I
In the eighteenth century this popular music was thought too crude to be of artistic value. The snobbishness of political life was reflected in the prevailing attitude toward art. Because the people's melodies were different from the accepted music they were held to be wrong. Or rather, one may say that cultivated people hardly dreamed of their existence. Gradually, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, scholars became aware of the value of popular art. Herder was the first important man to discover it in Germany, and he passed his appreciation of it on to Goethe. By the opening of the nineteenth century the appreciation of folk-art was well under way. Collections of folk-songs and folk-poetry were appearing, and their high artistic value was being recognized. With the first decade of the century the impulse reached the Scandinavian lands, and their national existence in art began.
These countries had of course been free from the immediate turmoil of the Napoleonic wars. They had suffered, as all Europe had suffered, but they had not been obliged to defend their nationality with their blood. Denmark and Norway-Sweden had been for centuries substantially independent, and Finland, which had been in loose subjugation alternately to Sweden and Russia, was practically independent for some time until a political pact between Napoleon and the Czar Alexander made her a grand duchy of Russia; but even as a part of the Russian Empire she suffered no violation of her national individuality until late in the nineteenth century. Political independence and geographical isolation had left the northern nations somewhat turgid and provincial. Their artistic life had been largely borrowed. The various courts had their choirs and kapellmeisters, usually imported from Germany. Native composers were infrequent; composition was largely in the hands of second-rate musicians from Germany who had migrated that they might be larger fish in a smaller puddle. And the composition was, of course, entirely in the foreign style. Stockholm and Copenhagen had their opera in the latter half of the eighteenth century, but the works performed were chiefly French and Italian. These imported works set the standard for most of the native musical composition. Toward the end of the eighteenth century German influence began to predominate, especially in Denmark, where the German Singspiel took root and enjoyed a long and prosperous career. The German influence was much more proper to the Scandinavian lands than that of France or Italy, but it had not the slightest relation to a national art. Danish stories occasionally appeared in the subject matter, but the music was substantially that of Reichardt and Zelter in Germany. In Sweden the course of events was the same. Occasionally national subject matter appeared in operatic librettos, but in the music never. Sweden, which up to the beginning of the nineteenth century continued to be a force in European political affairs, had naturally enjoyed a considerable degree of intercourse with other nations, and was all the more influenced by them in her art. Norway and Finland, however, were completely isolated, and received their musical ministrations not at second hand but at third. In all these countries there was a considerable degree of musical life (choirs, orchestras, and dramatic works), but this was almost wholly confined to the large cities. Yet all these nations had the possibilities of a rich artistic life—in national traditions, in folk-song, and in a common sensitiveness of the racial soul. All four nations are distinctly musical, and in Denmark and Finland especially the solo or four-part song was cultivated lovingly in the home and in the smaller communities.
From their isolation and provincialism the Scandinavian countries were awakened, not by direct, but by reflex impulse. The vigorous national life of other European lands gradually stimulated a sympathetic movement in the two Scandinavian peninsulas. Denmark saw its first good collection of folk-songs in 1812-14, Sweden in 1814-16. In 1842 came A. P. Berggreen's famous collection of Danish songs, and about the same time the 540 Norse folk-songs and dances gathered and edited by Ludwig Lindeman. Doubtless this interest had some political significance. But far more important than these was the appearance in 1835 of the first portion of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, which has since taken its place beside the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied as one of the greatest epics of all time. This remarkable poem seems to have been genuinely popular in origin. It remained in the mouths and hearts of the people throughout the centuries, almost unknown to the scholars. A Finnish physician, Elias Lönnrot, made it his life work to collect and piece together the fragments of the great poem. In 1835 he published thirty-five runes, and in 1849 a new edition containing fifty—all taken down directly from the peasants' lips. This work had a decided political significance. It intensified and solidified the national consciousness, tending to counterbalance the influence of the Swedish language, which until then had been unquestionedly that of the cultivated classes; later it formed a buffer to the Russian language which the Czar attempted to force upon the Finns by imperial edict. It served to arouse the national feeling to such a pitch that Finland has in recent years been the chief thorn in the Czar's side. And this fact, as we shall see, helped to give the Finnish music of the last three decades its intense national character.
The distinctly national movement in Scandinavian countries began, as we have said, in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Its growth thereafter was steady and uninterrupted and was aided by the generous spread of choral and symphonic music. In the first stage the music written was based chiefly on German models, but it was written more and more by native Scandinavians. In the second stage (roughly the second third of the century) the native composers wrote music that was based on the national folk-music, but timidly and vaguely. In the third stage, the folk-tunes were frankly utilized, the national scales and rhythms were deliberately and continuously called into service, and the whole musical output given a character homogeneously and distinctively national. It was in this stage that the Scandinavian music became known to the world at large. Grieg, a man of the highest talent, possibly of genius, made himself one of the best loved composers of the nineteenth century, and awakened a widespread taste for the exotic. Together with Tschaikowsky the Russian he made nationalism in music a world-wide triumph. After his success it was no longer counted against a composer that he spoke in a strange tongue. The very strangeness of the tongue became a source of interest; and if there was added thereto a strong and beautiful musical message the new composer usually had easy sailing. The outward success of Grieg doubtless stimulated musical endeavor in Scandinavian lands, and enabled the world at large to become familiar with many minor talents whose reputations could otherwise not have passed beyond their national borders. Finally, there has arisen in Finland the greatest and most individual of all Scandinavian composers, and one of the most powerful writers of music in the modern world—Jean Sibelius. In him the most intense nationalism speaks with a universal voice.
The folk-music which made this Scandinavian nationalism possible is rich and extensive. Apparently it is of rather recent growth, but this fact is offset by the isolation of the countries in which it developed. It is of pure Germanic stock (with the exception of certain Eastern influences in the music of Finland). Yet it has a marked individuality, a perfume of its own. This is the more remarkable as we discover that in external qualities it exhibits only slight differences from the German folk-song. The individuality is not obvious, as with the Russian or Hungarian folk-music, but subtly resident in a multitude of details which escape analysis. Not only is the Scandinavian music clearly distinct from that of the other Germanic lands, but the music of each of the four countries is subtly distinguished from that of all the others. The Danish is most like the ordinary German folk-song with which we are familiar. It is not rich in extent or variety of mood. Its chief qualities are a discreet playfulness and a gentle melancholy. In formal structure it is good but not distinguished. It is predominantly vocal; in old and characteristic dances Denmark is lacking. The Swedish folk-music is in every way richer. It does not attain to the extremes of animal and spiritual expression, like the Russian, but within its fairly broad limits it can show every variety of feeling. Even in its liveliest moments it reveals something of the predominant northern melancholy, but the dances, which are numerous and spirited, reveal a buoyant health. The thin veil of melancholy which has been so often noticed is not nearly so prominent as a certain refined sensuality. Sweden, more than any of the other Scandinavian lands, has known periods of cosmopolitan luxury. She has become a citizen of the world, with something of the man-of-the-world's self-indulgence and self-consciousness. So her folk-songs frequently reveal an exquisite sense of form which seems French rather than Germanic.
The Norse folk-song naturally shows a close relationship with that of Sweden, but in every point of difference it tends straight away from the German. Norway has for centuries been a primitive country in its material conditions; a country of tiny villages, of valleys for months isolated one from the other; a country of pioneer virtues and individualistic values. Large cities are few; the ordinary machinery of civilization is even yet limited. The economic activities are still in great measure primitive, and much of the work is out of doors, as in shipping, fishing and pasturing. The scenery is among the grandest in the world. So it is not surprising that the Norwegian folk-music is vigorous and sometimes a little crude, and that it reveals an intense feeling for nature. The people are deeply religious and filled with the stern Protestant sense of a personal relation with God. The tender and mystic aspects of the music are less easy to account for; many of the songs are an intimate revelation of subtle mood, and others show a tonal vagueness which in modern times is called 'impressionistic.' More than the Swedish songs they are spontaneous and poetic. If they reflect nature it is in her personal aspect. They show not so much the Norwegian mountains as the fog which covers the mountains. They sing not so much the old Vikings as the quiet people who have settled down to fishing and trading when their wanderings are over. They reveal not the face of nature, but her bosom on which lonely men may rest.
The Finnish music is of a mixed stock. Primarily it is an adaptation of the Swedish, and the greater number of Finnish songs are externally of Swedish mould. But Lapland has also contributed her child-like melodies. The true Finnish music, however, is that drawn from the legendary sources of the original race. The melodies of the old runes retain their primitive aspects, and are unlike those of any other nation. They are doubtless the very melodies to which the Kalevala was originally sung. Externally monotonous and heavy, they reveal strange beauties on closer examination. They are distinguished by many repetitions of the same note, by irregular or ill-defined metre, and by a long and sinuous melodic line. Another typical sort of melody is the 'horn-call,' developed from the original blasts of the hunting-horn. The theme of the trio of the scherzo of Sibelius' second symphony is typical of the rune melody. Finally the Russian influence may be felt in many of the older Finnish tunes—in uncertain tonality and a peculiar use of the minor. This mixture of musical forces is indicative of the ethnological and social mixture which is the Finnish race. The Finns are primarily a Mongolian people. From the Laplanders to the north they received what that simple people had to give. For centuries they were under the domination of Sweden; Swedish was the language of their literature and their cultured conversation, and Swedish was their official civilization. A considerable accession of Swedish immigrants and infusion of Swedish blood left their affairs in the control of Germanic influences. (It is on this account that the Finnish is included in a chapter on Scandinavian music.) Finally, a nearness to Russia and an intermittent subjugation to the Czardom brought into their midst Russian influences which were assimilated flexibly but incompletely. In the late nineteenth century Finland experienced a renaissance of national feeling. The genuine Finnish language gained the uppermost, and provided a rallying point for the resistance to the Czar's attempted Russianization of his duchy. Finnish traditions displaced those of the Vikings. And Finland began to stand forth as an oriental nation with a heroic background. Therefore, though her music developed largely out of Germanic materials, it has become, under Sibelius (himself of Teutonic blood), a thing apart.
The use of folk-music on the part of the Scandinavian composers seems to have been less deliberate and conscious than in the case of the 'neo-Russian' nationalists.[10] In the earliest composers who can be regarded as national it is scarcely to be noticed. For some years after Danish music began to have a national character the actual presence of folk-elements was to be detected only on close examination. Such a careful writer as Mr. Finck indignantly denies that Grieg made any deliberate use of folk-music. In his view the melodies of the people are so inferior to those of Grieg that to suggest the latter's indebtedness is something in the nature of blasphemy. Nevertheless, in the process of nationalizing the northern music the patriotic composers introduced the spirit and the technical materials of the folk-music into conscious works of art. Just what the process was is hardly to be known, even by the composers themselves. We know that Grieg was an ardent nationalist and studied and admired the folk-songs. To what extent he imitated or borrowed folk-melodies for his compositions is not of first importance. Probably, with the best of the nationalists, the process was one of saturating themselves in the music of their native land and then composing personally, and from the heart. At all events, it is certain that the influence of any folk-music, deeply studied, is too pervasive for a sensitive composer to escape.
Since the first third of the nineteenth century the Scandinavian composers have been heavily influenced by the prevailing German musical forces. German musicians were frequent visitors or sojourners in Scandinavian cities, and the musicians of the northern lands sought their education almost exclusively in Germany. Hence Scandinavian music has reflected closely the changes of fashion that prevailed to the south. Mendelssohn and Schumann (through the work of Gade) were the first dominating influences. Chopin influenced their style of pianistic writing, and Wagner and Liszt in due time influenced their harmonic procedure. Music dramas were written quite in the Wagnerian style, and a minor impulse toward programme music came from Berlioz and Liszt. In the art of instrumentation Wagner and Strauss received instant recognition and imitation—an imitation which soon became a schooling and developed into a pronounced native art. Even Brahms had his share in the work, primarily in the shorter piano pieces which have been so distinctive a part of the Scandinavian musical output, and latterly in the 'absolute' polyphonic work of Alfvén, Stenhammar and Norman.
But though all these strands are distinctly discernible, that which gives the Scandinavian tonal art a right to a separate existence is a contribution of its own. In the larger and more ambitious forms the Scandinavian composers have usually not been at their best or most distinctive. It is the smaller forms—songs, piano pieces, orchestral pictures, etc.—which have carried the music of the Northland throughout Europe and America. In these we best see the distinguishing Scandinavian traits. First there is an impressionism, a dexterity in the creation of specific mood or atmosphere, which preceded the recent craze for these qualities. The music of Grieg, simple as it seems to us now, was in its time a sort of gospel of what could be done with music on the intimate or pictorial sides. Vagueness, mystery, poetry spoke to us out of this music of the north. Next there was a feeling for nature, for pictorial values, for delineative music in its more romantic terms, which had not been found in the more strenuous program music of the Germans. The 'Sunrise' of Grieg's 'Peer Gynt Suite' attuned many thousands of ears to the beauty of natural scenery as depicted in music. Finally there was a feeling for tonal qualities as such, which the modern French school has developed to an almost unbelievable extent. The tone of the piano became an intimate part of the poetry of northern piano pieces. Further, the school of Grieg has shown an astonishing talent in the handling of orchestral color. Brilliant and poetic instrumentation has been one of the chief glories of the northern school. It was the romantic impulse that was behind all the best work, and accordingly the formal element does not bulk large in Scandinavian music. But there is often a wonderful finesse, polish and dexterity which reveals an exquisite sense of structure and workmanship, especially in the smaller forms. Vocal music, especially before the opening of the twentieth century, flourished, and the songs of certain northern composers have taken their place beside the best beloved lyric works of Germany. Finally, there are brilliant exceptions to the statement that the best northern work has been achieved in the smaller forms; the concertos of Grieg, the symphonic pieces of Sinding, and the symphonies and tone-poems of Sibelius, strike an epic note in modern music.