V
It remains, now that we have traced the bearing of our general principles on musical taste, to point out briefly how they afford also criteria for judging composers themselves, and how, thus judged, the six composers we are to study fall into perspective. Our principles, in a word, will now enable us to supplement our later studies of these composers in isolation with a somewhat rough but still helpful sense of their interrelationship. We must relate them to the general evolution of which they are phases; see how they differ in the power to assimilate the work of their predecessors, to avail themselves of all the resources, expressive and formal, of their art, and to develop new resources for those who succeed them. It is hardly necessary to insist on the value of some such basis of comparison. Without it we should be like a certain member of a college geology class who, more ardent than methodical, was wont to investigate outcrops and moraines with great enthusiasm, but in utter ignorance of the points of the compass. To this scatter-brained young man the instructor used always to say, «Orient yourself first of all, Mr. Jones, orient yourself.» And so, before examining the individual outcroppings of modern music, we shall do well to orient ourselves in the artistic landscape.
Of all the composers with whom we are to deal, Grieg and Dvořák are the least inclusive and catholic. Grieg, as we shall see, writes always in the personal vein, is among musicians what Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb are among writers. He is intimate, charming, graceful, but never epic or universal. He touches the great stream of musical tradition at a few points only, and adds little to its volume. He knows how to combine a few elements of effect with finesse, but there are limitations both in what he has to say and in his means of saying it. He is familiar with only one dialect in the language of tones. And if Grieg is personal, Dvořák is at most national. He is too deep-dyed a Bohemian to be a complete citizen of the world. Not only is his style curiously provincial, with its uneven rhythms of folk-song, its strong dance-like metrical schemes, and its florid coloring, but his substance is too ornate and too sweet to be profoundly significant. He is a «natural» musician raised to the nth power, but he is not enough a scholar to relate himself very vitally with the general growth of his art. Both of these men have contributed much that is novel and charming to the lighter side of music, but they are not masters of deep feeling and wide scope.
Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck illustrate strikingly another sort of partiality, a partiality often met with in a less noticeable degree. Each exemplifies only one of those contrasting phases of feeling which we saw to underlie Dance and Song, and which in the greatest composers are combined. Saint-Saëns' work, primarily expressive of active feeling, is strongly metrical, derives its chief interest and value from rhythmic qualities; Franck's, the product of a singularly contemplative and monastic nature, is monotonous in rhythm, but endlessly various in melodic and harmonic treatment. In the biographical essays the antithesis will be brought out more in detail. Here it is only necessary to suggest that, if these two French composers are somewhat wider in scope than Grieg or Dvořák, their curious limitations in temperament prevent them from doing all-inclusive and universal work.
With Tschaïkowsky and Brahms we come to men of a larger caliber. These two, different as they are—the Russian finding in music primarily a means of expression, the German valuing more its plastic beauty—are, nevertheless, the only two moderns who can be said to carry on worthily the torch of Bach and Beethoven. Both were men of sufficiently wide sympathy and scholarship to approach music with the utmost liberality, to get into contact with all its traditions and utilize all its technical resources. They write in that «grand style» which draws its elements from the widest sources, the style not of one man nor of one nation, but of the world. Again, they were men of complex temperament, capable of a great range of feeling both active and contemplative. Consequently the dance impulse and the song impulse are equally operative in their work, which has a richness and variety to be found in Bach and Beethoven, but not in Saint-Saëns or Franck. And though they were men of the deepest emotion, they had also the intellectual control over their work that made it not only expressive but beautiful. In a word, the range of their learning, the many-sidedness of their temperaments, their emotional profundity and their intellectual power, all conspired to make them the greatest musicians of their time.
Yet even between these two great men it is possible, with the aid of our principles, to make a distinction. We have seen that form is not only a means of defining utterance, but that it is furthermore the source of æsthetic delight, and, through the reverberation of that, of an immense reinforcement to expression; and we have accordingly concluded that in no case must form be sacrificed to any other factor of effect whatsoever. To sacrifice form, in music, whatever may seem at first sight the justification, is in the long run to sacrifice the greater for the less. Now Tschaïkowsky, led away by the impetuosity of his feeling, is often guilty of such a sacrifice. He gains for the moment; he gains a compelling eloquence, the most exciting effects, the wildest and most thrilling crises. But in the long run he loses. Eventually one tires of the crises, one is left cold, and then the waywardness, the incoherence, the lack of clear order and symmetry, are felt as weaknesses. Too many of Tschaïkowsky's pieces are better at a first hearing than at a fifth. With Brahms it is otherwise. All his emotion, deep, tender and noble as it is, is controlled by the firm will and the shaping hand of the supreme artist. However moving his music may be, it is even more beautiful. His faculties, whether by good fortune or merit, are more perfectly adjusted than those of any other modern composer. He is the most profound, the most simple, the most comprehensive of moderns, as becomes obvious when we test his work by the principles we have laid down. Others exemplify them partially, he most entirely; others are great in some or several effects, he is roundedly great. He allies himself with all that was done in music before him, and contributes indispensable elements to what will be done in it hereafter. And so, if we arrange our six composers in a series, determining the importance of each by means of the universal and impersonal principles of art, we must pass from Grieg to Brahms.