The change is gradual, usually not more than half conscious. It would hardly be wrong to say that the whole change, up to a certain point, is accidental. But it is often difficult to study such a transition in its early stages. And the peculiar interest of Fauré’s songs consists in the fact that they enable us to study the whole preliminary transition from the old to the new in French music, in simple terms and in steady development. Fauré was in a sense the laboratory for the new French impressionistic school. His experiments suggested dimly what could be done. His groping achievements showed how one might set about to do it. In his songs, from the earliest to the latest we see in successive stages of development the harmonic procedure of the new school. What was this change? What distinguished the old school from the new? It is worth while to answer this question briefly before touching Fauré’s work in order to have some touchstone to hold up to the songs when we come to look at them. In general terms the change from the old to the new in French music was a change from the conscious, the deliberate, the intelligent to the subconscious, the subjective, the sensuous. The older composers sought always to appeal in some degree to the hearer’s judgment, to please his sense of design, to speak with chastened clearness. We have often, in the course of this book, had occasion to mention the coldness and conventionality of the French music of the nineteenth century. Now the newer composers reacted against all this and set out to change it. In place of judgment they would have feeling; in place of the brain they would have the nerves. What matter about the sense of design if the _effect_ was beautiful? What matter whether or not you adjudge it to be good, so long as you feel it to be good? In the new French music the intelligence can usually go to sleep. Intelligence is in the music (or rather it was in the making of the music) but it keeps out of sight. All the hearer needs is to surrender himself to the sensations. He needs delicate ears and responsive nerves. If he has these he will get poetry and pictures out of the music in plenty. In other words, it is our old conflict between knowledge and experience, between judging and feeling, between the brain and the senses.