Lessons in Music Form Part 1

Lessons in Music Form.

by Percy Goetschius.

FOREWORD.

The present manual treats of the structural designs of musical composition, not of the styles or species of music. Read our AFTERWORD.

It undertakes the thorough explanation of each design or form, from the smallest to the largest; and such comparison as serves to demonstrate the principle of natural evolution, in the operation of which the entire system originates.

This explanation--be it well understood--is conducted solely with a view to the _a.n.a.lysis_ of musical works, and is not calculated to prepare the student for the application of form in practical composition. For the exhaustive exposition of the technical apparatus, the student must be referred to my "h.o.m.ophonic Forms."

The present aim is to enable the student to recognize and trace the mental process of the composer in executing his task; to define each factor of the structural design, and its relation to every other factor and to the whole; to determine thus the synthetic meaning of the work, and thereby to increase not only his own appreciation, interest, and enjoyment of the very real beauties of good music, but also his power to _interpret_, intelligently and adequately, the works that engage his attention.

The choice of cla.s.sic literature to which most frequent reference is made, and which the student is therefore expected to procure before beginning his lessons, includes:--

The Songs Without Words of Mendelssohn; the _Jugend Alb.u.m_, Op. 68, of Schumann; the pianoforte sonatas of Mozart (Peters edition); the pianoforte sonatas of Beethoven.

Besides these, incidental reference is made to the symphonies of Beethoven, the sonatas of Schubert, the mazurkas of Chopin, and other pianoforte compositions of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Chopin, and Brahms.

PERCY GOETSCHIUS.

BOSTON, Ma.s.s., Sept., 1904.

LESSONS IN MUSIC FORM.

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.

THE NECESSITY OF FORM IN MUSIC.--So much uncertainty and diversity of opinion exists among music lovers of every grade concerning the presence of Form in musical composition, and the necessity of its presence there, that a few general principles are submitted at the outset of our studies, as a guide to individual reflection and judgment on the subject.

Certain apparently defensible prejudices that prevail in the minds of even advanced musical critics against the idea of Form in music, originate in a very manifest mistake on the part of the "formalists"

themselves, who (I refer to unimpa.s.sioned theorists and advocates of rigid old scholastic rules) place too narrow a construction upon Form, and define it with such rigor as to leave no margin whatever for the exercise of free fancy and emotional sway. Both the dreamer, with his indifference to (or downright scorn of) Form; and the pedant, with his narrow conception of it; as well as the ordinary music lover, with his endeavor to discover some less debatable view to adopt for his own everyday use,--need to be reminded _that Form in music means simply Order in music_.

Thus interpreted, the necessity of form, that is, Order, in the execution of a musical design appears as obvious as are the laws of architecture to the builder, or the laws of creation to the astronomer or naturalist; for the absence of order, that is, Disorder, const.i.tutes a condition which is regarded with abhorrence and dread by every rational mind.

A musical composition, then, in which Order prevails; in which all the factors are chosen and treated in close keeping with their logical bearing upon each other and upon the whole; in which, in a word, there is no disorder of thought or technique,--is music with Form (_i.e._ good Form). A sensible arrangement of the various members of the composition (its figures, phrases, motives, and the like) will exhibit both agreement and contrast, both confirmation and opposition; for we measure things by comparison with both like and unlike. Our nature demands the evidence of _uniformity_, as that emphasizes the impressions, making them easier to grasp and enjoy; but our nature also craves a certain degree of _variety_, to counteract the monotony which must result from too persistent uniformity. When the elements of Unity and Variety are sensibly matched, evenly balanced, the form is good.

On the other hand, a composition is formless, or faulty in form, when the component parts are jumbled together without regard to proportion and relation.

Which of these two conditions is the more desirable, or necessary, would seem to be wholly self-evident.

The error made by pedantic teachers is to demand _too much_ Form; to insist that a piece of music shall be a model of arithmetical adjustment. This is probably a graver error than apparent formlessness. Design and logic and unity there must surely be; but any _obtrusive_ evidence of mathematical calculation must degrade music to the level of a mere handicraft.

Another and higher significance involved in the idea of Form, that goes to prove how indispensable it may be in truly good music, rests upon the opposition of Form to the material.

There are two essentially different cla.s.ses of music lovers:--the one cla.s.s takes delight in the mere sound and jingle of the music; not looking for any higher purpose than this, they content themselves with the purely sensuous enjoyment that the sound material affords. To such listeners, a comparatively meaningless succession of tones and chords is sufficiently enjoyable, so long as each separate particle, each beat or measure, is euphonious in itself. The other cla.s.s, more discriminating in its tastes, looks beneath this iridescent surface and strives to fathom the underlying _purpose_ of it all; not content with the testimony of the ear alone, such hearers enlist the higher, n.o.bler powers of Reason, and no amount of pleasant sounds could compensate them for the absence of well-ordered parts and their logical justification.

This second cla.s.s is made up of those listeners who recognize in music an embodiment of artistic aims, an object of serious and refined enjoyment _that appeals to the emotions through the intelligence_,--not a plaything for the senses alone; and who believe that all music that would in this sense be truly artistic, must exhibit "Form" as the end, and "Material" only as a means to this end.

Still another, and possibly the strongest argument of all for the necessity of form in music, is derived from reflection upon the peculiarly vague and intangible nature of its art-material--tone, sound. The words of a language (also sounds, it is true) have established meanings, so familiar and definite that they recall and re-awaken impressions of thought and action with a vividness but little short of the actual experience. Tones, on the contrary, are not and cannot be a.s.sociated with any _definite_ ideas or impressions; they are as impalpable as they are transient, and, taken separately, leave no lasting trace.

Therefore, whatever stability and palpability a musical composition is to acquire, _must be derived from its form, or design_, and not from its totally unsubstantial material. It must fall back upon the network traced by the disposition of its points and lines upon the musical canvas; for this it is that const.i.tutes its real and palpable contents.

THE EVIDENCES OF FORM IN MUSIC.--The presence of form in music is manifested, first of all, by the disposition of tones and chords in symmetrical measures, and by the numerous methods of tone arrangement which create and define the element of Rhythm,--the distinction of short and long time-values, and of accented and unaccented (that is, heavy and light) pulses.

This is not what is commonly supposed to const.i.tute form in music, but it is the fundamental condition out of which an orderly system of form may be developed. As well might the carpenter or architect venture to dispense with scale, compa.s.s and square in their constructive labors, as that the composer should neglect beat, measure and rhythm, in his effort to realize a well-developed and intelligible design in the whole, or any part, of his composition. The beats and measures and phrases are the barley-corn, inch and ell of the musical draughtsman, and without these units of measurement and proportion, neither the vital condition of Symmetry nor the equally important condition of well-regulated Contrast could be clearly established.

The _beat_ is the unit of measurement in music. The _measure_ is a group of beats,--two, three, four, or more, at the option of the composer. The bounds of the measures are visibly represented (on the written or printed page) by vertical lines, called bars; and are rendered orally recognizable (to the hearer who does not see the page) by a more or less delicate emphasis, imparted--by some means or other--to the _first_ pulse or beat of each measure, as accent, simply to mark where each new group begins. Those who play or sing can imagine how vague, and even chaotic, a page of music would look if these vertical bars were omitted; and how much more difficult it would be to read than when these (not only accustomed, but truly necessary) landmarks are present. Precisely the same unintelligible impression must be, and is, conveyed to the hearer when _his_ landmarks, the accents, are not indicated with sufficient emphasis or clearness to render him sensible of the beginning of each new measure.

The same primary system of measurement and a.s.sociation which is employed in enlarging the beats to measures, is then applied to the a.s.sociation of the measures themselves in the next larger units of musical structure, the Motive, Phrase, Period, and so forth. Unlike the measures, which are defined by the accents at their _beginning_, these larger factors of form are defined chiefly at their _end_, by the impression of occasional periodic interruption, exactly a.n.a.logous to the pauses at the end of poetic lines, or at the commas, semicolons and the like, in a prose paragraph. These interruptions of the musical current, called Cadences, are generally so well defined that even the more superficial listener is made aware of a division of the musical pattern into its sections and parts, each one of which closes as recognizably (though not as irrevocably) as the very last sentence of the piece.

Cadences serve the same purpose in music, then, as do the punctuation marks in rhetoric; and an idea of the senselessness and confusion of a musical composition, if left devoid of cadences in sufficient number and force, may be gleaned from an experimental test of the effect of a page of prose, read with persistent disregard of its commas, colons, and other marks of "cadence."

Another evidence of Form in music, that is at once subtle and powerful, rests upon what might be termed the _linear_ quality of melody. The famous old definition of a line as a "succession of points," tallies so accurately with that of melody (as a "succession of single tones"), that it is not only proper, but peculiarly forceful, to speak of melodies as _tone-lines_. Our conception of a melody or tune, our ability to recognize and reproduce it, depends far more upon its undulations, its rising, falling, or resting level, than upon its rhythmic features (the varying lengths of its tones). These movements trace a resonant line before our mind's eye as surely, though perhaps not as distinctly, as the pencil of the artist traces the lines of an image upon the paper; and this process is going on constantly, from beginning to end, in every piece of music. In a portrait it describes the contours of face and figure,--in a word, the _Form_; in the musical composition it fulfils, to a great extent, the self-same mission, that of defining the Form. One clear, predominating tone-line traces the "air" or tune of the piece; and this is often the only line that arrests the hearer's attention; but there are other tone-lines, less prominent and less extended and coherent, gliding along harmoniously beside the Melody proper, which (something like the shading in a picture) contribute to the richness of the design, and perform their share in proving and illuminating the Form of the whole.

This is most salient in music for orchestra, where each player describes an individual tone-line, rendered all the more distinct and recognizable by the specific "color" of his instrument; and that is the chief, perhaps the sole, reason why the orchestra is esteemed the most complete and perfect medium of musical expression.

UNITY AND VARIETY.--As much as opinions and beliefs may differ, among music critics, as to the necessity of Form in music, and the conditions of its existence, no reasonable objection can be taken to the hypothesis that _Clearness and Attractiveness_ are the two vital requisites upon which the enjoyment of any art depends. The artist's utterances or creations must be intelligible, and they must be interesting. The lack, partial or total, of either of these qualities neutralizes the force of the intended impression, in precise proportion to the default.

In musical composition these two requisites are embodied in the principles of Unity and Variety.

_Unity_--in its various technical phases of Uniformity, Regularity, Similarity, Equality, Agreement, or whatever other synonym we may find it convenient to use--is the condition out of which the composer must secure intelligibility, clearness, definiteness of expression. Glance at Ex. 2, and note the evidences of unity (similarity) in the rhythmic and melodic formation of the first four measures.

_Variety_--in its most comprehensive application--is the medium he must employ to arouse and sustain the hearer's interest. Glance again at Ex. 2, and note the contrast between the two halves of the first four measures, and between these and the following two measures.

These conditions are, of course, squarely opposed to each other, though their interaction is reciprocal rather than antagonistic; and, from what has been said, it is obvious that they are of equal importance.

Hence, as was declared on the second page, the great problem of the art-creator consists in so balancing their operations that neither may encroach upon the domain of the other. For too constant and palpable Unity will inevitably paralyze interest; while too much Variety will as surely tend to obscure the distinctness of the design.

The workings of the principle of Unity (to which attention must first be given, because it appears to come first in the order of creation) are shown in the following elementary details of composition:--