Excerpt from The Philosophy of Modernism-Its Connection With Music, Cyril Scott: The Man, and His Works N ow, as everybody who studies the aesthetics of art must know, there were until lately two distinct schools of thought, the Classic, just referred to, being one, and the Romantic, its antithesis, being the other; but at the end of last century a third came into being, which its votaries christened the Futuristic, though the term is somewhat ambiguous, as we shall have occasion to see later. As to the first, our simile has attempted to show it must lead to creative stagnation, and to nowhere beyond, for it may be regarded as a species of pharisaism in art, a petty adherence to rule and letter, ignoring the true spirit; the value of originality, individuality, and self-expression in its highest sense. In a word, it may be described as a profane contentment, because it is the enemy of divine evolution, and should it vanquish its opponents, which, of course, it never can do, then no more could a masterpiece be created in the world of art. The truth is, classicalism is based, at any rate in music, upon a gigantic misconception - the misconception that any great genius was ever Classical in Ms day. No composer of the first rank has ever adhered to traditions; he has always overstepped them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.