Yet program music continues to be written in ever-increasing abundance, and, though from the practical point of view it needs no apologist, it boasts an increasing number who defend it on various grounds. These theorists point to the ancient and more or less honorable history of program music, extending back into the dark ages of the art. They mention the greatest names of classical music--Bach and Beethoven--as those of composers who have at least tried their hand at it. They show that the classic ideal of the ‘purity of the arts’ (by no means practised in classical Greece, by the way) has broken down in every domain, and that some of the greatest works have been produced in defiance of it. And, arguing more cogently, they point out that whether or not music _should_ evoke visual images in people’s minds, evoke them it does, and in a powerful degree. When _Tod und Verklärung_ makes vivid to the imaginations of thousands the soul’s agonies of death and ecstasies of spiritual resurrection, it is no better than yelping at the moon to moan that this music is not ‘pure,’ or is out of its ‘proper function.’ Undoubtedly it is true that music which attempts to be accurately imitative or descriptive of physical objects or events is not worth the trouble. Certainly bad music cannot become good merely by having a program. But it is to be noted that all the great composers of program music insisted that their work should have a musical value apart from its program. Even Berlioz, as extreme as any in his program music, recorded the hope that his _Fantastique_, even if given without the program, would ‘still offer sufficient musical interest in itself.’ As music the _Fantastique_ has lived; as descriptive music it has immensely added to its interest and vividness in the minds of audiences. And so with all writers of program music up to Strauss and even Schönberg, with his _Pelleas und Melisande_ (though Schönberg is one of the most abstract of musicians in temperament). Further, good program music throws its emphasis much more on the emotional than on the literal story to be told. Liszt rarely describes outward events. He is always depicting some emotion in his characters, or some sentimental impression in himself. And there are few, even among the most conservative of theorists, who will deny the power of music to suggest emotional states. If so, why is it not ‘legitimate’ to suggest the successive emotional states of a particular character, as, for instance, Tasso? The fact that a visual image may be present in the minds of the hearers does not alter the status of the music itself. If we admit this, then we can hardly deny that the composer has a right to evoke this image, by means of a ‘program’ at the beginning.