Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music Part 4

In so far as taste partic.i.p.ates in feeling, the latter--like all else--alters its forms of expression with the period. That is, one aspect or another of feeling will be favored at one time or another, onesidedly cultivated, especially developed. Thus, with and after Wagner, voluptuous sensuality came to the fore; the form of _intensification of pa.s.sion_ is still unsurmounted by contemporary composers. On every tranquil beginning followed a swift upward surge.

Wagner, in this point insatiable, but not inexhaustible, turned from sheer necessity to the expedient, after reaching a climax, of starting afresh softly, to soar to a sudden new intensification.

Modern French writers exhibit a revulsion; their feeling is a reflexive chast.i.ty, or perhaps rather a restrained sensualism; the upstriving mountain-paths of Wagner are succeeded by monotonous plains of twilight uniformity.

Thus "style" forms itself out of feeling, when led by taste.

The "Apostles of the Ninth Symphony" have devised the notion of "depth"

in music. It is still current at face-value, especially in Germanic lands.

There is a depth of feeling, and a depth of thought; the latter is literary, and can have no application to tones. Depth of feeling, by contrast, is psychical, and thoroughly germane to the nature of music.

The Apostles of the Ninth Symphony have a peculiar and not quite clearly defined estimate of "depth" in music. _Depth_ becomes _breadth_, and the attempt is made to attain it through _weight_; it then discovers itself (through an a.s.sociation of ideas) by a preference for a _deep register_, and (as I have had opportunity to observe) by the insinuation of a second, mysterious notion, usually of a literary sort. If these are not the sole specific signs, they are the most important ones.

To every disciple of philosophy, however, depth of feeling would seem to imply exhaustiveness in feeling, a complete absorption in the given mood.

Whoever, surrounded by the full tide of a genuine carnival crowd, slinks about morosely or even indifferently, neither affected nor carried away by the tremendous self-satire of mask and motley, by the might of misrule over law, by the vengeful feeling of wit running riot, shows himself incapable of sounding the depths of feeling. This gives further confirmation of the fact, that depth of feeling roots in a complete absorption in the given mood, however frivolous, and blossoms in the interpretation of that mood; whereas the current conception of deep feeling singles out only one aspect of feeling in man, and specializes that.

In the so-called "Champagne Aria" in Don Giovanni there lies more "depth" than in many a funeral march or nocturne:--Depth of feeling also shows in not wasting it on subordinate or unimportant matters.

ROUTINE is highly esteemed and frequently required; in musical "officialdom" it is a _sine qua non_. That routine in music should exist at all, and, furthermore, that it can be nominated as a condition in the musician's bond, is another proof of the narrow confines of our musical art. Routine signifies the acquisition of a modic.u.m of experience and artcraft, and their application to all cases which may occur; hence, there must be an astounding number of a.n.a.logous cases. Now, I like to imagine a species of art-praxis wherein each case should be a new one, an exception! How helpless and impotent would the army of practical musicians stand before it!--in the end they would surely beat a retreat, and disappear. Routine transforms the temple of art into a factory. It destroys creativeness. For creation means, the bringing form out of the void; whereas routine flourishes on imitation. It is "poetry made to order." It rules because it suits the generality: In the theatre, in the orchestra, in virtuosi, in instruction. One longs to exclaim, "Avoid routine! Let each beginning be, as had none been before! Know nothing, but rather think and feel! For, behold, the myriad strains that once shall sound have existed since the beginning, ready, afloat in the aether, and together with them other myriads that shall never be heard.

Only stretch forth your hands, and ye shall grasp a blossom, a breath of the sea-breeze, a sunbeam; avoid routine, for it strives to grasp only that wherewith your four walls are filled, and the same over and over again; the spirit of ease so infects you, that you will scarcely leave your armchairs, and will lay hold only of what is nearest to hand. And myriad strains are there since the beginning, still waiting for manifestation!"

"It is my misfortune, to possess no routine," Wagner once wrote Liszt, when the composition of "Tristan" was making no progress. Thus Wagner deceived himself, and wore a mask for others. He had too much routine, and his composing-machinery was thrown out of gear, just when a tangle formed in the mesh which only inspiration could unloose. True, Wagner found the clew when he succeeded in throwing off routine; but had he really never possessed it, he would have declared the fact without bitterness. And, after all, this sentence in Wagner's letter expresses the true artist-contempt for routine, inasmuch as he waives all claim to a qualification which he thinks meanly of, and takes care that others may not invest him with it. This self-praise he utters with a mien of ironic desperation. He is, in very truth, unhappy that composition is at a standstill, but finds rich consolation in the consciousness that his genius is above the cheap expedients of routine; at the same time, with an air of modesty, he sorrowfully confesses that he has not acquired a training belonging to the craft.

The sentence is a masterpiece of the native cunning of the instinct of self-preservation; but equally proves--and that is our point--the pettiness of routine in creative work.

RESPECT the Pianoforte! Its disadvantages are evident, decided, and unquestionable: The lack of sustained tone, and the pitiless, unyielding adjustment of the inalterable semitonic scale.

But its advantages and prerogatives approach the marvelous.

It gives a single man command over something complete; in its potentialities from softest to loudest in one and the same register it excels all other instruments. The trumpet can blare, but not sigh; contrariwise the flute; the pianoforte can do both. Its range embraces the highest and deepest practicable tones. Respect the Pianoforte!

Let doubters consider how the pianoforte was esteemed by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, who dedicated their choicest thoughts to it.

And the pianoforte has one possession wholly peculiar to itself, an inimitable device, a photograph of the sky, a ray of moonlight--the Pedal.

The effects of the pedal are unexhausted, because they have remained even to this day the drudges of a narrow-souled and senseless harmonic theory; the treatment accorded them is like trying to mould air or water into geometric forms. Beethoven, who incontestably achieved the greatest progress on and for the pianoforte, divined the mysteries of the pedal, and to him we owe the first liberties.

The pedal is in ill-repute. For this, absurd irregularities must bear the blame. Let us experiment with _sensible_ irregularities.

"I FELT ... that the book I shall write will be neither in English nor in Latin; and this for the one reason ... namely, that the language in which it may be given me not only to write, but also to think, will not be Latin, or English, or Italian, or Spanish, but a language not even one of whose words I know, a language in which dumb things speak to me, and in which, it may be, I shall at last have to respond in my grave to an Unknown Judge."

(Von Hofmannsthal: A letter.)