FROM GRIEG TO BRAHMS

STUDIES OF SOME MODERN
COMPOSERS AND THEIR ART

BY

DANIEL GREGORY MASON

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1902, by
THE OUTLOOK COMPANY

Published November, 1902.

To my uncle
Dr. William Mason
who has won the gratitude
of lovers of music in America
I dedicate these studies
with affection and respect

PREFACE

«Music may be hard to understand, but musicians are men;» so remarked a friend of mine when I was first planning these essays. The sentence sums up very happily a truth I have constantly had in mind in writing them. As all music, no matter what its complexity on the technical side, is in essence an expression of personal feeling, and as the qualities of a man's personality show themselves not only in his works, but in his acts, his words, his face, his handwriting and carriage even, it has seemed natural and fruitful, in these studies, to seek acquaintance with the musicians through acquaintance with the men.

But personal expression depends not alone on the personality of the artist; it depends also on the resources of art, which in turn are the product of a long, slow growth. Accordingly, if we would understand the individual composers, we must have a sense of the scheme into which they fall, the great universal evolution of which they are but incidents. It is for this reason that I have tried, in the introductory essay on The Appreciation of Music, to describe some of the fundamental principles of the art, and to sketch in their light the general movement of musical history, in order to give the reader a perspective sense, a bird's-eye view of the great army of artists in which the supreme masters are but leaders of battalions and regiments. Without this sense it is impossible truly to place or justly to estimate any individual.

At the end of the introduction I apply the principles worked out to determining in a general way how the half dozen composers to be studied are related to modern music as a whole. My result is that although they are practically contemporary, they are by no means peers in the scope and significance of their work. If we arrange them in the order of their influence on art, which depends upon their power both to assimilate previous resources and to add new ones, we must pass «from Grieg to Brahms.»

The purpose of the last essay in the book, on The Meaning of Music, will be obvious enough. Just as the introductory essay tries to sketch the general musical environment, as determined by basic principles and developed in history, in relation to which alone the individuals discussed can be understood, so the epilogue seeks to suggest that still larger environment of human feeling and activity on which music, like everything else, depends for its vitality. The first essay considers music as a medium for men, the last considers life as a medium for music.

It would be impossible to acknowledge here all that these studies, particularly the first, owe to the writings of others. Perhaps the books which have most influenced my treatment of musical æsthetics are Dr. George Santayana's «Sense of Beauty» and Dr. C. Hubert H. Parry's «Evolution of the Art of Music,» though I have got much help also from Dr. William James's «Principles of Psychology,» from Dr. Josiah Royce's books, from Mr. Edward Carpenter, and of course from Helmholtz, Gurney, Mr. W. H. Hadow, and the other standard writers on musical theory. In gathering the biographical material I have had much cordial and skillful help from Miss Barton, of the Boston Public Library, for which I here record my thanks.

Cambridge, Massachusetts,
August 23, 1902.

NOTE TO THE THIRD IMPRESSION

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford has pointed out an error in the story told of Brahms on page 178. It was not the Cambridge University authorities who invited Brahms to write a new work, but the managers of the Leeds Festivals, who, after long neglect of his already printed compositions, asked him, in 1887, to write them a new one; whereupon he returned the answer described.

New York City,
May 10th, 1904.

CONTENTS

PAGE
IINTRODUCTION: THE APPRECIATION OF MUSIC[1]
IIEDVARD GRIEG[47]
IIIANTONIN DVOŘÁK[71]
IVCAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS[97]
VCÉSAR FRANCK[121]
VIPETER ILYITCH TSCHAÏKOWSKY[149]
VIIJOHANNES BRAHMS[173]
VIIIEPILOGUE: THE MEANING OF MUSIC[203]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE
BRAHMS AT THE PIANO
From a charcoal drawing by W. von Beckerath		[Title]
GRIEG[49]
DVOŘÁK[73]
SAINT-SAËNS[99]
FRANCK[123]
TSCHAÏKOWSKY[151]
BRAHMS[175]

I
INTRODUCTION
THE APPRECIATION
OF MUSIC

I
INTRODUCTION
THE APPRECIATION OF MUSIC

However interesting may be the study of an art through the personalities of the artists who have produced it, and such study, since art is a mode of human expression, is indeed essential, it must be supplemented by at least some general knowledge of the long continuous evolution in which the work of the most brilliant individual is but a moment, a phase. The quality of a man's work in art, and especially, as will be seen in a moment, in music, depends not alone on the depth of his character and the force of his talent, but also largely on the technical resources he owes to others, on the means for expressing himself that he finds ready to his hand. Whatever his personal powers or limitations, the value of his work will be determined not more by these than by the helps and hindrances of his artistic inheritance.

The great edifice of art, in fact, is like those Gothic cathedrals on which generations of men successively labored; thousands of common workmen hewed their foundation stones; finer minds, architects, smiths, brass founders, glass makers and sculptors, wrought and decorated the superstructures; and the work of each, whatever his personal skill and devotion, was valuable only because it built upon and added to that of all the rest. The soaring spires are firmly based on blocks of stone ploddingly adjusted; the windows, often of such a perfect beauty that they seem created rather than constructed, had nevertheless to be built up bit by bit; and all the marvelous organism of pillars, arches and buttresses is so delicately solid, so precariously stable, that had one stress been miscalculated, one joint inaccurately made, the whole would collapse. So it is with the edifice of art, and particularly with that of music, which depends for its very material on the labors of musicians. Pigments, clay, marble, the materials of the plastic arts, exist already in the world; but the whole ladder of fixed tones on which music is built is the product of man's æsthetic sense, and had to be created slowly and laboriously by many generations of men. The successions of chords which every banjo player strums in his accompaniments were the subject of long trial by the mediæval composers. The hymn tune that any boy can write is modeled on a symmetrical scheme of phrases developed by countless experimenters. It took men centuries to select and arrange the eight tones of the ordinary scale, and centuries more to learn how to combine them in chords. And the most eloquent modern works depend on this long evolution of resources just as inevitably as the Gothic spire rests on the hewn stones so carefully laid. In the art, as in the cathedral, the seen rests upon the unseen, the beautiful upon the solid, the complex upon the simple, the new upon the old. The product of a thousand artists, music is as dependent on each as the coral reef on the tiny indispensable body of each insect; and on the other hand the individual musician, whatever his ability, is great only as he uses the equipment his fellows have prepared—«the greatest is the most indebted man.»

If, then, we would justly value the half dozen composers who have done most for music in our day, we must add to our understanding of them as persons a knowledge of the general development in which they play a part; we must gain some sense of that great process of musical growth from which they inherit their resources, to which they make their various contributions, and in relation to which alone they can be fairly compared and appreciated. After examining the general course of musical history, ascertaining some fundamental principles, and applying these principles to our special judgments, we shall be able to perceive the greatest musicians of our day in their relations, and to get a perspective view of modern music in which they shall take their proper places.