Is it possible, however, that this variety of musical tone, the
historical roots of which extend back so far, may be something arbitrary
and accidental? The very usage of the German language lends a
significant double meaning to the word _Stimmung_ (pitch, tone, mood).
It stamps with the same name, on the one hand, the given basis upon
which are built up the harmonies of music and, on the other, the
harmonies of emotional life.
It is one of the most fascinating, but at the same time most difficult
tasks of the history of culture to catch, as it were, the personal
emotions, the pitch upon which each generation is based, in distinction
from the perception of the outspoken deeds and thoughts of the age.
This task would be incapable of solution if the history of art did not
furnish us a key to it. I have already shown in the preceding essay on
the _Eye for Natural Scenery_, that the question does not concern the
historical appreciation of the work of art as such, so much as the
investigation of the special manner in which a generation has perceived
and enjoyed the beautiful. And indeed this is more easily discerned in
the case of the most fluid, subjective species of the beautiful, in
natural beauty, than in the more objective artistic beauty.
In art, however, musical beauty comes closest to natural beauty, since
it is in its turn the most subjective, the most general in its
expression, and the most versatile in its forms.
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