I. MUSIC BY PROXY
In the preceding chapters I have dealt with special musical subjects, and have constantly referred to music as a distinct and independent art having its own reasons for existence. I have dealt, also, with some of its special functions as well as with its relation to the education of children. In the present chapter it is my purpose to discuss music in its relation to communities large and small, and this necessitates treating it on the broadest possible grounds.
By community music I mean, first, music in which all the people of a community take part; second, music which is produced by certain members of the community for the benefit and pleasure of the others; and third, music which, while actually performed by paid artists, is nevertheless somehow expressive of the will of the community as a whole. I shall take no refuge behind generalities or theories of æsthetics. I want to reach everybody, including the person who says, “I don’t know anything about music but I know what I like,” and that other extraordinary person who says, “I know only two tunes, one of which is ‘Yankee Doodle’”—each of these statements being quite incomprehensible, since it is a poor person indeed who doesn’t know what he likes, and anybody who knows “Yankee Doodle” has no excuse whatever for not knowing what the other tune is, or, so far as that goes, what any other tune is. I am, in short, appealing on common grounds about a common thing. My only question is this: If there is a means of interesting, delighting, and elevating a large number of people at very small expense, by something which they can all do together and which brings them all into sympathy with one another, and if the result of this coöperation is to produce something beautiful, is it not worth doing? I intend to make as full an answer to this question as space permits.
It is in the “doing” and the “doing together” that the crux of the matter lies, for a purely external connection with music never brings about a complete understanding of it. It is no exaggeration to say that our connection with nearly all artistic things is largely external. We do not draw; we do not train the eye to see or the hand to feel and touch, and artistic objects remain in a measure strange and unintelligible to us. The whole tendency of modern life and of modern education is to delegate those functions which have to do with our inner being. We delegate our religion to a preacher or to a dogma; we delegate our education to a curriculum smoothed out to a common level; some of us even delegate the forming of an opinion on passing events to a leader who presents them to us in a “current events” class. The religion, the knowledge, the opinion of many a person belongs to some one else. Many a man prefers an inferior novel because the author not only writes it, but reads it for him, whereas to the wise man the author might almost be called an amanuensis. In any case, a writer of genuine power never does more than his share. He depends on us to complete him. And in like case, if we expect to understand and love music we must use it; the composer depends on us as much as the author does.
This external connection with music and this lack of intimacy with the thing itself naturally leads us to lay stress on the performance of it. We revel in technique and we exalt the personalities of players and singers. In our opera houses we are satisfied only when we have an “all star” cast by whom we expect to be astonished rather than delighted and elevated. Now, fine singing, as such, is of little importance save as a means of reproducing fine music. If fine singing means a sacrifice of the musical effect; if it destroys the ensemble; if it limits the repertoire—then it is not worth the sacrifice. Why should it ever do so? Simply because opera-goers suffer it, and for no other reason in the world. One merely needs to mention a reasonable plan of opera—such as has been carried out for generations in French, Italian, and German cities—to be laughed at by those devotees who have sat for years at the feet of magnificence warming themselves in the effulgence of gilt and jewels. So it is with solo recitals and orchestral concerts. One continually hears people discussing the technique of pianists and violinists, or the comparative merits of our various orchestras. Local pride—the last thing in the world to connect with artistic judgment—asserts itself in favor of one orchestra or another, until it would almost seem that the only purpose of having an orchestra was to excel all the others. How often, on the contrary, do we hear the music itself intelligently discussed? In short, we are trying to be musical vicariously by means of an occasional performance by other people of music the greater part of which is unfamiliar and, therefore, unintelligible to us. This is like trying to be religious through going to church once a week and, sitting passively, being preached and sung at! The most musical communities are not those where all the music of the year is crowded into a festival of three or four days, but those where there is the most real music made at home. A German musical festival used to be the culmination of a whole year of healthy musical activity, and the occasion for the production of new works and a wide variety of old ones. An English or an American festival is, first of all, an opportunity to hear “The Messiah,” and secondly, to hear a famous soloist. The attendance on those two occasions is always much larger than at any others. Is it not true that all the higher functions of the soul of a man or a woman or of a community can be preserved only by being exercised?
In what follows I shall try to show how we may escape from the conditions in which we now too complacently rest. The material for the change is abundant, for there is in every community much more love of music than ever appears; the means are simple and inexpensive, for only a few dollars worth of good music are needed, with a room in which to practice, a piano and a leader. Let us make a start toward a sincere and intimate understanding of music through making it ourselves. Let us give up criticism of other people and begin to construct. Then shall we learn to see music as it is and to value it accordingly.