<h2><SPAN name="III" id="III"></SPAN>III</h2>
<h2><i>The Content and Kinds of Music</i></h2>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Metaphysics to be avoided herein.</i></div>
<p><span class="dropcap">B</span><span class="smcap">earing</span> in mind the purpose of this book, I shall not ask the reader
to accompany me far afield in the region of æsthetic philosophy or
musical metaphysics. A short excursion is all that is necessary to
make plain what is meant by such terms as Absolute music, Programme
music, Classical, Romantic, and Chamber music and the like, which not
only confront us continually in discussion, but stand for things which
we must know if we would read programmes understandingly and
appreciate the various phases in which music presents itself to us. It
is interesting and valuable to know why an art-work stirs up
pleasurable feelings within us, and to speculate upon its relations to
the intellect and the emotions; but the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></SPAN></span> circumstance that
philosophers have never agreed, and probably never will agree, on
these points, so far as the art of music is concerned, alone suffices
to remove them from the field of this discussion.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Personal equation in judgment.</i></div>
<p>Intelligent listening is not conditioned upon such knowledge. Even
when the study is begun, the questions whether or not music has a
content beyond itself, where that content is to be sought, and how
defined, will be decided in each case by the student for himself, on
grounds which may be said to be as much in his nature as they are in
the argument. The attitude of man toward the art is an individual one,
and in some of its aspects defies explanation.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>A musical fluid.</i></div>
<p>The amount and kind of pleasure which music gives him are frequently
as much beyond his understanding and control as they are beyond the
understanding and control of the man who sits beside him. They are
consequences of just that particular combination of material and
spiritual elements, just that blending of muscular, nervous, and
cerebral tissues, which make him what<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></SPAN></span> he is, which segregate him as
an individual from the mass of humanity. We speak of persons as
susceptible or insusceptible to music as we speak of good and poor
conductors of electricity; and the analogy implied here is
particularly apt and striking. If we were still using the scientific
terms of a few decades ago I should say that a musical fluid might yet
be discovered and its laws correlated with those of heat, light, and
electricity. Like them, when reduced to its lowest terms, music is a
form of motion, and it should not be difficult on this analogy to
construct a theory which would account for the physical phenomena
which accompany the hearing of music in some persons, such as the
recession of blood from the face, or an equally sudden suffusion of
the same veins, a contraction of the scalp accompanied by chilliness
or a prickling sensation, or that roughness of the skin called
goose-flesh, "flesh moved by an idea, flesh horripilated by a
thought."</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Origin of musical elements.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Feelings and counterpoint.</i></div>
<p>It has been denied that feelings are the content of music, or that it
is the mission of music to give expression to feel<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></SPAN></span>ings; but the
scientific fact remains that the fundamental elements of vocal
music—pitch, quality, and dynamic intensity—are the results of
feelings working upon the vocal organs; and even if Mr. Herbert
Spencer's theory be rejected, it is too late now to deny that music is
conceived by its creators as a language of the emotions and so applied
by them. The German philosopher Herbarth sought to reduce the question
to an absurdity by expressing surprise that musicians should still
believe that feelings could be "the proximate cause of the rules of
simple and double counterpoint;" but Dr. Stainer found a sufficient
answer by accepting the proposition as put, and directing attention to
the fact that the feelings of men having first decided what was
pleasurable in polyphony, and the rules of counterpoint having
afterward been drawn from specimens of pleasurable polyphony, it was
entirely correct to say that feelings are the proximate cause of the
laws of counterpoint.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>How composers hear music.</i></div>
<p>It is because so many of us have been taught by poets and romancers to
think<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></SPAN></span> that there is a picture of some kind, or a story in every piece
of music, and find ourselves unable to agree upon the picture or the
story in any given case, that confusion is so prevalent among the
musical laity. Composers seldom find difficulty in understanding each
other. They listen for beauty, and if they find it they look for the
causes which have produced it, and in apprehending beauty and
recognizing means and cause they unvolitionally rise to the plane
whence a view of the composer's purposes is clear. Having grasped the
mood of a composition and found that it is being sustained or varied
in a manner accordant with their conceptions of beauty, they occupy
themselves with another kind of differentiation altogether than the
misled disciples of the musical rhapsodists who overlook the general
design and miss the grand proclamation in their search for petty
suggestions for pictures and stories among the details of the
composition. Let musicians testify for us. In his romance, "Ein
Glücklicher Abend," Wagner says:<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Wagner's axiom.</i></div>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"That which music expresses is eternal and ideal. It does
not give voice to the passion, the love, the longing of this
or the other individual, under these or the other
circumstances, but to passion, love, longing itself."</p>
</div>
<p>Moritz Hauptmann says:</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Hauptmann's.</i></div>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"The same music will admit of the most varied verbal
expositions, and of not one of them can it be correctly said
that it is exhaustive, the right one, and contains the whole
significance of the music. This significance is contained
most definitely in the music itself. It is not music that is
ambiguous; it says the same thing to everybody; it speaks to
mankind and gives voice only to human feelings. Ambiguity
only then makes its appearance when each person attempts to
formulate in his manner the emotional impression which he
has received, when he attempts to fix and hold the ethereal
essence of music, to utter the unutterable."</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Mendelssohn's.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The "Songs without Words."</i></div>
<p>Mendelssohn inculcated the same lesson in a letter which he wrote to a
young poet who had given titles to a number of the composer's "Songs
Without Words," and incorporated what he conceived to be their
sentiments in a set of poems. He sent his work to Mendelssohn with the
request that the composer inform the writer<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></SPAN></span> whether or not he had
succeeded in catching the meaning of the music. He desired the
information because "music's capacity for expression is so vague and
indeterminate." Mendelssohn replied:</p>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"You give the various numbers of the book such titles as 'I
Think of Thee,' 'Melancholy,' 'The Praise of God,' 'A Merry
Hunt.' I can scarcely say whether I thought of these or
other things while composing the music. Another might find
'I Think of Thee' where you find 'Melancholy,' and a real
huntsman might consider 'A Merry Hunt' a veritable 'Praise
of God.' But this is not because, as you think, music is
vague. On the contrary, I believe that musical expression is
altogether too definite, that it reaches regions and dwells
in them whither words cannot follow it and must necessarily
go lame when they make the attempt as you would have them
do."</p>
</div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The tonal language.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Herbert Spencer's definition.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Natural expression.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Absolute music.</i></div>
<p>If I were to try to say why musicians, great musicians, speak thus of
their art, my explanation would be that they have developed, farther
than the rest of mankind have been able to develop it, a language of
tones, which, had it been so willed, might have been developed so as
to fill the place now occupied by<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></SPAN></span> articulate speech. Herbert Spencer,
though speaking purely as a scientific investigator, not at all as an
artist, defined music as "a language of feelings which may ultimately
enable men vividly and completely to impress on each other the
emotions they experience from moment to moment." We rely upon speech
to do this now, but ever and anon when, in a moment of emotional
exaltation, we are deserted by the articulate word we revert to the
emotional cry which antedates speech, and find that that cry is
universally understood because it is universally felt. More than
speech, if its primitive element of emotionality be omitted, more than
the primitive language of gesture, music is a natural mode of
expression. All three forms have attained their present stage of
development through conventions. Articulate speech has led in the
development; gesture once occupied a high plane (in the pantomimic
dance of the ancients) but has now retrograded; music, supreme at the
outset, then neglected, is but now pushing forward into the place
which its nature entitles it to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></SPAN></span> occupy. When we conceive of an
art-work composed of such elements, and foregoing the adventitious
helps which may accrue to it from conventional idioms based on
association of ideas, we have before us the concept of Absolute music,
whose content, like that of every noble artistic composition, be it of
tones or forms or colors or thoughts expressed in words, is that high
ideal of goodness, truthfulness, and beauty for which all lofty
imaginations strive. Such artworks are the instrumental compositions
in the classic forms; such, too, may be said to be the high type of
idealized "Programme" music, which, like the "Pastoral" symphony of
Beethoven, is designed to awaken emotions like those awakened by the
contemplation of things, but does not attempt to depict the things
themselves. Having mentioned Programme music I must, of course, try to
tell what it is; but the exposition must be preceded by an explanation
of a kind of music which, because of its chastity, is set down as the
finest form of absolute music. This is Chamber music.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Chamber music.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>History of the term.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Haydn a servant.</i></div>
<p>In a broad sense, but one not employed in modern definition, Chamber
music is all music not designed for performance in the church or
theatre. (Out-of-door music cannot be considered among these artistic
forms of aristocratic descent.) Once, and indeed at the time of its
invention, the term meant music designed especially for the
delectation of the most eminent patrons of the art—the kings and
nobles whose love for it gave it maintenance and encouragement. This
is implied by the term itself, which has the same etymology wherever
the form of music is cultivated. In Italian it is <i>Musica da Camera</i>;
in French, <i>Musique de Chambre</i>; in German, <i>Kammermusik</i>. All the
terms have a common root. The Greek <span lang="el" title="Greek: kamara">καμαρα</span> signified an arch,
a vaulted room, or a covered wagon. In the time of the Frankish kings
the word was applied to the room in the royal palace in which the
monarch's private property was kept, and in which he looked after his
private affairs. When royalty took up the cultivation of music it was
as a private, not as a court, function, and the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></SPAN></span> concerts given for
the entertainment of the royal family took place in the king's
chamber, or private room. The musicians were nothing more nor less
than servants in the royal household. This relationship endured into
the present century. Haydn was a <i>Hausofficier</i> of Prince Esterhazy.
As vice-chapelmaster he had to appear every morning in the Prince's
ante-room to receive orders concerning the dinner-music and other
entertainments of the day, and in the certificate of appointment his
conduct is regulated with a particularity which we, who remember him
and reverence his genius but have forgotten his master, think
humiliating in the extreme.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Beethoven's Chamber music.</i></div>
<p>Out of this cultivation of music in the private chamber grew the
characteristics of Chamber music, which we must consider if we would
enjoy it ourselves and understand the great reverence which the great
masters of music have always felt for it. Beethoven was the first
great democrat among musicians. He would have none of the shackles
which his predecessors wore, and compelled aristocracy of birth to bow
to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></SPAN></span> aristocracy of genius. But such was his reverence for the style of
music which had grown up in the chambers of the great that he devoted
the last three years of his life almost exclusively to its
composition; the peroration of his proclamation to mankind consists of
his last quartets—the holiest of holy things to the Chamber musicians
of to-day.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The characteristics of Chamber music.</i></div>
<p>Chamber music represents pure thought, lofty imagination, and deep
learning. These attributes are encouraged by the idea of privacy which
is inseparable from the form. Composers find it the finest field for
the display of their talents because their own skill in creating is to
be paired with trained skill in hearing. Its representative pieces are
written for strings alone—trios, quartets, and quintets. With the
strings are sometimes associated a pianoforte, or one or more of the
solo wind instruments—oboe, clarinet, or French horn; and as a rule
the compositions adhere to classical lines (see <SPAN href="#V">Chapter V.</SPAN>). Of
necessity the modesty of the apparatus compels it to fore<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></SPAN></span>go nearly
all the adventitious helps with which other forms of composition gain
public approval. In the delineative arts Chamber music shows analogy
with correct drawing and good composition, the absence of which cannot
be atoned for by the most gorgeous coloring. In no other style is
sympathy between performers and listeners so necessary, and for that
reason Chamber music should always be heard in a small room with
performers and listeners joined in angelic wedlock. Communities in
which it flourishes under such conditions are musical.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Programme music.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The value of superscriptions.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The rule of judgment.</i></div>
<p>Properly speaking, the term Programme music ought to be applied only
to instrumental compositions which make a frank effort to depict
scenes, incidents, or emotional processes to which the composer
himself gives the clew either by means of a descriptive title or a
verbal motto. It is unfortunate that the term has come to be loosely
used. In a high sense the purest and best music in the world is
programmatic, its programme being, as I have said, that "high ideal of
goodness,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></SPAN></span> truthfulness, and beauty" which is the content of all true
art. But the origin of the term was vulgar, and the most contemptible
piece of tonal imitation now claims kinship in the popular mind with
the exquisitely poetical creations of Schumann and the "Pastoral"
symphony of Beethoven; and so it is become necessary to defend it in
the case of noble compositions. A programme is not necessarily, as
Ambros asserts, a certificate of poverty and an admission on the part
of the composer that his art has got beyond its natural bounds.
Whether it be merely a suggestive title, as in the case of some of the
compositions of Beethoven, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, or an extended
commentary, as in the symphonic poems of Liszt and the symphonies of
Berlioz and Raff, the programme has a distinct value to the composer
as well as the hearer. It can make the perceptive sense more
impressible to the influence of the music; it can quicken the fancy,
and fire the imagination; it can prevent a gross misconception of the
intentions of a composer and the character of his composi<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></SPAN></span>tion.
Nevertheless, in determining the artistic value of the work, the
question goes not to the ingenuity of the programme or the clearness
with which its suggestions have been carried out, but to the beauty of
the music itself irrespective of the verbal commentary accompanying
it. This rule must be maintained in order to prevent a degradation of
the object of musical expression. The vile, the ugly, the painful are
not fit subjects for music; music renounces, contravenes, negatives
itself when it attempts their delineation.</p>
<p>A classification of Programme music might be made on these lines:</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Kinds of Programme music.</i></div>
<p>I. Descriptive pieces which rest on imitation or suggestion of natural
sounds.</p>
<p>II. Pieces whose contents are purely musical, but the mood of which is
suggested by a poetical title.</p>
<p>III. Pieces in which the influence which determined their form and
development is indicated not only by a title but also by a motto which
is relied upon to mark out a train of thought for the listener which
will bring his fancy<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></SPAN></span> into union with that of the composer. The motto
may be verbal or pictorial.</p>
<p>IV. Symphonies or other composite works which have a title to indicate
their general character, supplemented by explanatory superscriptions
for each portion.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Imitation of natural sounds.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The nightingale.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The cat.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The cuckoo.</i></div>
<p>The first of these divisions rests upon the employment of the lowest
form of conventional musical idiom. The material which the natural
world provides for imitation by the musician is exceedingly scant.
Unless we descend to mere noise, as in the descriptions of storms and
battles (the shrieking of the wind, the crashing of thunder, and the
roar of artillery—invaluable aids to the cheap descriptive writer),
we have little else than the calls of a few birds. Nearly thirty years
ago Wilhelm Tappert wrote an essay which he called "Zooplastik in
Tönen." He ransacked the musical literature of centuries, but in all
his examples the only animals the voices of which are unmistakable are
four fowls—the cuckoo, quail (that is the German bird, not the
American, which has a different call), the cock, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></SPAN></span> the hen. He has
many descriptive sounds which suggest other birds and beasts, but only
by association of idea; separated from title or text they suggest
merely what they are—musical phrases. A reiteration of the rhythmical
figure called the "Scotch snap," breaking gradually into a trill, is
the common symbol of the nightingale's song, but it is not a copy of
that song; three or four tones descending chromatically are given as
the cat's mew, but they are made to be such only by placing the
syllables <i>Mi-au</i> (taken from the vocabulary of the German cat) under
them. Instances of this kind might be called characterization, or
description by suggestion, and some of the best composers have made
use of them, as will appear in these pages presently. The list being
so small, and the lesson taught so large, it may be well to give a few
striking instances of absolutely imitative music. The first bird to
collaborate with a composer seems to have been the cuckoo, whose notes</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music18.png" alt="Music: Cuckoo!" width-obs="174" height-obs="96" /></p>
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<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>had sounded in many a folk-song ere Beethoven thought of enlisting the
little solo performer in his "Pastoral" symphony. It is to be borne in
mind, however, as a fact having some bearing on the artistic value of
Programme music, that Beethoven's cuckoo changes his note to please
the musician, and, instead of singing a minor third, he sings a major
third thus:</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music19.png" alt="Music: Cuckoo!" width-obs="143" height-obs="91" /></p>
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<div class="sidenote"><i>Cock and hen.</i></div>
<p>As long ago as 1688 Jacob Walter wrote a musical piece entitled
"Gallina et Gallo," in which the hen was delineated in this theme:</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music20.png" alt="Music: Gallina" width-obs="733" height-obs="173" /></p>
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<p>while the cock had the upper voice in the following example, his clear
challenge sounding above the cackling of his mate:<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></SPAN></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music21.png" alt="Music: Gallo" width-obs="683" height-obs="151" /></p>
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<p>The most effective use yet made of the song of the hen, however, is in
"La Poule," one of Rameau's "Pièces de Clavecin," printed in 1736, a
delightful composition with this subject:</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music22.png" alt="Music: Co co co co co co co dai, etc." width-obs="732" height-obs="102" /></p>
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<div class="sidenote"><i>The quail.</i></div>
<p>The quail's song is merely a monotonic rhythmical figure to which
German fancy has fitted words of pious admonition:</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music23.png" alt="Music: F�rchte Gott! Lobe Gott!" width-obs="734" height-obs="92" /></p>
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<div class="sidenote"><i>Conventional idioms.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Association of ideas.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Fancy and imagination.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Harmony and emotionality.</i></div>
<p>The paucity of examples in this department is a demonstration of the
state<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></SPAN></span>ment made elsewhere that nature does not provide music with
models for imitation as it does painting and sculpture. The fact that,
nevertheless, we have come to recognize a large number of idioms based
on association of ideas stands the composer in good stead whenever he
ventures into the domain of delineative or descriptive music, and this
he can do without becoming crudely imitative. Repeated experiences
have taught us to recognize resemblances between sequences or
combinations of tones and things or ideas, and on these analogies,
even though they be purely conventional (that is agreed upon, as we
have agreed that a nod of the head shall convey assent, a shake of the
head dissent, and a shrug of the shoulders doubt or indifference), the
composers have built up a voluminous vocabulary of idioms which need
only to be helped out by a suggestion to the mind to be eloquently
illustrative. "Sometimes hearing a melody or harmony arouses an
emotion like that aroused by the contemplation of a thing. Minor
harmonies, slow movements, dark tonal col<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></SPAN></span>orings, combine directly to
put a musically susceptible person in a mood congenial to thoughts of
sorrow and death; and, inversely, the experience of sorrow, or the
contemplation of death, creates affinity for minor harmonies, slow
movements, and dark tonal colorings. Or we recognize attributes in
music possessed also by things, and we consort the music and the
things, external attributes bringing descriptive music into play,
which excites the fancy, internal attributes calling for an exercise
of the loftier faculty, imagination, to discern their meaning."<SPAN name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</SPAN> The
latter kind is delineative music of the higher order, the kind that I
have called idealized programme music, for it is the imagination
which, as Ruskin has said, "sees the heart and inner nature and makes
them felt, but is often obscure, mysterious, and interrupted in its
giving out of outer detail," which is "a seer in the prophetic sense,
calling the things that are not as though they were, and forever
delighting to dwell on that which <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></SPAN></span>is not tangibly present." In this
kind of music, harmony, the real seat of emotionality in music, is an
eloquent factor, and, indeed, there is no greater mystery in the art,
which is full of mystery, than the fact that the lowering of the
second tone in the chord, which is the starting-point of harmony,
should change an expression of satisfaction, energetic action, or
jubilation into an accent of pain or sorrow. The major mode is "to
do," the minor, "to suffer:"</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Major and minor.</i></div>
<p><ANTIMG src="images/music24.png" alt="Music: Hurrah! Alas!" width-obs="217" height-obs="94" /></p>
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<div class="sidenote"><i>Music and movement.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Handel's frogs.</i></div>
<p>How near a large number of suggestions, which are based wholly upon
experience or association of ideas, lie to the popular fancy, might be
illustrated by scores of examples. Thoughts of religious functions
arise in us the moment we hear the trombones intone a solemn phrase in
full harmony; an oboe melody in sixth-eighth time over a drone bass
brings up a pastoral picture of a shepherd playing upon his pipe;
trumpets and drums suggest war, and so on. The<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></SPAN></span> delineation of
movement is easier to the musician than it is to the poet. Handel, who
has conveyed the sensation of a "darkness which might be felt," in a
chorus of his "Israel in Egypt," by means which appeal solely to the
imagination stirred by feelings, has in the same work pictured the
plague of frogs with a frank <i>naïveté</i> which almost upsets our
seriousness of demeanor, by suggesting the characteristic movement of
the creatures in the instrumental accompaniment to the arioso, "Their
land brought forth frogs," which begins thus:</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music25.png" alt="Handel's frogs" width-obs="740" height-obs="131" /></p>
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<div class="sidenote"><i>The movement of water.</i></div>
<p>We find the gentle flux and reflux of water as if it were lapping a
rocky shore in the exquisite figure out of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></SPAN></span> which Mendelssohn
constructed his "Hebrides" overture:</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music26.png" alt="Hebrides Overture" width-obs="740" height-obs="138" /></p>
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<p>and in fancy we ride on mighty surges when we listen to the principal
subject of Rubinstein's "Ocean" symphony:</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music27.png" alt="Ocean Symphony" width-obs="739" height-obs="153" /></p>
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<p>In none of these instances can the composer be said to be imitative.
Music cannot copy water, but it can do what water does, and so suggest
water.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>High and low.</i></div>
<p>Some of the most common devices of composers are based on conceptions
that are wholly arbitrary. A musical tone cannot have position in
space such as is indicated by high or low, yet so familiar is the
association of acuteness of pitch with height, and gravity of pitch
with depth, that composers continually<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></SPAN></span> delineate high things with
acute tones and low things with grave tones, as witness Handel in one
of the choruses of "The Messiah:"</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music28.png" alt="Music: Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth" width-obs="736" height-obs="97" /></p>
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<div class="sidenote"><i>Ascent, descent, and distance delineated.</i></div>
<p>Similarly, too, does Beethoven describe the ascent into heaven and the
descent into hell in the Credo of his mass in D. Beethoven's music,
indeed, is full of tone-painting, and because it exemplifies a double
device I make room for one more illustration. It is from the cantata
"Becalmed at Sea, and a Prosperous Voyage," and in it the composer
pictures the immensity of the sea by a sudden, extraordinary spreading
out of his harmonies, which is musical, and dwelling a long time on
the word "distance" (<i>Weite</i>) which is rhetorical:</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/music29.png" alt="Music: In der ungeheu'ren Weite" width-obs="744" height-obs="176" /></p>
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<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Bald imitation bad art.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Vocal music and delineation.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Beethoven's canon.</i></div>
<p>The extent to which tone-painting is justified is a question which
might profitably concern us; but such a discussion as it deserves
would far exceed the limits set for this book, and must be foregone.
It cannot be too forcibly urged, however, as an aid to the listener,
that efforts at musical cartooning have never been made by true
composers, and that in the degree that music attempts simply to copy
external things it falls in the scale of artistic truthfulness and
value. Vocal music tolerates more of the descriptive element than
instrumental because it is a mixed art; in it the purpose of music is
to illustrate the poetry and, by intensifying the appeal to the fancy,
to warm the emotions. Every piece of vocal music, moreover, carries
its explanatory programme in its words. Still more tolerable and even
righteous is it in the opera where it is but one of several factors
which labor together to make up the sum of dramatic representation.
But it must ever remain valueless unless it be idealized. Mendelssohn,
desiring to put <i>Bully Bottom</i> into the overture to "A Midsummer<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></SPAN></span>
Night's Dream," did not hesitate to use tones which suggest the bray
of a donkey, yet the effect, like Handel's frogs and flies in
"Israel," is one of absolute musical value. The canon which ought
continually to be before the mind of the listener is that which
Beethoven laid down with most painstaking care when he wrote the
"Pastoral" symphony. Desiring to inform the listeners what were the
images which inspired the various movements (in order, of course, that
they might the better enter into the work by recalling them), he gave
each part a superscription thus:</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The "Pastoral" symphony.</i></div>
<div class="blockquot"><p>I. "The agreeable and cheerful sensations awakened by
arrival in the country."</p>
<p>II. "Scene by the brook."</p>
<p>III. "A merrymaking of the country folk."</p>
<p>IV. "Thunder-storm."</p>
<p>V. "Shepherds' song—feelings of charity combined with
gratitude to the Deity after the storm."</p>
</div>
<p>In the title itself he included an admonitory explanation which should
have everlasting validity: "Pastoral Symphony; more expression of
feeling than painting." How seriously he thought<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></SPAN></span> on the subject we
know from his sketch-books, in which occur a number of notes, some of
which were evidently hints for superscriptions, some records of his
convictions on the subject of descriptive music. The notes are
reprinted in Nottebohm's "Zweite Beethoveniana," but I borrow Sir
George Grove's translation:</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Beethoven's notes on descriptive music.</i></div>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"The hearers should be allowed to discover the situations."</p>
<p>"Sinfonia caracteristica, or a recollection of country
life."</p>
<p>"All painting in instrumental music, if pushed too far, is a
failure."</p>
<p>"Sinfonia pastorella. Anyone who has an idea of country life
can make out for himself the intentions of the author
without many titles."</p>
<p>"People will not require titles to recognize the general
intention to be more a matter of feeling than of painting in
sounds."</p>
<p>"Pastoral symphony: No picture, but something in which the
emotions are expressed which are aroused in men by the
pleasure of the country (or), in which some feelings of
country life are set forth."<SPAN name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</SPAN></p>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>As to the relation of programme to music Schumann laid down an
admirable maxim when he said that while good music was not harmed by a
descriptive title it was a bad indication if a composition needed one.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Classic and Romantic.</i></div>
<p>There are, among all the terms used in music, no words of vaguer
meaning than Classic and Romantic. The idea which they convey most
widely in conjunction is that of antithesis. When the Romantic School
of composers is discussed it is almost universally presented as
something opposed in character to the Classical School. There is
little harm in this if we but bear in mind that all the terms which
have come into use to describe different phases of musical development
are entirely artificial and arbitrary—that they do not stand for
anything absolute, but only serve as platforms of observation. If the
terms had a fixed meaning we ought to be able, since they have
established themselves in the language of history and criticism, to
describe unambiguously and define clearly the boundary which separates
them. This, however, is im<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></SPAN></span>possible. Each generation, nay, each
decade, fixes the meaning of the words for itself and decides what
works shall go into each category. It ought to be possible to discover
a principle, a touchstone, which shall emancipate us from the
mischievous and misleading notions that have so long prompted men to
make the partitions between the schools out of dates and names.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Trench's definition of "classical."</i></div>
<p>The terms were borrowed from literary criticism; but even there, in
the words of Archbishop Trench, "they either say nothing at all or say
something erroneous." Classical has more to defend it than Romantic,
because it has greater antiquity and, in one sense, has been used with
less arbitrariness.</p>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"The term," says Trench, "is drawn from the political
economy of Rome. Such a man was rated as to his income in
the third class, such another in the fourth, and so on, and
he who was in the highest was emphatically said to be of the
class, <i>classicus</i>, a class man, without adding the number
as in that case superfluous; while all others were <i>infra
classem</i>. Hence by an obvious analogy the best authors were
rated as <i>classici</i>, or men of the highest class; just as in
English we say 'men of rank'<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></SPAN></span> absolutely for men who are in
the highest ranks of the State."</p>
</div>
<p>Thus Trench, and his historical definition, explains why in music also
there is something more than a lurking suggestion of excellence in the
conception of "classical;" but that fact does not put away the quarrel
which we feel exists between Classic and Romantic.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Romantic in literature.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Schumann and Jean Paul.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Weber's operas.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Mendelssohn.</i></div>
<p>As applied to literature Romantic was an adjective affected by certain
poets, first in Germany, then in France, who wished to introduce a
style of thought and expression different from that of those who
followed old models. Intrinsically, of course, the term does not imply
any such opposition but only bears witness to the source from which
the poets drew their inspiration. This was the imaginative literature
of the Middle Ages, the fantastical stories of chivalry and knighthood
written in the Romance, or Romanic languages, such as Italian,
Spanish, and Provençal. The principal elements of these stories were
the marvellous and the supernatural. The composers whose names first
spring<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></SPAN></span> into our minds when we think of the Romantic School are men
like Mendelssohn and Schumann, who drew much of their inspiration from
the young writers of their time who were making war on stilted
rhetoric and conventionalism of phrase. Schumann touches hands with
the Romantic poets in their strivings in two directions. His artistic
conduct, especially in his early years, is inexplicable if Jean Paul
be omitted from the equation. His music rebels against the formalism
which had held despotic sway over the art, and also seeks to disclose
the beauty which lies buried in the world of mystery in and around us,
and give expression to the multitude of emotions to which unyielding
formalism had refused adequate utterance. This, I think, is the chief
element of Romanticism. Another has more of an external nature and
genesis, and this we find in the works of such composers as Von Weber,
who is Romantic chiefly in his operas, because of the supernaturalism
and chivalry in their stories, and Mendelssohn, who, while distinctly
Romantic in many of his strivings, was yet so<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></SPAN></span> great a master of form,
and so attached to it, that the Romantic side of him was not fully
developed.</p>
<div class="sidenote"><i>A definition of "Classical" in music.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>The creative and conservative principles.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Musical laws of necessity progressive.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Bach and Romanticism.</i></div>
<div class="sidenote"><i>Creation and conservation.</i></div>
<p>If I were to attempt a definition it would be this: Classical
composers are those of the first rank (to this extent we yield to the
ancient Roman conception) who have developed music to the highest
pitch of perfection on its formal side and, in obedience to generally
accepted laws, preferring æsthetic beauty, pure and simple, over
emotional content, or, at any rate, refusing to sacrifice form to
characteristic expression. Romantic composers are those who have
sought their ideals in other regions and striven to give expression to
them irrespective of the restrictions and limitations of form and the
conventions of law—composers with whom, in brief, content outweighs
manner. This definition presents Classicism as the regulative and
conservative principle in the history of the art, and Romanticism as
the progressive, regenerative, and creative principle. It is easy to
see how the notion of contest between them grew up, and the only harm
which can come from<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></SPAN></span> such a notion will ensue only if we shut our eyes
to the fact that it is a contest between two elements whose very
opposition stimulates life, and whose union, perfect, peaceful,
mutually supplemental, is found in every really great art-work. No law
which fixes, and hence limits, form, can remain valid forever. Its end
is served when it enforces itself long enough to keep lawlessness in
check till the test of time has determined what is sound, sweet, and
wholesome in the innovations which are always crowding eagerly into
every creative activity in art and science. In art it is ever true, as
<i>Faust</i> concludes, that "In the beginning was the deed." The laws of
composition are the products of compositions; and, being such, they
cannot remain unalterable so long as the impulse freshly to create
remains. All great men are ahead of their time, and in all great
music, no matter when written, you shall find instances of profounder
meaning and deeper or newer feeling than marked the generality of
contemporary compositions. So Bach frequently floods his formal
utterances<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></SPAN></span> with Romantic feeling, and the face of Beethoven, serving
at the altar in the temple of Beauty, is transfigured for us by divine
light. The principles of creation and conservation move onward
together, and what is Romantic to-day becomes Classic to-morrow.
Romanticism is fluid Classicism. It is the emotional stimulus
informing Romanticism which calls music into life, but no sooner is it
born, free, untrammelled, nature's child, than the regulative
principle places shackles upon it; but it is enslaved only that it may
become and remain art.</p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<p style="text-align: center">
<ANTIMG src="images/deco05.png" alt="Decoration" width-obs="300" height-obs="102" /></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></SPAN></span></p>
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