism. But the process of perfecting form is a purely intellectual operation. Hence the dominance of formal development was due to a belief that form was of paramount importance in music, and to a determination to work according to that belief. The dominance of romanticism, or free emotional impulse, could only come when composers had arrived at the intellectual conviction that this impulse ought to be permitted to make its own forms according to its needs. At this point I must ask the reader to accept a somewhat long quotation from another book of my own ("What is Good Music?"), simply because I cannot present in any different form what I have already said and now desire to say again: "Music was originally a free dictation of fancy or feeling, and it dates back to the night of time. When I say 'free,' I mean in respect to form. It was probably a kind of intonation employed in the solemn speech of ceremonials, as instanced in the First Book of Samuel, x. 5: 'After that thou shalt come to the hill of God, where is a garrison of the Philistines; and it shall come to pass, when thou art come thither to the city, thou shalt meet a company of the prophets coming down from a high place with a psaltery and a tabret and a pipe and a harp before them; and they shall prophesy.' Further historical support of the probability that song began in mere inflections of the voice is found in the old Neume notation, which preceded the notation now in use. The Neumes were marks, somewhat like the Greek accents, placed over the vowels of a text, to indicate the intervals, up or down, through which the voice should pass in intoning. What we now recognize as melody was developed by gradual growth from intonations of this kind. Rhythm must have made its appearance in music as soon as it did in the verses to which music was set. Eugene Veron, in his 'Æsthetics,' says:--