As such, his usefulness is by no means small. He
speaks with an authority no less than that of his adversaries, the other
and less radical professors. He, too, has invented a system and a
method; his "Harmonielehre," for instance, is as irrefragable as theirs;
he can quote scripture with the devil. He is at least demolishing the
old constraining superstitions, and in so doing may exercise an
incalculable influence on the course of music. It may be that many a
musician of the future will find himself the better equipped because of
Schoenberg's explorations. He is undoubtedly the most magistral theorist
of the day. The fact that he could write at the head of his treatise on
harmony, "What I have here set down I have learned from my pupils,"
independently proves him a great teacher. It is probable that his later
music, the music of his puzzling "third period," will shortly come to be
considered as simply a part of his unique course of instruction.
Sibelius
Others have brought the North into houses, and there transmuted it to
music. And their art is dependent on the shelter, and removed from it,
dwindles. But Sibelius has written music innocent of roof and inclosure,
music proper indeed to the vasty open, the Finnish heaven under which it
grew.
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