Our minds can be sounding-boards, which gather and reflect upon our souls the tone pictures we hear. A wooden surface must be smooth, properly formed, and perfectly poised, or it will not collect, focus, and reflect sound effects. In the same way our mental sounding-boards must be properly prepared, or they will not collect details and reflect sentiments. This preparation involves the use of all available means for shaping, refining, and poising. The earnest study of any branch of learning broadens, and the contemplation of the beautiful in nature and art quickens, the perceptions. Pedantry--another name for self-sufficient ignorance--will warp and so distort our reflector as to mar its efficiency, making it unjust alike to the subject and to us. The ear should be capable of transmitting correctly, and if possible in detail. Some persons are endowed with absolute pitch. These fortunates, if they persist in careful listening, can become able to follow an intricate composition, in its modulations, thematic development, etc., more easily, as well as more accurately, through hearing than through reading the printed page. This ability marks a long stride towards sympathy with the composer, especially as its exercise involves undivided attention to the subject in hand. The absence of absolute pitch is no indication of lack of talent, and those who cannot acquire it have no reason for discouragement. Every ordinarily gifted student can educate his hearing to recognize intervals (seconds, thirds, etc.) and the tendency of chords, as based on the relations existing between the tones of which they are composed--to each other and to the key. We should strive to make ourselves good mediums. Refined creations cannot appeal to crude natures. The savage, although sometimes possessing poetic instincts, prefers his own music, with its monotonous weirdness, to that which more civilized communities can offer. Our right to pass judgment upon others' creations will therefore depend largely on the distance we are removed from the savage in the process of evolution. THE END * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For those words, the variant more frequently used was retained. In some cases there was no predominant variant. The hyphenated variant was chosen in those cases. Obvious punctuation and printing errors, which were not detected during the printing of the original book, have been corrected. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Music and Its Masters, by O. B. (Otis Bardwell) Boise