M. Goblot classifies expressive music under three headings, to which he gives the names of "la musique emotive," "la musique descriptive," and "la musique imitative." His first rubric is somewhat vague, a sort of rag-bag into which he stuffs "toute musique qui provoque l’emotion sans aucun intermediaire conscient." The other two are not only more precise, but serve to call attention to devices which have become very prominent in romantic, and especially in modern realistic, music. "Imitative" music, by reproducing literally sounds heard in the extra-musical world of nature, suggests to the listener the objects and events associated with them. Examples are the bird-notes in Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony," the thunder in Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique," the bleating of sheep in Strauss's "Don Quixote," the striking of the clock and the wailing of the baby in his "Symphonia Domestica." "Descriptive" music suggests actions and events by means of analogies, chiefly of movement and of utterance, between the music and the object, and is of course far commoner than the more literal and narrowly circumscribed imitation. Beethoven is descriptive when he represents the even flowing of the brook, in the "Pastoral Symphony," by rippling figures in eighth notes, or when in the bass recitatives of the Ninth Symphony he suggests the impassioned utterance of an imaginary protagonist; Mendelssohn describes in his "Hebrides Overture" the heaving of the ocean, and in his "Midsummer Night's Dream" the dancing of fairies; Saint-Saëns reproduces in "Le Rouet d'Omphale" the very whirr of the spinning-wheel, and Wagner in his fire-music the ceaseless lapping of flames.
Such devices as these certainly occupy a prominent place in modern music. Almost every composer of the later nineteenth century has taken his fling at this sort of sketching from nature. One cannot resist, nevertheless, the suspicion that M. Goblot attaches too great an importance to what is, after all, a casual and desultory element in most compositions, and that he inclines to lay on the narrow shoulders of imitation and description a greater burden of explanation than they can carry. Beethoven's birds and brooks are attractive features in a great work; Saint-Saëns' spinning-wheel makes a charming arabesque on a harmony of solid musicianship; but what are we to say to M. Goblot's assertion that a passage cited from Alexandre George, modulating upward by whole steps, is emphatically expressive because it "reminds us of a person reiterating with growing exaltation the same authoritative or impassioned affirmation, and each time advancing a step, in an attitude of menace or defiance"? Can we accept as unquestioningly as he does a series of thirteen consecutive fifths, descriptive of sunrise, on the ground that it "wounds our ears as the light of the sun wounds our eyes"? And listen to his comment on Schubert's "Trout," that long-suffering denizen of Teutonic waters: "En courant sur son lit de pierres, elle se creuse de plis profonds, se hérisse de crêtes saillantes, et ces plis et ces crêtes se croisent obliquement en miroitant." Schubert's fat shoulders, we suspect, would have shaken could he have read this ingenious commentary on his work.
If such finical transcription of natural sights and sounds is the aim of music, why do we prefer Beethoven's thunder, which clings cravenly to the diatonic scale, to Berlioz's, so much more realistic in its daring dissonance? Why do we not forthwith turn about face on the road our art has so long been travelling, and forsake musical intervals, those quite artificial figments, for the noises which surround us everywhere in the actual world? Noise is indeed the hidden goal toward which all description and imitation aspire, and sound could never have passed into music under their guidance, but only in quest of a far deeper, more subtle expressiveness. It is hard to believe that any sane listener would long continue to patronize music in which there was not something more truly satisfying than the lapping of brooks, the crashing of storm or battle, and the whirring of spinning-wheels or the creaking of wind-mills. If such were the case, we should have to admit sadly that music had fallen to the level to which dramatic art falls in the real-tank-and-practicable-saw-mill melodrama, to which painting falls in those pictures from which we try to pluck the too tangible grape.
M. Goblot evidently realizes himself that there is a subtler appeal than that of description and imitation; for it is in order to account for it that he makes his separate heading of "la musique emotive," by which he indicates all music which acts directly upon the emotions, without the aid of any recognition of external objects, any intellectual concepts, or, as he says, "aucun intermediaire conscient." The appeal he here has in mind is that of thousands of melodies, which, without describing or imitating any concrete object, suggest vividly special states of feeling, by recalling to us, in veiled, modified, and idealized form, those gestures or cries we habitually make under the spur of such feelings. Since the spontaneous vocal expressions of strong emotion—wailing, crying, pleading, moaning, and the like—have all their characteristic cadences, which can be more or less accurately reproduced in a bit of melody, and since the natural bodily gesticulations can be similarly suggested by divers rhythmical movements, music has the power to induce a great variety of emotional states by what we may call direct contagion, without the intermediation of any mental images. It can act upon us like the infection of tears or laughter, to which we involuntarily succumb, without asking for any reasons. And it certainly exercises this power much more constantly and steadily than it imitates or describes. Almost all lyrical melodies, such as Schumann's "Ich Grolle Nicht," with its persistently rising inflection of earnest protestation, or Chopin's "Funeral March," with its monotone of heavy grief, will be found on analysis to reëcho, in an idealized and transfigured form, the natural utterance of passion. This kind of expression, which has been frequently described, appeals to our subconscious associations rather than to those conscious processes of thought by which we follow realistic delineation. Operating at a deeper level in our natures, it is proportionately more potent and irresistible.
But is even this type of expression, more general and pervasive though it be than the types so interestingly studied by M. Goblot—is even this style of expression universal, omnipresent, fundamental? Does it suffice to explain the overwhelming emotional appeal of an organ-fugue of Bach, for example, of which the impression seems to be vague, general, indefinable in specific terms, in the exact measure of its profundity? If "la musique emotive" works at a deeper level and upon a more subconscious element in our nature than "la musique imitative" and "la musique descriptive," is there not still another kind of music, which we may perhaps best call simply "la musique belle," which, addressing still deeper instincts, exercises an even more magical persuasiveness?
The case of the Bach fugue forces us to the conclusion that there is indeed a kind of expression depending neither on the portrayal of natural objects nor on the suggestion of such special feelings as joy and grief, but penetrating by a still deeper avenue to the primal springs of our emotion. The more compelling the experience, it seems, the more is it idealized away from concrete references and provocations in the direction of abstract musical beauty. By presenting to us a perfect piece of form, a highly complex yet ultimately single organism of tones, it calls into full play our most fundamental perceptions; and this satisfying exercise of our faculties gives us a pervasive happiness, a diffused sense of efficient vitality, ineffably more delightful than any particularized emotion or isolated intellectual process. Perfection of form thus turns out to be the most indispensable of all the means of expression at the command of the composer.
Psychological analysis, carried to its legitimate end, verifies, we see, the conclusions of the naïve musical observer. All expression, for psychology, is the product of an association between two "terms" in the mind—the first that which is given by experience, the expressive object, the second that system of thoughts and feelings at which the mind arrives through the associative act, that which, as we say, is expressed. This being the case, it is evident that, other things being equal, that expression will be most potent the first term of which most deeply stirs our instinctive, subconscious life. When the first term is a basic activity of our minds, such as the perception of a beautiful form, the feelings to which it leads us will have a peculiar depth and amplitude. Our whole organism, like the sounding-board of the well-attuned instrument, will be set in vibration. This is what happens when we listen sympathetically to music that is really beautiful. When, on the other hand, the mental trigger pulled is only some special emotion, so that the stimulation is superficial or local, the impression will reverberate less far-reachingly. We shall be less profoundly moved. And when it is not even an emotion, however special, that starts off the train of thought, but the intellectual concept of some object or event, we shall likely be not so much moved as interested; our curiosity rather than our passions will respond; and we shall call the music bizarre, original, or striking, but hardly beautiful. Something like the same gradation in the power of various appeals, according to their generality, is observable in ordinary life. To read a love-story, labyrinthine in minute detail, is a less seizing experience than to overhear the impassioned speech of some actual lover, even if we catch none of the words; and this in turn commoves us less than to feel in our own frames that boiling of the blood, that surging of the vitals, which is the raw material of love. Brisk exercise on a fine autumn day of sun and wind gives a richer happiness than is dreamed of in our philosophies. It communicates no particular ideas, but attunes our whole being so exquisitely that the fancies spring up spontaneously, like wild-flowers in a fertile meadow. So lovely music simply establishes in us a mood, leaving all the furniture of that mood to our imaginations. And this is why it is that artistic expression, as it becomes more minute and meticulously precise, is apt to lose in persuasive power, and that the composer, if he understands his medium, must needs hesitate long before sacrificing the least degree of beauty, however interstitial and inconspicuous, to any isolated feature of interest, no matter how salient or seductive.
VI
Perhaps it is not too much to hope that the foregoing analysis, incomplete and tentative as it is, affords us something like a rational basis for our instinctive attitudes toward the various types of music. Though its intention is to suggest rather than to dogmatize, it may by this time have fixed clearly in our minds certain fundamental principles of artistic effect; and by constant reference to these it may have established in us a measure of judicial impartiality and poise. Especially, it may have clarified our notions, likely to remain confused so long as they are unconscious, of the essential achievements of the romantic school, both in its lyrical and in its realistic phases, as well as of the peculiar drawbacks and limitations to which it is subject.
The abiding charm of the lyrical work of the romantic composers, typical of which are Schubert's songs, Schumann's novelettes and phantasiestücke, and Chopin's nocturnes and preludes, lies in its intimateness, its strong personal flavor. It fascinates us by its impulsive self-revelation, its frankness, spontaneity, and enthusiasm. Its subjectivity and introspection, even when they are troubled or touched with sadness, stir a sympathetic chord in the self-conscious modern breast. To those moods which the classic reticence chills and repels, romantic music speaks with tender, caressing humanity. Even its limitations are then an added appeal; for when we are too weary or dull to brace ourselves to the perception of impersonal beauty, the accent of private grief, aspiration, struggle, and disappointment seems better pitched to our capacity, and has a pathos we can understand. Schumann and Chopin are the best companions for hours of reverie and self-communion. On the other hand, when those hours overtake us in which we realize the pathetic incompleteness of all merely personal life, in which we discern what fragmentary creatures we are, and how little of truth we can ever see, then all living to ourselves alone is touched with the sense of vanity. Then every utterance of our petty private griefs, and even of our nobler but still private joys, seems like a breath dissipated in a universe; we find true existence, solid reality, only in an identification of our interests with those of all mankind. As morals finds its escape from this sense of the vanity of individual living in social devotion, æsthetics finds it in the impersonality of classic art. Romanticism is sometimes silent, or speaks to unattending ears. We turn from all special expressions, touched as they are with human mortality and evanescence, to the eternal abstract beauty.