"[141]
[Footnote 141: Vincent d'Indy, _Cours de Composition musicale_, p. 132.]
This book seems to be of the Middle Ages by reason of a sort of
scholastic spirit of abstraction and classification.
"In artistic creation, seven faculties are called into play by the
soul: the Imagination, the Affections, the Understanding, the
Intelligence, the Memory, the Will, and the Conscience."[142]
[Footnote 142: _Id._, _ibid._, p. 13.]
And again its mediaeval spirit is shown by an extraordinary symbolism,
which discovers in everything (as far as I understand it) the imprint
of divine mysteries, and the mark of God in Three Persons in such things
as the beating of the heart and ternary rhythms--"an admirable
application of the principle of the Unity of the Trinity"![143]
From these remote times comes also M. d'Indy's method of writing
history, not by tracing facts back to laws, but by deducing, on the
contrary, facts from certain great general ideas, which have once been
admitted, but not proved by frequent recurrence, such as: "The origin of
art is in religion"[144]--a fact which is anything but certain. From
this reasoning it follows that folk-songs are derived from Gregorian
chants, and not the Gregorian chants from the folk-songs--as I would
sooner believe.
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