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In this way we may understand simultaneously the supremacy of absolute music and the truth for which Wagner contends, that music can never be anything but expression. Dr. Hanslick's dictum that music has no other means for its expression than movement and symbolism cannot be admitted. It can express through association.
Coming to more recent times, we find that some of the greatest composers and other men of genius were "savages," judged by Dr. Hanslick's standard. When Congreve wrote that "music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," did he not mean to imply that educated people are not affected by it?
The primary error in Dr. Hanslick's argument is that it begins at the wrong end, and tacitly assumes that art can be controlled by theoretical speculations.
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