VI
We have been speaking chiefly of the folk-song, the fountain of all vocal music. But the art-song, that is, the song for a solo voice with instrumental accompaniment, which is quantitively but a small part of vocal music, is the special study of this book. For convenience we date the beginning of this art-song from Schubert, regarding the song writers who preceded him as mere experimenters. Accordingly, at the time of the writing of this book the art-song, one of the four or five great divisions of modern music, is hardly a century old.
It is, of course, a somewhat arbitrary division that separates the art-song from song as a whole. The arbitrary division is justified by its convenience. Schubert may fairly be said to have infused a new spirit into song writing and most of the songs written by established composers since his time have been written in his spirit. So we find an extensive and remarkably homogeneous song literature, the product of the last hundred years, which in its form and intent separates itself from the folk-song. The songs on the boundary line are few. The songs before Schubert which give any evidence of this recent spirit are hardly to be found at all. It is as though a new god had descended from the skies and taught a new kind of art to his creatures.
What is this distinction we draw between the folk-song and the art-song? The superficial elements of contrast are apt to be misleading, for, while most folk-songs are simple, many art-songs are simple, too; and, while many art-songs are irregular and peculiar, their irregularities are rarely so great as are to be found in the earlier folk-songs. The distinction must be sought in the spirit of the songs. It becomes more eloquent the more we study the two sorts. It forces us continually to seek further back for the true character of each, so that at last it seems as though we needed two different souls for the singing of them. The folk-song speaks for man in the mass; the art-song speaks for man the individual. For the folk-song, let us always remember, was composed not by an individual, but by a mass, each member of which may have contributed one or more of its beauties. If it had sung of a joy or sorrow which belonged exclusively to its original singer, it would have held no interest for other people and would have died with its composer. Those folk-songs were, of course, most popular which spoke for the interests and emotions of the greatest number of men. We can justly say that those folk-songs are greatest which sing of the things that are common to all men in such a way that they can be understood by all men. But in the composition of the art-song precisely the opposite influences are dominant. The composer, if he is to make his mark in the art world, must not write exactly like other composers, but must distinguish his work in some way. He must call attention to himself or his work by writing in a style that is not quite like anybody else’s. Fashionable or critical audiences will pay little attention to the man who seems merely to be repeating what a greater man has written before him; these audiences continually crave a novelty or a sensation. Everything forces the conscious composer in these days to be as personal as possible. His song then expresses the feelings of one individual in one particular style.
It has always been a nice question of taste whether one prefers to observe the type or the individual. Would you have your love song one that could be sung by every lover, high or low, or one that would ring true for you alone? If you are quite honest you will probably have to admit that you will swing from one to the other from time to time. At times it will seem vulgar that you should be rejoicing in precisely the same sentiments as those which are sending the Italian bootblack into a seventh heaven; your delicacy, your sense of dignity will demand that your love be your own, like no one else’s on earth. And, again, the precious selfishness of cultivating your own soul with such conscious care when it is such a tiny part of humanity—such a reaction will make you praise heaven that you and the bootblack can sing the same love song and feel the same love.
However you feel about it the art-song has chosen to specialize on individuals. Not only on individual persons, but on particular feelings of those persons. The folk-song expresses the type emotion—love, sorrow, or patriotism; the art-song expresses some particular shade or nuance of these emotions. The Scotch folk-tune which we sing with Burns’s stirring words, ‘Scots Wha Hae,’ expresses magnificently the defiance of patriotic bravery. It might be the song of anybody facing odds in defense of his beliefs. Schubert’s song, ‘Courage,’ has exactly the same note of defiance, but, so to speak, only a particular section of the great general emotion. His defiance is that of a man broken down with sorrow and misfortune, who in one superb moment vows to conquer by pure force of will power—a vow which we know is impossible of fulfillment. The modern French composers are especially apt at catching a particular delicate phase of a mood or emotion and rendering it so that it would never be mistaken for another phase, however much the two resembled each other. Have you never caught yourself moodily looking at the last glow from a sunset and wondered whether you have ever had a moment just like that before—a moment which the slightest change in the things about you would have spoiled utterly? Such a moment it is the delight of the art-song to portray; it is almost unknown to the folk-song.
The folk-song, again, presents an emotion in its sum total; the art-song presents it in its component parts. With their capacity and zest for exactitude song composers have continually, since Schubert’s time, given more and more attention to accuracy of detail. In one of the earliest of Schubert’s songs, ‘Gretchen at the Spinning-wheel,’ the girl is musing of her lover while she is spinning. The whirr of the spinning-wheel is in the accompaniment and enframes the whole song. But when the girl sighs, ‘And, ah, his kiss!’ Schubert felt that she would surely not continue her mechanical spinning. So he makes the whirring stop in the accompaniment and in its place comes a lovely succession of chords—one would say like a blush. Now a folk-song would have paid no attention to such a detail. It would have caught and probably caught with wonderful accuracy the spirit of the whole song. But the variation of mood in the words would not have affected the music. It could not, because the folk-song, unpublished and disseminated among many untrained persons, must be easy to remember. It is accordingly most often cast in a regular stanza form and the same melody is repeated for each verse of the words, though the heroine change therein from the noon of joy to the midnight of sorrow. The great majority of art-songs, therefore, are not written in stanza form, but follow the words with specially adapted music from beginning to end. (This is the so-called durchkomponiertes Lied.) The form of the art-song tends to be free in the extreme, while that of the folk-song is usually strict and regular. In the art-song the tendency toward exactitude of delineation sometimes goes to extremes. The music tries to be just to each phrase, or even to each word, and the song as a whole is lost in the details. But in general the good art-song shows not only the emotion as a whole, by means of its formal or modal unity, but also the component parts of the emotion placed side by side. We might say that the art-song follows the impressionistic method of showing the component colors on the canvas and letting the eye blend them into the resultant, while the folk-song follows the older method of mixing the components on the palette and showing only the blended result to the eye.
The highest glory of the folk-song is to express what unites men. The highest glory of the art-song is to express what differentiates men. The folk-song includes; the art-song selects. The folk-song is general; the art-song precise. The folk-song tells of life as man found it; the art-song tells of life as man made it.
Nearly everything that is distinctive of the art-song involves conscious planning. However spontaneous and unrestrained a Lieder singer may appear on the concert platform, there is behind his or her interpretation a whole conscious network of selection and rejection. A good folk-song, as everyone has noticed, asks for no intellectual comprehension—it ‘sings itself.’ But an art-song rarely ‘sings itself.’ It must be sung. And this is precisely one of the beauties of the art-song—the feeling that it has been achieved by art, that it is the working-out of somebody’s intention, that it has been personally propelled.