The Art of Building a Home: A collection of lectures and illustrations

by Barry Parker; Sir Raymond Unwin

The kinship between all the various branches of art is so very close, that instead of speaking of them as different arts, it would really be more accurate to describe them as only different media for expression of the same truth. Our object in trying to express ourselves in some one form of art, is to bring home to those to whom this form most appeals, truths which we see are passed over by them unheeded and uncomprehended when expressed in another. Many of the principles and truths I hope to bring before you are so much more easily set forth in other arts than that of language, that the attempt to use this form would seem unnecessary and undesirable were it not for the truth of what I have just said, that each of the arts appeals & clearly expresses its meanings and teachings only to a part of those to whom it is addressed. All feel something of the meanings expressed through art, no matter what form of expression may have been chosen, but every one will be more directly appealed to and will more clearly understand the message expressed in one art than they would that, or some other message, expressed in another.

It cannot be denied that many get from music what they see not in poetry, while others learn from poetry what they miss in music, painting, sculpture, or architecture; that some can feel and know truth in architecture they find not in the drama, and many learn from the drama what no other art can teach them.

For though it is true that many of our greatest artists could have expressed themselves, as some have expressed themselves, with equal power through several media; many of our greatest poets might have made equally great painters, and our painters, poets; still few could possibly find time to acquire equal knowledge of several arts. And though most men, being masters of one art, will have abundant sympathy and love for the others, yet life will prove too short for them to come to feel and know the messages or truths of any other with equal clearness. But, having them in the depths of their natures, they will feel, though dimly perhaps, that they are all one, and that their vital truths belong to all alike, and are essentially the same in all, and are of the very life of all that is worthy, all that is beautiful, true, or noble.

Now all the greatest truths are so broad and universal in their very elements, that they are incapable of clear definition and must depend on the subtleties of true art for expression. And in this lies the dignity of all true art, in that by it and through it only can the highest truths be taught, or true education reached.

Music is the most perfect means of saying what cannot be expressed in words. None of us can translate into words what has been revealed to us through music, it is a means of expression above and beyond words; painting, poetry, sculpture, architecture, even a mere colour scheme, can all tell us much which is beyond the power of any direct expression. The deeper the truth the more dependent it is upon one or other of these arts for its expression. None of us can say what music has brought home to us, none of us can tell what a beautiful building has said to us. If we try to give all these things in words, “beauty,” “truth,” or that hopelessly feeble phrase “elevating influence,” and kindred terms, are all that come to our aid with which to tell of them. Into these weak inadequate words we have to read all that which we have learned from other arts, & so give them a meaning they are incapable of conveying, unless we have felt it through influences above and beyond them. Music, the most perfect of the arts, is the most subtle, the most inexplicable. It seems to be, (if I may use the expression), the most direct gift of God to man, excepting of course that revelation of Himself which we call Nature, and which is above all arts or anything needing man’s instrumentality.

Why has music this power of calling forth all that is best in us, of making us feel the great things beyond expression? We cannot say.

We feel, and so we know and realise, that music never deceives, and is the only art which is never misunderstood. Her revelation is either taken or left, it is either comprehended or passed by unheeded, but it is never misconstrued. It may be understood and felt in a degree only. It may give more of its message to one than to another, but in so far as it is understood at all, it is truly understood and never misleads, and herein lies its greatness.

Some there are who say they can express by language or other arts what the musician is speaking of in his music; this only shows that all in which music transcends other arts is beyond their conception. The messages music has for us are above and beyond such things as can be put into words, and to have it merely telling a story which could equally well, or perhaps even better, have been told in words, or even to have it imitating the sounds of the sea, the voices of the storm, the whisper of the trees, or the sorrow of the wind, is to miss much of its greatness.

The messages of music may have been at some times the same as those of Nature, in the sea, the stream, or the trees, but to make it merely a less comprehensible language, telling us what written or spoken language can tell us, is to take from it much of its nobility and to deprive it of some of its most sacred prerogatives.

So if we follow this through we see its truth in all the arts. Poetry, partaking of the character of music, can bring home to us things too subtle, too high, to be told to us in prose, but may be misunderstood as music cannot be. In its highest influences, in those elements which it has in common with music, it is, like music, either taken rightly or not comprehended at all, but in many of its lesser and more definable messages it may be misunderstood.