Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music Part 2

[J] The only kind of people one might properly call _musical_, are the singers; for they themselves can sound. Similarly, a clown who by some trick produces tones when he is touched, might be called a _pseudo-musical_ person.

"Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-tuned law,"

writes Edgar Allan Poe. Lastly, one may speak quite correctly of "musical laughter," because it _sounds_ like music.

Taking the signification in which the term is applied and almost exclusively employed in German, a musical person is one who manifests an inclination for music by a nice discrimination and sensitiveness with regard to the _technical aspects_ of the art. By "technics" I mean rhythm, harmony, intonation, part-leading, and the treatment of themes.

The more subtleties he is capable of hearing or reproducing in these, the more "musical" he is held to be.

In view of the great importance attached to these elements of the art, this "musical" temperament has naturally become of the highest consequence. And so an artist who plays with perfect technical finish should be deemed the most musical player. But as we mean by "technics"

only the mechanical mastery of the instrument, the terms "technical"

and "musical" have been turned into opposites.

The matter has been carried so far as to call a composition itself "musical,"[K] or even to a.s.sert of a great composer like Berlioz that he was not sufficiently musical.[L] "Unmusical" conveys the strongest reproach; branded thus, its object becomes an outlaw.[M]

[K] "But these pieces are so musical," a violinist once remarked to me of a four-hand worklet which I had characterized as trivial.

[L] "My dog is _very_ musical," I have heard said in all seriousness.

Should the dog take precedence of Berlioz?

[M] Such has been my own fate.

In a country like Italy, where all partic.i.p.ate in the delights of music, this differentiation becomes superfluous, and the term corresponding is not found in the language. In France, where a living sense of music does not permeate the people, there are musicians and non-musicians; of the rest, some "are very fond of music," and others "do not care for it."

Only in Germany is it made a point of honor to be "musical," that is to say, not merely to love music, but more especially to understand it as regards its technical means of expression, and to obey their rules.

A thousand hands support the buoyant child and solicitously attend its footsteps, that it may not soar aloft where there might be risk of a serious fall. But it is still so young, and is eternal; the day of its freedom will come.--When it shall cease to be "musical."

THE creator should take over no traditional law in blind belief, which would make him view his own creative endeavor, from the outset, as an exception contrasting with that law. For his individual case he should seek out and formulate a fitting individual law, which, after the first complete realization, he should annul, that he himself may not be drawn into repet.i.tions when his next work shall be in the making.

The function of the creative artist consists in making laws, not in following laws ready made. He who follows such laws, ceases to be a creator.

Creative power may be the more readily recognized, the more it shakes itself loose from tradition. But an intentional avoidance of the rules cannot masquerade as creative power, and still less engender it.

The true creator strives, in reality, after _perfection_ only. And through bringing this into harmony with _his own_ individuality, a new law arises without premeditation.

So narrow has our tonal range become, so stereotyped its form of expression, that nowadays there is not one familiar motive that cannot be fitted with some other familiar motive so that the two may be played simultaneously. Not to lose my way in trifling,[N] I shall refrain from giving examples.

[N] With a friend I once indulged in such trifling in order to ascertain how many commonly known compositions were written according to the scheme of the second theme in the Adagio of the Ninth Symphony.

In a few moments we had collected some fifteen a.n.a.logues of the most different kinds, among them specimens of the lowest type of art. And Beethoven himself:--Is the theme of the Finale in the "Fifth" any other than the one wherewith the "Second" introduces its Allegro?--or than the princ.i.p.al theme of the Third Piano Concerto, only in minor?

That which, within our present-day music, most nearly approaches the essential nature of the art, is the Rest and the Hold (Pause).

Consummate players, improvisers, know how to employ these instruments of expression in loftier and ampler measure. The tense silence between two movements--_in itself music_, in this environment--leaves wider scope for divination than the more determinate, but therefore less elastic, sound.

What we now call our Tonal System is nothing more than a set of "signs"; an ingenious device to grasp somewhat of that eternal harmony; a meagre pocket-edition of that encyclopedic work; artificial light instead of the sun.--Have you ever noticed how people gaze open-mouthed at the brilliant illumination of a hall? They never do so at the millionfold brighter sunshine of noonday.--

And so, in music, the signs have a.s.sumed greater consequence than that which they ought to stand for, and can only suggest.

How important, indeed, are "Third," "Fifth," and "Octave"! How strictly we divide "consonances" from "dissonances"--_in a sphere where no dissonances can possibly exist_!

We have divided the octave into twelve equidistant degrees, because we had to manage somehow, and have constructed our instruments in such a way that we can never get in above or below or between them. Keyboard instruments, in particular, have so thoroughly schooled our ears that we are no longer capable of hearing anything else--incapable of hearing except through this impure medium. Yet Nature created an _infinite gradation_--_infinite!_ who still knows it nowadays?[O]

[O] "The equal temperament of 12 degrees, which was discussed theoretically as early as about 1500, but not established as a principle until shortly before 1700 (by Andreas Werkmeister), divides the octave into twelve equal portions (semitones, hence 'twelve-semitone system') through which mean values are obtained; no interval is perfectly pure, but all are fairly serviceable."

(Riemann, "Musik-Lexikon.") Thus, through Andreas Werkmeister, this master-workman in art, we have gained the "twelve-semitone" system with intervals which are all impure, but fairly serviceable. But what is "pure," and what "impure"? We hear a piano "gone out of tune," and whose intervals may thus have become "pure, but unserviceable," and it sounds _impure_ to us. The diplomatic "Twelve-semitone system" is an invention mothered by necessity; yet none the less do we sedulously guard its imperfections.

And within this duodecimal octave we have marked out a series of fixed intervals, seven in number, and founded thereon our entire art of music.

What do I say--_one_ series? Two such series, one for each leg: The Major and Minor Scales. When we start this series of intervals on some other degree of our semitonic ladder, we obtain a _new key_, and a "foreign" one, at that! How violently contracted a system arose from this initial confusion,[P] may be read in the law-books; we will not repeat it here.

[P] It is termed "The Science of Harmony."

We teach four-and-twenty keys, twelve times the two Series of Seven; but, in point of fact, we have at our command only two, the major key and the minor key. _The rest are merely transpositions._ By means of the several transpositions we are supposed to get different shades of harmony; but this is an illusion. In England, under the reign of the high "concert pitch," the most familiar works may be played a semitone higher than they are written, without changing their effect. Singers transpose an aria to suit their convenience, leaving untransposed what precedes and follows. Song-writers not infrequently publish their own compositions in three different pitches; in all three editions the pieces are precisely alike.

When a well-known face looks out of a window, it matters not whether it gazes down from the first story or the third.

Were it feasible to elevate or depress a landscape, far as eye can reach, by several hundred yards, the pictorial impression would neither gain nor lose by it.

Upon the two Series of Seven, the major key and the minor key, the whole art of music has been established; one limitation brings on the other.

To each of these a definite character has been attributed; we have learned and have taught that they should be heard as contrasts, and they have gradually acquired the significance of symbols:--Major and Minor--Maggiore e Minore--Contentment and Discontent--Joy and Sorrow--Light and Shade. The harmonic symbols have fenced in the expression of music, from Bach to Wagner, and yet further on until to-day and the day after to-morrow. _Minor_ is employed with the same intention, and has the same effect upon us now, as two hundred years ago. Nowadays it is no longer possible to "compose" a funeral march, for it already exists, once for all. Even the least informed non-professional knows what to expect when a funeral march--whichever you please--is to be played. Even such an one can antic.i.p.ate the difference between a symphony in major and one in minor. We are tyrannized by Major and Minor--by the bifurcated garment.

Strange, that one should feel major and minor as opposites. They both present the same face, now more joyous, now more serious; and a mere touch of the brush suffices to turn the one into the other. The pa.s.sage from either to the other is easy and imperceptible; when it occurs frequently and swiftly, the two begin to shimmer and coalesce indistinguishably.--But when we recognize that major and minor form one Whole with a double meaning, and that the "four-and-twenty keys" are simply an elevenfold transposition of the original twain, we arrive unconstrainedly at a perception of the UNITY _of our system of keys_ [tonality]. The conceptions of "related" and "foreign" keys vanish, and with them the entire intricate theory of degrees and relations. _We possess one single key._ But it is of most meagre sort.

"Unity of the key-system."

--"I suppose you mean that 'key' and 'key-system' are the sunbeam and its diffraction into colors?"

No; that I can not mean. For our whole system of tone, key, and tonality, taken in its entirety, is only a part of a fraction of one diffracted ray from that Sun, "Music," in the empyrean of the "eternal harmony."

However deeply rooted the attachment to the habitual, and inertia, may be in the ways and nature of humankind, in equal measure are energy, and opposition to the existing order, characteristic of all that has life.

Nature has her wiles, and persuades man, obstinately opposed though he be to progress and change; Nature progresses continually and changes unremittingly, but with so even and unnoticeable movement that men perceive only quiescence. Only on looking backward from a distance do they note with astonishment that they have been deceived.

The Reformer of any given period excites irritation for the reason that his changes find men unprepared, and, above all, because these changes are appreciable. The Reformer, in comparison with Nature, is undiplomatic; and, as a wholly logical consequence, his changes do not win general acceptance until Time, with subtle, imperceptible advance, has bridged over the leap of the self-a.s.sured leader. Yet we find cases in which the reformer marched abreast of the times, while the rest fell behind. And then they have to be forced and lashed to take the leap across the pa.s.sage they have missed. I believe that the major-and-minor key with its transpositional relations, our "twelve-semitone system,"