The Masters and Their Music

The Masters and Their Music, by W. S. B. Mathews, is a series of illustrative programs with biographical, esthetical, and critical annotations. The opening pages say the book is designed as an introduction to music as literature for the use of clubs, classes, and private study. The preface says that when a musical student begins to think of music as a literature, it is necessary for him to come as soon as possible to the fountainheads of this literature in the works of a few great masters.

The book says the tendency of the musical art is constantly toward the complex, and toward the bringing together of relations so subtle as to have been unintelligible to earlier musicians. The book advises using the Bülow edition of one piece, particularly as the figures are written out in full and the fingering is carefully marked. The book says a person has often maintained that one could write better music if inspired by poetry than when he merely gives rein to his musical fancy. The book refers to the large works of Mr. MacDowell's, especially the two sonatas.