It is far from the desire of the present writer to enter into a lengthy discussion of vexed controversies which time alone can settle. The object of this appendix is simply to assist the general reader to follow certain allusions and incidents in the text of the narrative, and especially to make clear how it was that Brahms, an uncompromising champion of musical tradition, whose very existence as an artist was staked on the vitality of Absolute music, could deeply respect the art of Wagner. With these ends only in view, it is proposed to limit the few words to be said here to the attempt to show what the fundamental difference was which separated the methods of Berlioz and Wagner, the two giants of the Weimar party, in their efforts to establish a basis for the Music of the Future so far as they conceived this could be achieved by the closer union of the arts of instrumental music and poetry.
Berlioz (1803-1869) has been accepted as the typical champion of what is called Programme-music. The question as to what is to be understood by this term, however, has become very difficult to answer, because nowadays anything may become a programme or supply a label. A poem, a romance, or a commonplace situation of everyday life; an emotion, a series of emotions, or the individuality of a man or woman; or, again, the emotion or mental action which a certain personality may excite in another. If, however, we restrict the question and examine only what meaning attaches to the term Programme-music as applied to Berlioz's instrumental works, the answer is that the composer is so intent on conveying, as an essential part of his movements, definite and detailed ideas outside the art of sound per se, which he finds in certain poems or plays or narratives, that he not only places verbal headings above them, but in many cases prefaces his works with an explanation minutely describing the scenes which they are intended to represent point by point, or the emotions that he desires to excite at successive steps of their progress. Such detailed labels and expositions are what is commonly termed the Programme.
However the purpose be described which Berlioz thus set himself to fulfil, whether it be said that the music was to absorb or to clothe the poem, to translate or reflect it, it is obvious that, if words have any real meaning, its ultimate raison d'être was to be either imitative or, at best, illustrative. Instrumental music necessarily becomes one or the other the moment that material outside the domain of sound is accepted as of its essence, and it is thereby debased from the level of the fine art of sound. If it be said that the object of the programme is to be a sort of guide-post to the emotions or sentiments to which the music is addressed, the position becomes worse, for the incapacity of the musician as such stands confessed. The union of poetry and music in the sense of the instrumental Programme composer is, from the point of view of the creator of Absolute music, fatal, not only to the dignity, but to the vital force, of both arts. The poem becomes a phantom, the music a conundrum; the listener wastes his time and fancy in trying to fit them together, and is without means of knowing how far he has been successful, and the product of these processes is a something which, in the words of Wagner, is neither fish nor fowl.
Whatever may be the ultimate fate of Berlioz's works, his immense capacity, the extraordinary sensitiveness and force of his imagination of tone-colour, and his phenomenal mastery of the resources of the orchestra, have insured the survival of his name. If on no other account, it will live as that of the creator of the complex art of instrumentation in its modern sense, which was assimilated by Wagner and developed by him in his dramas with vitalizing energy.
Very far removed from Berlioz's position was that of Wagner (1813-1883), who not only implied his disbelief in Programme-music by his practice, but expressly recorded it by direct avowal, and illustrated his remarks by references to Berlioz's works.[97] If, as may be the case, he received his first impulse as a reformer from Berlioz, he clearly saw the fallacies in which the theories of the French musician were involved, and avoided them in a sufficiently convincing manner. He perceived, firstly, that the rejection of a future for Absolute music was the same thing as the rejection of a future independent art of sound; secondly, that a union of instrumental music with poetry in Berlioz's sense meant that the function of music must be illustrative; thirdly, that the subject to be illustrated by musical sound must be presented to the perception of the audience in as real and indubitable a manner as the illustration; that, as the musical illustration was to be heard, so the subject illustrated must be seen.
Having boldly faced his premises, a splendid vision dawned upon his imagination, and he shrank from no consequences which they involved.
Rejecting the future existence not only of music, but also of poetry, as a separate art, he predicted for both a future, as co-ordinate elements with action and scenic effect, of a larger art, the drama, the object of which he explained to be dramatic truth. Concentrating his immense energies upon a reform of the stage, he adopted as his fundamental principle that of a return, in the modern sense, to the practice of Greek Tragedy. He substituted musical declamation of a very highly-developed order for the rhythmic melody and symmetrical movements of opera. Relinquishing the aria, the scena, the regularly-constructed ensemble linked by recitativo secco, which he conceived to be contradictory and obstructive to dramatic truth, his method was to set his poem to a glorified species of recitative, called by him the Melos, and to support and give it additional force and vividness by a gorgeous illustrative orchestral accompaniment, its other self. An important feature in his scheme, which is to be regarded as his substitute for the Subject of traditional form, was the adoption and development of the Leitmotif, a device employed to some extent by Weber in 'Der Freischütz,' and by Berlioz. By it the successive appearances on the stage of each prominent person of the drama, and often the anticipation and remembrance as well as the occurrence of an important situation, are signalized by a special harmonic progression or a particular rhythmic figure. These became in the case of Wagner, who was his own poet, something more than mere labels or mottoes. Growing up in his mind with the progress of his poem, his series of Leitmotive became for him, as it were, his musical dramatis personæ. He felt them as an inseparable part of his persons and events, and they became with these the framework on which his works were constructed.
It must be clear to all unprejudiced minds that the principles which guided the creator of the great music dramas were perfectly logical and coherent, and that Wagner acted on them throughout the course of his career, properly so called, with entire consistency and with magnificent success. His error, and the error of his disciples, lay in their arrogant and senseless propaganda of the Wagnerian articles of faith, as expressions of the ultimate and universal principles of art. Wagner went so far as to claim that Beethoven, recognising that instrumental music had reached its natural term of existence, had given practical expression to such a belief by setting Schiller's 'Ode to Joy' in the finale of his ninth symphony. The assumption is controverted by the facts that Beethoven composed the works known as the posthumous string quartets, and sketched a purely instrumental tenth symphony after the completion of the ninth.
The rejection of a future for Absolute music is, of course, purely arbitrary. Wagner's achievements for the stage were transcendent, but it is even conceivable that the progress of time may sooner or later produce a composer able successfully to champion, in a manner of his own, the cause of rhythmic melody, of traditional form, on Wagner's own arena, on the stage itself.
If we examine the pretensions of the so-called larger art, the musical Drama, versus the capacities of the several arts of poetry, of music, of dramatic action, by the testimony of Wagner's own works, is it possible to contend that these make for, and not against, the wholly superfluous proposition from which he started as a reformer? One of the reproaches frequently levelled by the New-Germans against ante-Wagnerian opera was that its form hardly rose above the level of an entertainment; that entertainment was its raison d'être. What, however, is the ultimate result of the musical Dramas? Is it not also entertainment—entertainment of a highly complex and luxurious form, conceived and accomplished, certainly, in the most perfect and perfectly consistent manner? The famous Dramas are gorgeous stage poems; but are they so exceptionally and extraordinarily elevating to the mind? They address the senses with exceptional power. Could either of them replace amongst our highest possessions a really great play, a great poem, a great symphony? The art of sound, the art of music, is and remains the special art divine because it is capable of reaching beyond the limited impressions of which words are the symbols, and of suggesting the infinite.