Earlier this year, when I first heard Dave Aju's soulful house cut “First Love” (out this month on Circus Company on his full-length entitled Open Wide), I was struck by such deeply stirring feelings that I had this track on constant rotation for a week! At the time, I didn't try to conceptualize what precisely in this piece created such a resonance. Then recently while rooting around old music journals, I came across this very poignant article from 1913 which perfectly put into words the sentiments I have while listening to my favourite music. Especially notable is the passage that starts with “This instinctive feeling for a work is, in reality, the mirror of its creation.”

After transcribing the relevant paragraphs (below), I became so engrossed in the author's writing style and whimsical ranting, that I decided to transcribe a couple more passages to allow him to complete his thought! Down with horticulturists!! And the belated bleatings of the pathetically weak-voiced!!! haha! Without further ado, I give you:

Some Reflections on Modern Musical Criticism
P. A. Hesletine
The Musical Times, Vol. 54, No. 848 (Oct. 1, 1913), pp. 652-654
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.

“... for what, after all, is the musical aesthetic if it is no that intuitive feeling for the music implanted in the individual, the feeling of the merits or defects of a work, even if hear and reason be at variance on the subject? This instinctive feeling for a work is, in reality, the mirror of its creation, and almost amounts to a creation in itself, for it is the reflex action of a creative will that has achieved its expression, upon a sympathetic temperament whose desire to translate its dreams into the realities of art lacks a voice of its own, finding the vague thoughts it would utter reflected, or rather transfigured and transcended by the voices of others of a kindred nature that have become articulate.

In the same way, a work that is antipathetic in feeling to the mood or temperament of a particular hearer, evokes the thought that even its expressed realit is inferior to the shadowy, unborn dreams that haunt his mind. As was hinted above, this power of feeling a work has its roots entirely in the idiosyncrasies of temperament and their resultant moods and tastes.

The time has long passed when freedom of thought in music was suppressed by a kind of superstitious adherence to certain arbitrary rules and regulations, in spite of the belated bleatings - now becoming pathetically weak-voiced and unsupported - of the musically dead who deplore the 'licentiousness' of modern music, and sigh for the good old days when Haydn reigned supreme, or even make bold to deny the name of music to the works of those 20th century composers whose musical genealogies they happen to be unable to trace back to Jubal. They should, perhaps, be reminded that there are, no doubt, persons who would see no necessary connection between the grown plant and its bulb - there certainly is not much resemblance between the two when viewed side by side - but such people would scarcely be mistaken for horticulturists, though they might take the greatest delight in the aesthetic beauty of flowers. Even those who condescend to permit their contemporaries to express themselves through a musical medium at all, are prone to forget that all the precious rules and regulations which are so dear to them, were only compiled by musical grammarians from the study of musical works already in existence.”