VI
Since the early days of violent opposition to Berlioz and Liszt the question of the ‘legitimacy’ of program music has not ceased to interest theorists. There are not a few writers to-day who stoutly maintain that the program and the pictorial image have no place in music; that music, being constructed out of wholly abstract stuff, must exist of and for itself. They wish to have music ‘pure,’ to keep it to its ‘true function’ or its ‘legitimate place.’ Music, they say, can never truly imitate or describe outward life, and debases itself if it makes the unsuccessful attempt.
Yet program music continues to be written in ever-increasing abundance, and, though from the practical point of view it needs no apologist, it boasts an increasing number who defend it on various grounds. These theorists point to the ancient and more or less honorable history of program music, extending back into the dark ages of the art. They mention the greatest names of classical music—Bach and Beethoven—as those of composers who have at least tried their hand at it. They show that the classic ideal of the ‘purity of the arts’ (by no means practised in classical Greece, by the way) has broken down in every domain, and that some of the greatest works have been produced in defiance of it. And, arguing more cogently, they point out that whether or not music should evoke visual images in people’s minds, evoke them it does, and in a powerful degree. When Tod und Verklärung makes vivid to the imaginations of thousands the soul’s agonies of death and ecstasies of spiritual resurrection, it is no better than yelping at the moon to moan that this music is not ‘pure,’ or is out of its ‘proper function.’
Undoubtedly it is true that music which attempts to be accurately imitative or descriptive of physical objects or events is not worth the trouble. Certainly bad music cannot become good merely by having a program. But it is to be noted that all the great composers of program music insisted that their work should have a musical value apart from its program. Even Berlioz, as extreme as any in his program music, recorded the hope that his Fantastique, even if given without the program, would ‘still offer sufficient musical interest in itself.’ As music the Fantastique has lived; as descriptive music it has immensely added to its interest and vividness in the minds of audiences. And so with all writers of program music up to Strauss and even Schönberg, with his Pelleas und Melisande (though Schönberg is one of the most abstract of musicians in temperament).
Further, good program music throws its emphasis much more on the emotional than on the literal story to be told. Liszt rarely describes outward events. He is always depicting some emotion in his characters, or some sentimental impression in himself. And there are few, even among the most conservative of theorists, who will deny the power of music to suggest emotional states. If so, why is it not ‘legitimate’ to suggest the successive emotional states of a particular character, as, for instance, Tasso? The fact that a visual image may be present in the minds of the hearers does not alter the status of the music itself. If we admit this, then we can hardly deny that the composer has a right to evoke this image, by means of a ‘program’ at the beginning.
The fact is that not one listener in a hundred has any sense of true absolute music—the pure ‘pattern music’ which is as far from emotions and sentiments as a conventional design is from a Whistler etching. Even the most rabid of purists, who exhaust a distinguished vocabulary of abuse in characterizing program music, may expend volumes of emotion in endeavoring to discover the ‘meaning’ of classical symphonies. They may build up elaborate significations for a Beethoven symphony which its composer left quite without a program, making each movement express some phase of the author’s soul, or detecting the particular emotion which inspired this or that one. They will even build up a complete programmistic scheme for every symphony, ordaining that the first movement expresses struggle, the second meditation, the third happiness, and the last triumph—and more of the like. They will enact that a symphony is ‘great’ only in so far as it expresses the totality of emotional experience—of specific emotional experience, be it noted. This sort of ‘interpretation’ has been wished on any number of classical symphonies which were utterly innocent of any intent save the intent to charm the ear. And nearly always the deed has been done by professed enemies of program music.
But, in spite of the fact that the instinct for programs and meanings resides in nearly every breast, still there is a theoretical case for absolute music. There is nothing to prove that music, in and of itself, has any specific emotional implications whatsoever. It is merely an organization of tones. As such, since it sets our nerves tingling, it can indeed arouse emotion, but not emotions. That is, it can heighten and excite our nervous state, but what particular form that nervous state will take is determined by other factors. In psychological language, it increases our suggestibility. Under the nervous excitement produced by music a particular emotional suggestion will more readily make an impression, and this impression will become associated in our minds with the music itself. The program is such a suggestion. In a more precise way the words and actions of a music drama supply the suggestion. Of course, we have been so long and so constantly under the influence of musical suggestions that music without a particular suggestion may have a more or less specific import to us. Slow minor music we are wont to call ‘sad,’ and rapid major music ‘gay.’ But this is because such music has nearly always, in our experience, been associated with the sort of mood it is supposed to express. Somewhere, in the course of our musical education, there came the specific suggestion from outside.
But this discussion is purely theoretical. The practical fact is that music, thanks to a complex web of traditional suggestion, is capable of bringing to us more or less precise emotional meanings—or even pictorial meanings, for there is no dividing line. And this fact must be the starting point for any practical discussion of the ‘legitimacy’ of programme music. Starting with it, we find it difficult to exclude any sort of music on purely abstract grounds. Any individual may personally care more for ‘abstract’ music than for program music; that is his privilege. But it is a very different thing to try to ordain ‘legitimacy’ for others, and legislate a great mass of beautiful music out of artistic existence.
After all, the case reduces to this: that an ounce of practice is worth a ton of precept. And the successful practice of program music is one of the chief glories of the romantic movement. Whatever may have been the faults of the period, it demonstrated its faith by deed, and the present musical age is impregnated with this faith from top to bottom.
H. K. M.
FOOTNOTES:
[98] ‘Berlioz’s Memoirs,’ Chap. X.
[99] ‘Letters to Humbert Ferrand,’ quoted in Everyman English edition of the Memoirs, Chapters XV and XVI.
CHAPTER X
ROMANTIC OPERA AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHORAL SONG
The rise of German opera; Weber and the romantic opera; Weber’s followers—Berlioz as opera composer—The drame lyrique from Gounod to Bizet—Opéra comique in the romantic period; the opéra bouffe—Choral and sacred music of the romantic period.