FOOTNOTE:
[A] Composers who originate forms or methods that recommend themselves to the musical world because they voice recognizable advance in art expression, create periods. Mendelssohn was in his more earnest moods a modernized Bach. He did not originate forms, but adapted those of his great ideal to our nineteenth century habits of thought and feeling. He did this inimitably, but he was more finished than forceful or bold, and his impress on art was consequently not deep, although extremely salutary.
CHAPTER VI
WHAT ARE THE INFLUENCING FACTORS IN DECIDING MUSICAL DESTINIES?
WHO IS TO BE OUR SEVENTH HIGH-PRIEST?
For reasons inherent both in music itself and in man's sluggish and prejudiced perceptions, really great composers have usually to wait longer for recognition than do those of mediocre capacities. Music that is worthy of consideration is as individual as its composer's features or his unconscious habits. It is a tonal utterance of his most intimate nature, an inarticulate but clear expression of his strongest emotions,—a shadow-picture of his very soul. The more intense the nature, the stronger the emotions; and the deeper the soul of the composer, the less quickly can we apprehend the full import of his writings, for they are characteristic of him and foreign to us. Each period-maker adds so much to art resources and so materially modifies art methods, that he may be said to originate a musical dialect, with which our ears and minds have to become familiar before his poetic schemes can assume for us sustained and clear significance.
Because of this alien character of pronounced originality, high-priestly honors are usually posthumous, for they are bestowed only upon those who have convinced the musical world of their fitness through the life-long, patient, and intelligent use of supreme endowments. It is the musical world only that has the power to confer high-priestly honors, for that office is not at the disposal of composers' friends or adherents, nor of parties or clans. One must have gained universal recognition as a beneficent and radically new factor in art in order to secure the requisite suffrages, and that requires so much time that but two of our six high-priests lived to realize the honor. Even Beethoven did not live to feel full assurance of immortality, but Wagner did. He knew that his innovations had been accepted by the world, that his achievements broadened the foundations of art and opened new channels for musical thought, that his individuality shone brightly across the broad sea of modern culture, a "beacon-light" of resplendent brightness, and that he was a period-maker, whose impress upon art was too deep to wear away, for he was a musician who abated not one jot or tittle of that which he thought was art's due.
This working throughout life for posthumous honors is not so depressing as it would seem at first glance, for any man, however modest, if blessed with supreme endowments, must feel his power, and be buoyed up by the certainty of ultimate recognition. The art love, steadfastness, ambition, individuality, and imagination of truly great men are proof against the struggles and discouragements of the artist's existence.
Time is then our final tribunal, the only adjuster of musical values who makes no errors in judgment. The individual judge gauges the merits of contemporaneous composers, guided by his or her personal impressions. Time gathers composite impressions made upon races of music-lovers during decades, and her verdicts, based upon these impressions, are final. We are sometimes nonplussed, and even rebellious, when the success of our favorite composer, or of some especially sympathetic piece of music, proves ephemeral, but the fittest always survives, and the fittest is the composer or work which, in addition to the indispensable technical and æsthetic qualities, is pervaded by the richest vein of altruistic individuality.
If time be our final tribunal, then professional critics are the advocates who present the claims of artists at the bar of her court. These advocates differ widely in ability and in character. A few of them have great learning, acute perceptions, and honesty; they will advocate no cause that is prejudicial to the interests of art, our muse having, as it were, endowed them with a super-retainer. Such advocacy embodies the highest and best of which the limitations of individuality admit. From this ideal standard professional critics grade downward until they reach assertive, prejudiced, and sometimes malicious ignorance. In passing down the scale we first find capacity without the essential confidence in convictions (timid ability is always a weak factor in adjusting affairs, whether artistic or material), then honesty and good-will unsupported by capacity, then capacity biassed by prejudice or self-interest, and last and worst, the pettifogger. These classes show arrogance, and attract attention (temporarily) in inverse ratio to their abilities. If we scan the history of our tribunal, we find that the more assertive the advocate the smaller his sphere of influence.
The great public is the jury in this court, and its decisions, although ultimately wise and just, are always so delayed by the babel of pleas that dins in its ears, that I feel justified in devoting a little space to these "moulders of opinion," and to facilitate my purpose will use a simile drawn from nature, which is less whimsical and more reliable than man.
Music is like a sensitive plant,—it flourishes only when each and every condition is favorable to its growth. For this reason those who find pleasure, edification, and comfort in its subtle qualities should imitate the skilled gardener in his watchful and discriminating culture of flowers. A professional gardener is to horticulture what a critic should be to art. Each is supposed to bring trained faculties to his task, but the gardener, familiar with the principles that govern flower growth, studies the natures of his germs, and then adapts soil, temperature, etc., to the requirements of each. He thus starts out with one material advantage over his art confrère, in that his experience enables him to recognize the genera of his germs and to anticipate results. He deals with seeds, roots, slips, and bulbs; the art critic with the mysteries of individuality, of which he most often judges from the impressions made upon his susceptibilities by a momentary contact of its outward manifestations. These manifestations are seldom full and trustworthy indexes of creative capacity, especially in the cases of young composers, because of the unfavorable conditions that so often attend upon their development and presentation.
Communities are gardens in which music thrives, barely exists (the most common condition), or entirely fails to take root. Propagation is the crucial test of vitalizing qualities. A community that can produce new varieties, really audacious talents, must possess a high degree of fertility. The composers to be found living and creating in any given place are therefore reflections of their musical environment, for the faculties of musical organisms are more sensitive even than music itself. Transplanted music will continue to exist under conditions that afford no incitement to earnest creation, nor the elements from which virility may be drawn. Beethoven's works interest communities in which his faculties would have remained latent.
The legitimate functions of criticism are to seek out and to nurture true talent and to guide public discrimination in its initial judgment. Critics and reviewers are experts to whose expressed opinions the printing-press imparts degrees of convincing power not always comportable with their merit, and spreads them broadcast for good or ill. Printed criticism, because of this cogent quality, and because it appeals, and may repeatedly appeal,—being in fixed form,—to so broad a radius of intelligence, should be the most powerful as well as the most active agency in creating the conditions essential to musical growth; but a careful review of the past and present relations of criticism to art culture would, to my mind, convince any unbiassed thinker that the decision of our court had been delayed and not facilitated by the average advocate, and that the productivity of our garden had never been increased by the ministrations of professional gardeners.
Nevertheless, printed criticism has a momentary influence. We do not necessarily surrender when confronted by criticisms at variance with our own ideas, but the undue weight with which printed matter is endowed often causes even expert opinion to waver, protest to the contrary as it may.
Printed news is not always authentic, nor are printed opinions on finance, political economy, sports, weather, etc., infallible, although usually written by specialists; but these matters, being material, adjust themselves, and their editorial short-comings seldom do irreparable harm; whereas our sensitive art, the elements of which are emotional, and the supersensitive organisms which are blessed with art productivity, are less capable of recovering from the shock incident to misconception and misrepresentation.
Wagner was unique in this respect, for he endured years of calumny and injustice without flinching. His nature was dual, as if his art instinct had been grafted into an heroic character, like a noble oak, from which it drew vitality, and whose wide-spread roots imparted stability to its convictions without infusing into them any other suggestion of its stern elements. Were all talented composers as firmly rooted as Wagner, there would be less reason for protesting against ignorance and carelessness in print.
The second question propounded in the headlines of this chapter can be discreetly considered, but it can receive no conclusive answer until time's verdict is rendered. We can weigh the impressions made upon our individual susceptibilities by the qualities of the more prominent candidates for high-priestly honors, and compare these with like individual conceptions of ideal attributes, but the result of our speculations must necessarily partake more of the character of a weather-vane, subject to the caprice of changing conditions, than of a finger-post, giving reliable direction to our anticipations.
Of all the composers of recent times, Brahms attracted the largest following of musicians, and with right, for the volume of his worthy creations is larger than that produced by any of his contemporaries. He wrote a vast number of songs, ensemble pieces for a great variety of instrumental combinations, accompanied and unaccompanied piano-forte pieces, and symphonies, overtures, etc., for the grand orchestra. His work is usually characterized by rich harmonies, melodic voice-leading, transparent form, and a varying amount of spontaneity that at times fails to conceal evident effort. This effort makes itself felt in peculiar and even grotesque harmonic successions and rhythms, and it is traceable through all periods of his career. These, which to me are forced methods, are the only features that individualize Brahms' music. He is greatest when self-forgetful, and these unnatural features bespeak self-consciousness. Schumann, who was, as I said in a previous chapter, Brahms' musical god-father, was a genius with a clearly defined individuality, the complete and natural expression of which obliged him to invent means to supplement those that he had inherited from his predecessors. These invented means were peculiar harmonic compounds and erratic accents. Schumann usually employed these devices with grateful results; for he makes us feel that they are essential to the development of full significance in his tonal schemes. Genius has a magical power over resources and modes, often transforming eccentricities into felicitous, expressive means, and endowing that which would be chaotic in other hands with logical import.
Brahms seems to have been dazzled by these extreme manifestations of his great prototype's individuality. He not only adopted, but exaggerated these, and made them the distinguishing features of his style. He was a masterly contrapuntist, had a clear sense of form, handled the orchestra well, although he never exhausted its resources, and was always a logical thinker. His skill in the treatment of themes was so astounding that he often imparted significance to trivial motives (vide the "Academic Overture" and his sets of variations), but he was not a great initial inventor (an originator of pregnant themes) nor was he a resourceful colorist.
As I said before, Brahms was greatest when self-forgetful, for at such times the artificial element dropped out of his diction and he became a masterful musician, possessed of all the qualities but one that have characterized our priestly line. This missing quality is to my mind the most essential of all,—viz., a natural, distinguishing, and pervading individuality.
Tschaikowski received brief mention while we were considering Russia's services to art in the fourth chapter. Because of Russia's half-closed door her art has, until recent times, been very much isolated. For this reason Tschaikowski's claims have not even now been fully laid before our tribunal. It is a peculiar but characteristic circumstance that America anticipated Europe by several years in her knowledge and appreciation of this great creator. America is constantly eager for novelty, and has not learned to seek it at home; Germany, and in a less degree the other European countries, feel complacency in their own achievements, and corresponding distrust and intolerance of foreign products.
It was but six years ago that Germany was made aware of the fact that a great genius had lived, created, and died outside of her sphere of direct influence, and almost without her knowledge. Tschaikowski had naturally been known in a way to well-read German musicians, but it required such a blow as was struck by Professor Leopold Auer to draw from our tocsin a peal sufficiently vibrant to penetrate to the farthermost confines of the musical world and to herald the coming of a new hero. Never was an act of justice and love more conscientiously and adequately accomplished. Auer showed rare judgment in the selection of his programme. His evident desire was to display as many features of Tschaikowski's versatile genius as possible. He therefore chose the scholarly second, instead of the more assertively emotional sixth symphony. The violin concert, the "Nutcracker" suite, and the symphonic poem "Francesca da Rimini" followed. I know of no other composer of any time whose works could furnish an equal variety of defined moods, each bearing the unmistakable stamp of his individuality.
Professor Auer conducted the orchestral works and played the concerto with a skill which drew its inspiration from the reverent memory of his lost friend. His exaltation infected the orchestral players, and finally the audience, making the evening memorable, and sending out waves of enthusiasm that have carried Tschaikowski's name and music to the remotest corners of the musical world.
In my previous mention of Tschaikowski I accorded him virtues that "place him at the head of symphonists of his time." He had, however, two frailties, one of which more or less pervades his works, while the other shows itself but seldom. The former is a too great fealty to his themes as at first announced, and the latter is an occasional tendency to be melodramatic. Plastic compositions must be true to the spirit, but not to the initial form of their themes, for pregnant themes possess many phases of suggestiveness, and the more of these phases a composer feels and displays, the richer the homogeneity of his creations.
Were it not for these slight weaknesses in Tschaikowski's work I should not hesitate to predict that time would make him her choice for our seventh high-priest, and he may win the honor in spite of them, for his great qualities are overpowering.
There are no known candidates who are worthy of comparison with these two giants, Brahms and Tschaikowski, one mechanically and the other emotionally musical.
CHAPTER VII
A SUMMARY OF MUSIC'S ATTRIBUTES.
WHAT CONSTITUTES MUSICAL INTELLIGENCE?
Although some of the attributes of our art have received repeated mention in previous chapters, I feel that a short summary of their distinguishing qualities might serve to throw the outlines of my sketch into clearer relief. I shall seek this background without resorting to technical analysis.
Before undertaking this task I should like to emphasize the oft-announced fact that music is a thing apart. It, like language and the other arts, follows lines that lead from individuality to outside intelligence. In the case of music, these lines start in the innermost recess of the composer's emotional nature, and connecting with lines that lead through our intellects into the equally secret chambers of our natures, bring to us sentiments intelligible, but too intimate to endure analysis.
Civilized nations have long associated rhythms and moods,—i.e., a marked four-quarter measure has always been characteristic of the march, etc., but rhythm, although it is music's heart-pulsation, is only the metre for musical thought.
Scientists teach us that certain sounds are adapted to conjunctive use as chords because of the mathematical relation existing between the vibrations, of which they are the audible results. They go on from this beginning through the gamut of musical learning, and close without having given us a key to interpretation; so music is, and must remain, an untranslatable language of the soul, producing effects and inducing emotions, using the intellect as a medium only.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Music which is translatable is necessarily of a low order." This sentiment is true, and it voices a fine sense of music's nature and limitations, remarkable in a layman, for there exists a disposition to pull the creations of the great masters down to earth, and to make them tell tales of earthly experiences.
Music's purity, strength, and beauty are always sacrificed through attempts to materialize it, for great music results from the natural development and the felicitous expression of characteristic musical thought, and not in the ingenious tonal illustrations of scenes or sentiments, which have been, or might better be, expressed in words, because of their material character.
Pure, complete conceptions cannot take form in other than sensitive natures; sensitive to the influences of life's surroundings, receiving impressions from the bird's song, the flower's perfume, the storm's might, the mountain's grandeur, the rippling stream, the peaceful valley, and filled, at least for the time, with love for God and man; nor could such conceptions pass to expression through intellects that had not been tempered, refined, and broadened to grasp all the resources that tonal science offers.
It is in artificial music only,—born of purpose and not of inspiration,—or in the work of unripe musicians, that science obtrudes itself. In other words, when the means are noticeable, they have either been unskillfully employed, or the composer has been actuated by the ambition to display scholarly qualities regardless of æsthetic considerations.
How often we hear works in which any possible sparks of sensibility and spontaneity have been smothered beneath loads of counterpoint and thematic development, which are devoid of significance because not evolved in logical sequence! Drawing and anatomy are to painting and sculpture, and grammar, rhetoric, and metre are to poetry, what musical science is to musical art, inasmuch as in each the capacity to produce, or to appreciate what others have produced, is largely proportioned to one's knowledge of these structural laws.
Temperament, natural endowments, culture, and habit play such important rôles in creating individual conceptions of beauty that we can only consider as our criterion the judgment of people existing in our own environment.
The first essential of beauty is symmetry. A rose cannot be beautiful unless gracefully formed and poised. The Creator's hand may have tinted it incomparably, may have distilled the daintiest fragrance for its portion, but these will avail naught if it has inherited ungraceful proportions, or if the world has distorted it during its period of growth.
As the rose requires color and perfume to perfect its charms, so each animate and inanimate creation in this world requires its suitable accessories to symmetry.
According to our standard, woman should have a lithe, plastic form, with fluctuating color and an all-pervading fragrance of intellectual modesty; whereas man should have a sinewy form, bold and strong, the color of perfect health, and the fragrance of intellectual fearlessness. Each must possess clearly defined individuality.
God's creations are never exact duplicates, and still we have numerous beautiful roses and women and Apollo-like men, each with appropriate attributes, and each satisfying the æsthetic taste of some one person or class of persons, because of the affinity to that object of the personal ideal which was implanted in this person or these persons by God, and which has been nurtured by conditions of life.
As in everything else that lays claim to beauty, so in music, symmetry must underlie all other attributes. The laws regulating musical symmetry are so rigid, when viewed from one stand-point, and are so elastic when viewed from another and higher, that it is not at all strange that young composers stand aghast when they reach the neutral point of receptivity from which these apparently contradictory conditions first manifest themselves. But these conditions are not really contradictory, for prescribed form is but a properly proportioned and adjusted skeleton, an outlining framework, subject to such modifications as will adapt it to the character of our schemes. These modifications must not, however, involve the use of eccentric lines, or the omission of essential members of the body musical, for such action would result in malformations.
The composer, having articulated his form, clothes it in such melodic and harmonic material, moulded into such shape, as will realize his fancy's ideal. The outcome of exhaustive knowledge, directed with justifiable freedom, is musical symmetry.
The next attribute is, as in the case of the rose, color; which in music is more or less attractive according to the richness of the material applied and the artistic skill and care bestowed upon its arrangement.
There are several sources to which the tone painter may resort for what might be termed primary colors,—viz., the human voice, the characteristic qualities of instruments, harmonic compounds, and rhythm, the combining and blending of these primary colors so as to produce the most effective shade for each episode, not only when considered by itself, but also in its relations to the whole panoramic succession of the finished picture, is the problem that so few solve. Most composers seem to feel quite satisfied if they succeed in startling us with uncommon combinations, however crude and irrelevant.
Next comes sentiment, which is to music what fragrance is to the rose, and what intellectuality is to woman. All three would be hollow mockeries without this parallel endowment. A piece of music must express a human desire, a belief, or an emotion, otherwise it is but empty sound.
These three attributes—symmetry, color, and sentiment—are at the command of all talented musicians, but the all-pervading individuality that so adjusts form, so arranges color, and gives such adequate expression to each shade of feeling as to create natural but unique tone pictures, is possessed by few composers of any given generation.
So-called original music may be nothing more than the fruit of good taste displayed in the arrangement of laboriously sought peculiarities of means and modes, and it is therefore only outwardly individual; but music whose themes spring from a pronounced individual feeling, which feeling moulds its form and makes each contributive detail conform to the spirit of the initial impulse, is truly original. Individual music is then radically original, but original music is not necessarily individual.
A spark of individual genius, because of its clean brilliancy, sends out its rays into illimitable space; whereas a whole bonfire of purposeful eccentricities curtains its flames with non-radiating elements, illuminating but a small field.
Now we must step backward beyond that point where science begins to shed her light upon natural laws. What agency produces life, starts and keeps in motion the machinery of our bodies, and places a soul behind our features? The same agency must guide us in the conception of musical ideas, or they will lack all living elements. This power is God: God in us,—a well-spring of inspiration for those whose susceptibilities are sufficiently acute to feel its influence.
Science can teach us to produce rich harmonic successions and instrumental colors, but it cannot impart the magical power of spontaneous and sequential growth that characterizes great compositions, nor can it show us how to identify the spirit which pervades such works. Any one can prepare himself to weigh the intellectual properties of a musical work, but the spirit which these properties are supposed to clothe will not materialize for unsympathetic souls. Herein exists the reason for differences of opinion entertained by cultured and honest critics.
Some works possessing all the attributes of greatness must be often heard before they begin to enlist our sympathies. Others, equally inspired, fail to awaken responsiveness in certain persons. Differently constituted natures cannot be expected to vibrate in unison, and as real music is soul vibration made audible, it seeks responsiveness in our natures, as any given tone lays hold of objects whose vibrations are sympathetic, causing them to emit consonant sounds.
The impression made by music can only be similar even—in character and intensity—where the hearers are equally endowed and cultured, and are equally conditioned mentally to surrender themselves to its influence. As long as each member of the human family is distinguished by individuality, so long will the impressions made by the intangible elements in art be diverse.
Suggestiveness is the highest quality with which a poet, an orator, a painter, a sculptor, or a musician can endow his productions. Its existence implies a clear conception, rooted in sentiment and adequately expressed through adaptable means, but well within the line of demarcation which separates logical terseness from redundancy.
Who can listen to Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, or Wagner and not find himself in a dreamland, peopled not so much by children of the great master's brain, as by the offspring of his own fancy? These results are the fruits of suggestiveness.
Routine often leads to diffuseness; the lack of it always results in illogical and inadequate expression; but routine directed by genius seldom fails to discover the vital line which marks the boundary of completeness. On one side of this line we have inland waters, flowing from the author's fancy: on the other, and fed therefrom, the open sea of semi-conscious cerebration, with its capricious winds and tidal currents.
If a writer succeed in enlisting our sympathies, the flow of his thoughts will impart the impetus requisite to carry us beyond this line; but here his direct influence ceases, for the stream of his fancies becomes merged in the ocean of each of our lives' memories, hopes, and experiences, and each having received an impulse comporting with his receptivity and habits of mind, sails away upon his course propelled by unfettered imagination.
MUSICAL INTELLIGENCE.
A symphony is like an epic poem; its salient points rather than its rounded whole appeal to the average reader or listener. The striking episodes of unfamiliar compositions in large form, are prone to come out into undue prominence, and so blind us to their true significance as phases of sequential development. The sustained effort, and experience demanded by a symphony, are the supreme tests of a composer. We therefore have no right to an opinion in regard to the merits or demerits of a large earnest work until study and hearing have, in our understanding, joined its episodes and given them importful continuity.
Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Wagner were endowed with great talent, which indefatigable energy advanced to genius. They worked upon a plane far above other men. We cannot hope to feel what they felt while creating, but we can work, the while knowing that as we approach their level in knowledge and experience our minds will better assist our understanding of their conceptions. Their joys, their sorrows, their triumphs, their every sentiment should find response in our hearts; but the impression made by music can only be distinct after we have made ourselves acoustically receptive, after our natures have become attuned like æolian harps to responsiveness when waves of melody strike upon them.
Our minds can be sounding-boards, which gather and reflect upon our souls the tone pictures we hear. A wooden surface must be smooth, properly formed, and perfectly poised, or it will not collect, focus, and reflect sound effects. In the same way our mental sounding-boards must be properly prepared, or they will not collect details and reflect sentiments. This preparation involves the use of all available means for shaping, refining, and poising. The earnest study of any branch of learning broadens, and the contemplation of the beautiful in nature and art quickens, the perceptions.
Pedantry—another name for self-sufficient ignorance—will warp and so distort our reflector as to mar its efficiency, making it unjust alike to the subject and to us.
The ear should be capable of transmitting correctly, and if possible in detail. Some persons are endowed with absolute pitch. These fortunates, if they persist in careful listening, can become able to follow an intricate composition, in its modulations, thematic development, etc., more easily, as well as more accurately, through hearing than through reading the printed page. This ability marks a long stride towards sympathy with the composer, especially as its exercise involves undivided attention to the subject in hand.
The absence of absolute pitch is no indication of lack of talent, and those who cannot acquire it have no reason for discouragement. Every ordinarily gifted student can educate his hearing to recognize intervals (seconds, thirds, etc.) and the tendency of chords, as based on the relations existing between the tones of which they are composed—to each other and to the key.
We should strive to make ourselves good mediums. Refined creations cannot appeal to crude natures. The savage, although sometimes possessing poetic instincts, prefers his own music, with its monotonous weirdness, to that which more civilized communities can offer. Our right to pass judgment upon others' creations will therefore depend largely on the distance we are removed from the savage in the process of evolution.
THE END
Transcriber's Notes:
The book cover was modified by the Transcriber and has been put in the Public Domain.
A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For those words, the variant more frequently used was retained. In some cases there was no predominant variant. The hyphenated variant was chosen in those cases.
Obvious punctuation and printing errors, which were not detected during the printing of the original book, have been corrected.