The sincere endeavor to express a quality, with the aspiration to make it
real, has the tendency to focus the power of that quality and concentrate
the mind upon it. This, by repetition of effort, both increases the power
and facilitates its expression. One must come to think vividly in terms of
expression. In the instance before us it should be in terms of vocal
expression. Anything well expressed--unconsciously--is to real art what
innocence is to virtue, or what the spontaneous grace of a child is to
that grace as applied to forms definitely intended to communicate an ideal
to others. Self-consciousness must precede super-self-consciousness.
Unconsciousness is childishness in art, and leads to vagueness of meaning,
to the perpetuation of personal idiosyncrasies; and while a larger
consciousness may be induced from the mind side, positive and overwhelming
inspiration will be needed to overcome habitual limitations. A musician
must love music itself, as well as its meanings, and a voice cannot be
made the best of by one who does not love its music. Self-consciousness
represents the stage of work and endeavor where faults are being overcome,
power enlarged, and new forms of activity mastered. This may be at first a
hindrance to spontaneity, and seem to hamper the imagination; but as
facility is acquired joy comes back, and the joy of conquest with the
adustment of means to ends is a stage of self-consciousness dangerous for
the egotist, but is inspiration and incitement to larger effort.
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