IV. TONE COLOR AND DESIGN
Such has been the development of the elements of symphonic music. The processes I have described are the natural processes of an art which is continually striving for wider and deeper expression. And, speaking humanly, it is not too much to say that within ourselves there should take place a complete analogue to that development and to those processes. The connection between ourselves and the sounds may graduate all the way from complete unconsciousness of their significance (even though we hear all the sounds clearly) to that state wherein they strike fire in our souls, and there passes between the imagination of the composer and our own that spark of undying fire which illumines our whole being. For in the last analysis it is not so much the music that communicates itself as it is the soul of the composer reaching us over whatever stretch of time. He who creates beauty is immortal.
Is not this what we seek? Is not this the object of all beauty everywhere? Is it not always trying us to see if we are in tune?—as, indeed, everything else is: labor, love, objects, knowledge, religion—all these await our answer.
But I should not leave this part of my subject without setting forth the relation between these elements of symphonic music and the orchestral instruments by means of which they find expression. I do not wish to attempt here any account of orchestration, as such, but rather to point out that in symphonic music it is by the quality of tone that the essence of an idea is conveyed. The tone of the instrument is like the inflection of the voice in speaking, wherein the truth is conveyed although you speak an untruth. An oath might be a prayer but for the inflection.
The pianoforte or the violin, or any other single instrument, has but little variety of tone; the orchestra, on the other hand, has not only four distinct groups of instruments, each group having its own tone quality, but within two of these groups[11] there are considerable differences in what is called “tone color.” It is of no great importance to know that the solo near the beginning of the slow movement of the César Franck symphony is played on an English horn, but it is important to feel the quality of the tone, and to realize how largely the effect of the theme depends on it. For some obscure reason many people remain insensitive to qualities of tone color. (Perhaps they have received their musical education at the pianoforte which, under unskillful hands, differs only in loud and soft.) One so seldom observes a listener even amused by the antics of Beethoven’s double-basses, and yet, in at least four of his symphonies, their behavior is at times extremely ludicrous. He whose humor ranges all the way from the most delicate, ironic smile to a terrible, tragic laughter, wherein joy and sorrow meet,—as meet they must when either presses far,—he achieves these remarkable effects largely by means of the tone quality of the instruments. In his Fifth Symphony he creates the most thrilling effect by means of some score or more of reiterated notes in the soft, muffled tones of the kettle-drum. In the finale to the First Symphony of Brahms it is the tone of the French horn, and again of the flute, that creates for us such profound illusions of beauty as pierce to our very soul. From the depths of the orchestra the horn chants its ennobled song; then follows the dulcet blow-pipe of the flute singing the same magic theme. These varied tones succeeding one another, or melting one into the other—these are the colors that animate and beautify the forms into which the thoughts fall. What delicate nonsense filigree the violins draw in the slow movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; how sepulchral the bassoon with its mock sadness; what a vibrant quality do the violoncellos and the contra-basses give to the great melody in the finale to the Ninth; with what poignancy does the clarinet give voice to the sentiment of the second theme in the slow movement of Brahms’s Third Symphony. How luxurious and vivid is the application of all these varied hues to the design.
A fine singing voice has, perhaps, the most beautiful of all tone colors, but the sensibility of many people seems to be limited to that alone. In fact the love of singing is, in many cases, merely a sentimental thrill unconnected with any intellectual process and entirely devoid of imagination. In the orchestra the tone of the instrument is to the theme itself what the color is to the rose. It is much more than that, of course, because it is at any time both retrospective and prospective; this tone color is a darker or lighter shade of that, or, perchance, another hue entirely. The colors shift from moment to moment always as a part of the design rather than as mere color.
Taking it all together—rhythm, meter, melody, harmony, and tone color—this substance of a symphony is a wonderful thing. Nothing quite so delicately organized has ever been created by the mind and the imagination of man. With an interplay of parts almost equal to that of a finely adjusted machine, it seems to go where it wills to go regardless of anything but a whim. How marvelously does it express both the actions and the dreams of human beings; how true is it to their deeper consciousness—a consciousness that dimly fathoms both life and death; that knows itself to have come from across the ages, and feels itself to be a part of the ages to come. It is just as likely that life is a brief, shadowed moment in an endless light, as that it is “a rapid, blinking stumble across a flick of sunshine.”