How To Listen To Music Part 3

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 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 ent.i.tles it to occupy. When we conceive of an art-work composed of such elements, and foregoing the advent.i.tious helps which may accrue to it from conventional idioms based on a.s.sociation of ideas, we have before us the concept of Absolute music, whose content, like that of every n.o.ble 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 cla.s.sic 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 chast.i.ty, is set down as the finest form of absolute music. This is Chamber music.

[Sidenote: _Chamber music._]

[Sidenote: _History of the term._]

[Sidenote: _Haydn a servant._]

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 n.o.bles 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 _Musica da Camera_; in French, _Musique de Chambre_; in German, _Kammermusik_. All the terms have a common root. The Greek [Greek: kamara] 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 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 _Hausofficier_ 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.

[Sidenote: _Beethoven's Chamber music._]

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 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.

[Sidenote: _The characteristics of Chamber music._]

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 a.s.sociated a pianoforte, or one or more of the solo wind instruments--oboe, clarinet, or French horn; and as a rule the compositions adhere to cla.s.sical lines (see Chapter V.). Of necessity the modesty of the apparatus compels it to forego nearly all the advent.i.tious helps with which other forms of composition gain public approval. In the delineative arts Chamber music shows a.n.a.logy 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.

[Sidenote: _Programme music._]

[Sidenote: _The value of superscriptions._]

[Sidenote: _The rule of judgment._]

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 t.i.tle 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, 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 n.o.ble compositions. A programme is not necessarily, as Ambros a.s.serts, 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 t.i.tle, 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 composition.

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.

A cla.s.sification of Programme music might be made on these lines:

[Sidenote: _Kinds of Programme music._]

I. Descriptive pieces which rest on imitation or suggestion of natural sounds.

II. Pieces whose contents are purely musical, but the mood of which is suggested by a poetical t.i.tle.

III. Pieces in which the influence which determined their form and development is indicated not only by a t.i.tle but also by a motto which is relied upon to mark out a train of thought for the listener which will bring his fancy into union with that of the composer. The motto may be verbal or pictorial.

IV. Symphonies or other composite works which have a t.i.tle to indicate their general character, supplemented by explanatory superscriptions for each portion.

[Sidenote: _Imitation of natural sounds._]

[Sidenote: _The nightingale._]

[Sidenote: _The cat._]

[Sidenote: _The cuckoo._]

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 Tonen." 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 c.o.c.k, and the hen. He has many descriptive sounds which suggest other birds and beasts, but only by a.s.sociation of idea; separated from t.i.tle 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 _Mi-au_ (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

[Music ill.u.s.tration: Cuck-oo!]

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:

[Music ill.u.s.tration: Cuck-oo!]

[Sidenote: _c.o.c.k and hen._]

As long ago as 1688 Jacob Walter wrote a musical piece ent.i.tled "Gallina et Gallo," in which the hen was delineated in this theme:

[Music ill.u.s.tration: _Gallina._]

while the c.o.c.k had the upper voice in the following example, his clear challenge sounding above the cackling of his mate:

[Music ill.u.s.tration: _Gallo._]

The most effective use yet made of the song of the hen, however, is in "La Poule," one of Rameau's "Pieces de Clavecin," printed in 1736, a delightful composition with this subject:

[Music ill.u.s.tration: Co co co co co co co dai, etc.]

[Sidenote: _The quail._]

The quail's song is merely a monotonic rhythmical figure to which German fancy has fitted words of pious admonition:

[Music ill.u.s.tration: Furch-te Gott! Lo-be Gott!]

[Sidenote: _Conventional idioms._]

[Sidenote: _a.s.sociation of ideas._]

[Sidenote: _Fancy and imagination._]

[Sidenote: _Harmony and emotionality._]

The paucity of examples in this department is a demonstration of the statement 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.n.a.logies, even though they be purely conventional (that is agreed upon, as we have agreed that a nod of the head shall convey a.s.sent, 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 ill.u.s.trative. "Sometimes hearing a melody or harmony arouses an emotion like that aroused by the contemplation of a thing. Minor harmonies, slow movements, dark tonal colorings, 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."[B] 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 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:"

[Sidenote: _Major and minor._]

[Music ill.u.s.tration: Hur-rah! A-las!]

[Sidenote: _Music and movement._]

How near a large number of suggestions, which are based wholly upon experience or a.s.sociation of ideas, lie to the popular fancy, might be ill.u.s.trated 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 ba.s.s brings up a pastoral picture of a shepherd playing upon his pipe; trumpets and drums suggest war, and so on. The 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 _navete_ 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:

[Sidenote: _Handel's frogs._]