sician, on the other hand, feels bound and tied when he is forced to express himself in words. He cannot say as much (nor can he say it as vaguely) as he can in his own music. If a law be passed as a pendent to the now celebrated Eighteenth Amendment (and very probably it will be), making it a criminal offence to mention vodka or absinthe or even beer in a book, or to paint a picture in which people may be seen to be drinking, the musician may still compose bacchanals and brindisi; he may be as abandonedly Dionysiac, as intoxicated and as intoxicating as he desires. Nobody is going to prohibit performances of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Nobody will arrest Vincent d'Indy for disrobing a tune in Istar. The cream of the jest is that our national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner, was originally a drinking song!
February 21, 1919.
