But in every case, as we can see, the music is not left to tell its story alone; we are not compelled to guess the subject represented merely from the tones themselves. The subject is told us in some way or other—we see Don Juan thrusting at the Commandant, or the spear flying at Parsifal's head, or the fire licking the couch of Brynhilde; or else there is, in the words of the song or opera, some suggestion of the external thing that is being illustrated in the music. And in the symphonic poem, all that we require in order that everything may be perfectly clear is a statement, in the programme, of the picture upon which the music is based. I am not expected to know, merely from the tones alone, what the "giant" motive in the Rheingold is meant to represent; but when I am told that it relates to the giants, I can take delight in the expressiveness of its lumbering, unwieldy movements. Similarly I must be told that the opening pages of Also sprach Zarathustra are meant as a representation of the majesty and spaciousness of Nature. And—again to draw upon the argument of the foregoing pages—there is nothing that can be done in this line in the song or the opera that cannot be done quite as effectually in the symphonic poem, if composers would only give their hearers the same full insight into their literary intentions as the song or opera writer does, and if hearers would only take the trouble to master these intentions before they listen to the music that is based upon them. If they would do this, their pleasure in the symphonic poem would be enormously increased; everything in it would be alive to them. For myself, at any rate, to listen to Till Eulenspiegel or Ein Heldenleben or Don Quixote is not only to enjoy the music but to see the whole action as clearly as if I were reading it in a book or watching it on the stage. I get none of the boredom, none of the unfortunate provocations to laughter, that are inseparable from that artificial, stagey form of art, the opera. I miss, of course, some of the factors that make opera so glorious—the inexpressible thrill communicated by the human voice, the quickening of the pulse that is given by the movements of the actors and the catastrophes of the stage; but on the other hand I am spared a great many things, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that my sense of form is receiving the purest, most undiluted pleasure it is possible for it to receive in poetic music. The case for programme music is quite as strong as the case for opera or for the symphony. That many stupid things have been done in its name, that many fools and weaklings have fought under its banner, counts for nothing; how many symphonies, how many operas, are there that the world would willingly let die! The rightness of the form is not affected by the wrongness of the people who choose to work in it; and that the form itself is essentially right, I have, I hope, given adequate proof. Finally, to the question of how far music is justified in trying to suggest external things, we can only say that it is better not to be too dogmatic. Things that would have seemed impossible a hundred years ago are done with ease to-day. Who would believe that a windmill could be represented in music? Yet Strauss's windmill in Don Quixote is really extraordinarily clever and satisfying; he suggests wonderfully, too, the caracoling of the horse as the knight puts him through his paces. His pictorial faculty, indeed, is something unique in the history of music; Wagner's is only an imperfect instrument by the side of it. The representative power of music is growing day by day. The only æsthetic fact we can be sure of is this, that no piece of representation will be tolerated unless it is at the same time music. That is the ultimate test; the imitative passages that make us smile are the passages that are merely imitative, without sufficient musical charm to keep them alive for us. But here, of course, we simply get back to the position already advanced in this article—that in all poetic music there must be as thorough a satisfaction as possible not only of the literary or the pictorial but of the musical sense.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] See an interesting article by Max Vancsa—Zur Geschichte der Programm-Musik—in Nos. 23 and 24 of Die Musik (1903).
[20] The reader will of course not take this to mean that a piece of programme music should sound just as well when played as absolute music, i.e. should be as interesting to the man who does not know the programme as to the man who does. Against that current fallacy I argue further on.
[21] The term "poetic" is used as a kind of verbal shorthand. A piece of music may be suggested by a drama, a novel, a historical event, a poem, a philosophical treatise (like Also sprach Zarathustra), or anything else. The one phrase "poetic music" will conveniently cover the æsthetic facts involved in all these modes of suggestion.
[22] That is, sound quâ sound (music), plus sound congealed into definite symbols (words).
[23] I am not, of course, putting this forward as the way in which music actually and historically developed. I am simply disengaging from the historical facts, in order to throw it into stronger relief, the psychological element underlying them; just as in economics we try to understand what has actually been the course of events by isolating from the other factors of human nature the factors that concern the desire of gain, and arguing deductively from these.
[24] There is emotion, of course, at the back of the notes; the reader will not take me to mean that the pleasure is merely physical, like a taste or an odour. But the emotive wave is relatively small and very vague; it neither comes directly from nor suggests any external existence.
[25] I take some of these historical facts from the article of Max Vancsa, already cited.