The psychological process of musical creation has hitherto eluded all scientific research. No satisfactory result can be obtained from comparing the recorded utterances of the composers themselves as to what induced the composition of their works or what they intended to express in them. People who are inclined to interpret the music which they hear in literary or pictorial terms are naturally attracted by definitely descriptive music, and readily produce evidence in support of the theory that all composers set out to write music with a deliberately descriptive intent. But the history of music shows us clearly that deliberately descriptive music rarely stands the test of time. There are plenty of examples to be found of acknowledged great composers such as Byrd, Purcell, Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Beethoven, who have now and then set out to be descriptive; and in almost every case we feel that their descriptive music is on a far lower level than their non-descriptive music. Indeed, in many cases it is painfully ridiculous both as pure music and as description. If it can be saved at all, it is only by concentrating attention on its purely musical aspect. The trained musician is content to take music as music and nothing else. It is a logical and reasonable language, although it cannot be translated into words. Writers on painting seem now to be pretty generally agreed that the “story” of a picture has nothing to do with its value as a work of art; that depends upon line and colour alone. It is nearly half a century since Walter Pater wrote that “all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” It was yet a generation earlier that Hanslick put forward his theory of musical beauty. That theory of “abstract music” did not satisfy the age of Wagner and Liszt; but although Hanslick failed to work out his theory as fully as he might have done, its further implications have come to be accepted with surprising cordiality by a generation of musicians whose art would probably have filled Hanslick himself with the most unspeakable horror. Music expresses itself and nothing else. A work may be dramatic, illustrative, or even descriptive in certain aspects; but unless it is intelligible simply as music alone, constructed on its own purely musical principles, apart from all external considerations, it must fall short of perfection as a work of musical art. II