How To Listen To Music Part 4

[Music ill.u.s.tration]

[Sidenote: _The movement of water._]

We find the gentle flux and reflux of water as if it were lapping a rocky sh.o.r.e in the exquisite figure out of which Mendelssohn constructed his "Hebrides" overture:

[Music ill.u.s.tration]

and in fancy we ride on mighty surges when we listen to the princ.i.p.al subject of Rubinstein's "Ocean" symphony:

[Music ill.u.s.tration]

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.

[Sidenote: _High and low._]

Some of the most common devices of composers are based on conceptions that are wholly arbitrary. A musical tone cannot have position in s.p.a.ce such as is indicated by high or low, yet so familiar is the a.s.sociation of acuteness of pitch with height, and gravity of pitch with depth, that composers continually delineate high things with acute tones and low things with grave tones, as witness Handel in one of the choruses of "The Messiah:"

[Music ill.u.s.tration: Glo-ry to G.o.d in the high-est, and peace on earth.]

[Sidenote: _Ascent, descent, and distance delineated._]

Similarly, too, does Beethoven describe the ascent into heaven and the descent into h.e.l.l in the Credo of his ma.s.s in D. Beethoven's music, indeed, is full of tone-painting, and because it exemplifies a double device I make room for one more ill.u.s.tration. 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" (_Weite_) which is rhetorical:

[Music ill.u.s.tration: In der un-ge-heu-'ren Wei-te.]

[Sidenote: _Bald imitation bad art._]

[Sidenote: _Vocal music and delineation._]

[Sidenote: _Beethoven's canon._]

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 ill.u.s.trate 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 _Bully Bottom_ into the overture to "A Midsummer 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:

[Sidenote: _The "Pastoral" symphony._]

I. "The agreeable and cheerful sensations awakened by arrival in the country."

II. "Scene by the brook."

III. "A merrymaking of the country folk."

IV. "Thunder-storm."

V. "Shepherds' song--feelings of charity combined with grat.i.tude to the Deity after the storm."

In the t.i.tle itself he included an admonitory explanation which should have everlasting validity: "Pastoral Symphony; more expression of feeling than painting." How seriously he thought 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:

[Sidenote: _Beethoven's notes on descriptive music._]

"The hearers should be allowed to discover the situations."

"Sinfonia caracteristica, or a recollection of country life."

"All painting in instrumental music, if pushed too far, is a failure."

"Sinfonia pastorella. Anyone who has an idea of country life can make out for himself the intentions of the author without many t.i.tles."

"People will not require t.i.tles to recognize the general intention to be more a matter of feeling than of painting in sounds."

"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."[C]

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 t.i.tle it was a bad indication if a composition needed one.

[Sidenote: _Cla.s.sic and Romantic._]

There are, among all the terms used in music, no words of vaguer meaning than Cla.s.sic and Romantic. The idea which they convey most widely in conjunction is that of ant.i.thesis. When the Romantic School of composers is discussed it is almost universally presented as something opposed in character to the Cla.s.sical 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 impossible. 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 emanc.i.p.ate us from the mischievous and misleading notions that have so long prompted men to make the part.i.tions between the schools out of dates and names.

[Sidenote: _Trench's definition of "cla.s.sical."_]

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." Cla.s.sical has more to defend it than Romantic, because it has greater antiquity and, in one sense, has been used with less arbitrariness.

"The term," says Trench, "is drawn from the political economy of Rome. Such a man was rated as to his income in the third cla.s.s, such another in the fourth, and so on, and he who was in the highest was emphatically said to be of the cla.s.s, _cla.s.sicus_, a cla.s.s man, without adding the number as in that case superfluous; while all others were _infra cla.s.sem_. Hence by an obvious a.n.a.logy the best authors were rated as _cla.s.sici_, or men of the highest cla.s.s; just as in English we say 'men of rank' absolutely for men who are in the highest ranks of the State."

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 "cla.s.sical;" but that fact does not put away the quarrel which we feel exists between Cla.s.sic and Romantic.

[Sidenote: _Romantic in literature._]

[Sidenote: _Schumann and Jean Paul._]

[Sidenote: _Weber's operas._]

[Sidenote: _Mendelssohn._]

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 Provencal. The princ.i.p.al elements of these stories were the marvellous and the supernatural. The composers whose names first spring 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 mult.i.tude 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 great a master of form, and so attached to it, that the Romantic side of him was not fully developed.

[Sidenote: _A definition of "Cla.s.sical" in music._]

[Sidenote: _The creative and conservative principles._]

[Sidenote: _Musical laws of necessity progressive._]

[Sidenote: _Bach and Romanticism._]

[Sidenote: _Creation and conservation._]

If I were to attempt a definition it would be this: Cla.s.sical 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 aesthetic 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 Cla.s.sicism 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 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 _Faust_ 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 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 Cla.s.sic to-morrow.