Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 48

159.

FREEDOM IN FETTERS-A PRINCELY FREEDOM.-Chopin, the last of the modern musicians, who gazed at and worshipped beauty, like Leopardi; Chopin, the Pole, the inimitable (none that came before or after him has a right to this name)-Chopin had the same princely punctilio in convention that Raphael shows in the use of the simplest traditional colours. The only difference is that Chopin applies them not to colour but to melodic and rhythmic traditions. He admitted the validity of these traditions because he was born under the sway of etiquette. But in these fetters he plays and dances as the freest and daintiest of spirits, and, be it observed, he does not spurn the chain.

160.

CHOPIN'S BARCAROLLE.-Almost all states and modes of life have a moment of rapture, and good artists know how to discover that moment. Such a moment there is even in life by the seash.o.r.e-that dreary, sordid, unhealthy existence, dragged out in the neighbourhood of a noisy and covetous rabble. This moment of rapture Chopin in his Barcarolle expressed in sound so supremely that G.o.ds themselves, when they heard it, might yearn to lie long summer evenings in a boat.

161.

ROBERT SCHUMANN.-"The Stripling," as the romantic songsters of Germany and France of the first three decades of this century imagined him-this stripling was completely translated into song and melody by Robert Schumann, the eternal youth, so long as he felt himself in full possession of his powers. There are indeed moments when his music reminds one of the eternal "old maid."

162.

DRAMATIC SINGERS.-"Why does this beggar sing?" "Probably he does not know how to wail." "Then he does right." But our dramatic singers, who wail because they do not know how to sing-are they also in the right?

163.

DRAMATIC MUSIC.-For him who does not see what is happening on the stage, dramatic music is a monstrosity, just as the running commentary to a lost text is a monstrosity. Such music requires us to have ears where our eyes are. This, however, is doing violence to Euterpe, who, poor Muse, wants to have her eyes and ears where the other Muses have theirs.

164.

VICTORY AND REASONABLENESS.-Unfortunately in the aesthetic wars, which artists provoke by their works and apologias for their works, just as is the case in real war, it is might and not reason that decides. All the world now a.s.sumes as a historical fact that, in his dispute with Piccini, Gluck was in the right. At any rate, he was victorious, and had might on his side.

165.

OF THE PRINCIPLE OF MUSICAL EXECUTION.-Do the modern musical performers really believe that the supreme law of their art is to give every piece as much high-relief as is possible, and to make it speak at all costs a dramatic language? Is not this principle, when applied for example to Mozart, a veritable sin against the spirit-the gay, sunny, airy, delicate spirit-of Mozart, whose seriousness was of a kindly and not awe-inspiring order, whose pictures do not try to leap from the wall and drive away the beholder in panic? Or do you think that all Mozart's music is identical with the statue-music in _Don Juan_? And not only Mozart's, but all music?-You reply that the advantage of your principle lies in its greater _effect_. You would be right if there did not remain the counter-question, "_On whom_ has the effect operated, and _on whom_ should an artist of the first rank desire to produce his effect?" Never on the populace! Never on the immature! Never on the morbidly sensitive! Never on the diseased! And above all-never on the _blase_!

166.

THE MUSIC OF TO-DAY.-This ultra-modern music, with its strong lungs and weak nerves, is frightened above all things of itself.

167.

WHERE MUSIC IS AT HOME.-Music reaches its high-water mark only among men who have not the ability or the right to argue. Accordingly, its chief promoters are princes, whose aim is that there should be not much criticism nor even much thought in their neighbourhood. Next come societies which, under some pressure or other (political or religious), are forced to become habituated to silence, and so feel all the greater need of spells to charm away emotional ennui-these spells being generally eternal love-making and eternal music. Thirdly, we must reckon whole nations in which there is no "society," but all the greater number of individuals with a bent towards solitude, mystical thinking, and a reverence for all that is inexpressible; these are the genuine "musical souls." The Greeks, as a nation delighting in talking and argument, accordingly put up with music only as an _hors d'uvre_ to those arts which really admit of discussion and dispute. About music one can hardly even _think_ clearly. The Pythagoreans, who in so many respects were exceptional Greeks, are said to have been great musicians. This was the school that invented a five-years' silence,(23) but did not invent a dialectic.

168.

SENTIMENTALITY IN MUSIC.-We may be ever so much in sympathy with serious and profound music, yet nevertheless, or perhaps all the more for that reason, we shall at occasional moments be overpowered, entranced, and almost melted away by its opposite-I mean, by those simple Italian operatic airs which, in spite of all their monotony of rhythm and childishness of harmony, seem at times to sing to us like the very soul of music. Admit this or not as you please, you Pharisees of good taste, it is so, and it is my present task to propound the riddle that it is so, and to nibble a little myself at the solution.-In childhood's days we tasted the honey of many things for the first time. Never was honey so good as then; it seduced us to life, into abundant life, in the guise of the first spring, the first flower, the first b.u.t.terfly, the first friendship.

Then-perhaps in our ninth year or so-we heard our first music, and this was the first that we understood; thus the simplest and most childish tunes, that were not much more than a sequel to the nurse's lullaby and the strolling fiddler's tune, were our first experience. (For even the most trifling "revelations" of art need preparation and study; there is no "immediate" effect of art, whatever charming fables the philosophers may tell.) Our sensation on hearing these Italian airs is a.s.sociated with those first musical raptures, the strongest of our lives. The bliss of childhood and its flight, the feeling that our most precious possession can never be brought back, all this moves the chords of the soul more strongly than the most serious and profound music can move them.-This mingling of aesthetic pleasure with moral pain, which nowadays it is customary to call (rather too haughtily, I think) "sentimentality"-it is the mood of Faust at the end of the first scene-this "sentimentality" of the listener is all to the advantage of Italian music. It is a feeling which the experienced connoisseurs in art, the pure "aesthetes," like to ignore.-Moreover, almost all music has a magical effect only when we hear it speak the language of our own _past_. Accordingly, it seems to the layman that all the old music is continually growing better, and that all the latest is of little value. For the latter arouses no "sentimentality,"

that most essential element of happiness, as aforesaid, for every man who cannot approach this art with pure aesthetic enjoyment.

169.

AS FRIENDS OF MUSIC.-Ultimately we are and remain good friends with music, as we are with the light of the moon. Neither, after all, tries to supplant the sun: they only want to illumine our nights to the best of their powers. Yet we may jest and laugh at them, may we not? Just a little, at least, and from time to time? At the man in the moon, at the woman in the music?

170.

ART IN AN AGE OF WORK.-We have the conscience of an industrious epoch.

This debars us from devoting our best hours and the best part of our days to art, even though that art be the greatest and worthiest. Art is for us a matter of leisure, of recreation, and we consecrate to it the _residue_ of our time and strength. This is the cardinal fact that has altered the relation of art to life. When art makes its great demands of time and strength upon its recipients, it has to battle against the conscience of the industrious and efficient, it is relegated to the idle and conscienceless, who, by their very nature, are not exactly suited to great art, and consider its claims arrogant. It might, therefore, be all over with art, since it lacks air and the power to breathe. But perhaps the great art attempts, by a sort of coa.r.s.ening and disguising, to make itself at home in that other atmosphere, or at least to put up with it-an atmosphere which is really a natural element only for petty art, the art of recreation, of pleasant distraction. This happens nowadays almost everywhere. Even the exponents of great art promise recreation and distraction; even they address themselves to the exhausted; even they demand from him the evening hours of his working-day-just like the artists of the entertaining school, who are content to smooth the furrowed brow and brighten the lack-l.u.s.tre eye. What, then, are the devices of their mightier brethren? These have in their medicine-chests the most powerful excitants, which might give a shock even to a man half-dead: they can deafen you, intoxicate you, make you shudder, or bring tears to your eyes.

By this means they overpower the exhausted man and stimulate him for one night to an over-lively condition, to an ecstasy of terror and delight.

This great art, as it now lives in opera, tragedy, and music-have we a right to be angry with it, because of its perilous fascination, as we should be angry with a cunning courtesan? Certainly not. It would far rather live in the pure element of morning calm, and would far rather make its appeal to the fresh, expectant, vigorous morning-soul of the beholder or listener. Let us be thankful that it prefers living thus to vanishing altogether. But let us also confess that an era that once more introduces free and complete high-days and holidays into life will have no use for _our_ great art.