How To Listen To Music Part 2

hymn-like in the Trio:

[Music ill.u.s.tration]

and wildly baccha.n.a.lian when subjected to trochaic abbreviation in the Finale:

[Music ill.u.s.tration]

[Sidenote: _Intervallic characteristics._]

Intervallic characteristics may place the badge of relationship upon melodies as distinctly as rhythmic. There is no more perfect ill.u.s.tration of this than that afforded by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Speaking of the subject of its finale, Sir George Grove says:

"And note--while listening to the simple tune itself, before the variations begin--how _very_ simple it is; the plain diatonic scale, not a single chromatic interval, and out of fifty-six notes only three not consecutive."[A]

[Sidenote: _The melodies in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony._]

Earlier in the same work, while combating a statement by Lenz that the resemblance between the second subject of the first movement and the choral melody is a "thematic reference of the most striking importance, vindicating the unity of the entire work, and placing the whole in a perfectly new light," Sir George says:

"It is, however, very remarkable that so many of the melodies in the Symphony should consist of consecutive notes, and that in no less than four of them the notes should run up a portion of the scale and down again--apparently pointing to a consistent condition of Beethoven's mind throughout this work."

[Sidenote: _Melodic likenesses._]

Like Goethe, Beethoven secreted many a mystery in his masterpiece, but he did not juggle idly with tones, or select the themes of his symphonies at hap-hazard; he would be open to the charge, however, if the resemblances which I have pointed out in the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, and those disclosed by the following melodies from his Ninth, should turn out through some incomprehensible revelation to be mere coincidences:

From the first movement:

[Music ill.u.s.tration]

From the second:

[Music ill.u.s.tration]

The choral melody:

[Music ill.u.s.tration]

[Sidenote: _Design and Form._]

From a recognition of the beginnings of design, to which identification of the composer's thematic material and its simpler relationships will lead, to so much knowledge of Form as will enable the reader to understand the later chapters in this book, is but a step.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] "Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies," p. 374.

III

_The Content and Kinds of Music_

[Sidenote: _Metaphysics to be avoided herein._]

Bearing in mind the purpose of this book, I shall not ask the reader to accompany me far afield in the region of aesthetic 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, Cla.s.sical, 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 circ.u.mstance 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.

[Sidenote: _Personal equation in judgment._]

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 att.i.tude of man toward the art is an individual one, and in some of its aspects defies explanation.

[Sidenote: _A musical fluid._]

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 he is, which segregate him as an individual from the ma.s.s of humanity. We speak of persons as susceptible or insusceptible to music as we speak of good and poor conductors of electricity; and the a.n.a.logy 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 a.n.a.logy 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 p.r.i.c.kling sensation, or that roughness of the skin called goose-flesh, "flesh moved by an idea, flesh horripilated by a thought."

[Sidenote: _Origin of musical elements._]

[Sidenote: _Feelings and counterpoint._]

It has been denied that feelings are the content of music, or that it is the mission of music to give expression to feelings; 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.

[Sidenote: _How composers hear music._]

It is because so many of us have been taught by poets and romancers to think 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 Glucklicher Abend," Wagner says:

[Sidenote: _Wagner's axiom._]

"That which music expresses is eternal and ideal. It does not give voice to the pa.s.sion, the love, the longing of this or the other individual, under these or the other circ.u.mstances, but to pa.s.sion, love, longing itself."

Moritz Hauptmann says:

[Sidenote: _Hauptmann's._]

"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."

[Sidenote: _Mendelssohn's._]

[Sidenote: _The "Songs without Words."_]

Mendelssohn inculcated the same lesson in a letter which he wrote to a young poet who had given t.i.tles 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 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:

"You give the various numbers of the book such t.i.tles as 'I Think of Thee,' 'Melancholy,' 'The Praise of G.o.d,' '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 G.o.d.' 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."

[Sidenote: _The tonal language._]

[Sidenote: _Herbert Spencer's definition._]

[Sidenote: _Natural expression._]

[Sidenote: _Absolute music._]