(ββ) A further distinction consists in this that melody in the case supposed is no longer developed, as in our previous example, merely in the exposition of separate notes composed upon a relatively independent harmonic progression, regarded simply as the base of it: in the melody now under consideration every separate note of the melody is substantially complete as a concrete whole In a chord. In this manner it, on the one hand, includes a world of tones, and from another it is so closely interwoven with the movement of the harmony, that it is now impossible to retain the distinction previously accepted between a melody unfolded in relative independence, and a harmony which supplies the emphatic pauses of the accompaniment and its more fixed and determinate musical basis. Harmony and melody are here one and the same compact whole, and a modification of the one implies a correspondent and necessary alteration of the other[458]. This may be pre-eminently illustrated by chorales written in four parts. In like manner the same melody can be so interwoven in the varied vocal expression of its parts, that this interlacery itself creates a harmonic progression; or we may have different melodies in a similar way elaborated harmonically in association, so that the union of particular notes of these melodies produces musical harmony. We often, for example, meet with this in the compositions of Sebastian Bach. In such cases the music progresses by means of parts that vary greatly from one another in their character and movement, which appear to associate or inter-thread with each other on independent lines, yet retain at the same time an essential harmonic relation to each other. A necessary and coherent union is thereby asserted.
(γγ) In composition of this kind it is not merely necessary for music which has any claim to profundity to be developed to the bare limits of undisturbed consonance, nay, even first to pass beyond it in order that it may return thereto: rather the first simple mode of concord will have to be rent asunder in dissonances. It is only through such conflict that the profounder combinations and mysteries of music in which an independent necessity reposes, discovers their source and ground; and for the same reason it is only in such profounder harmonic progressions that the arresting moments of melody originate. A bold style of musical composition will consequently part company with a purely consonant progression. It will pass into the sphere of opposing forces, will summon to its aid the most discordant contrasts, and disclose its unique power amid the tumult of all the resources of harmony, the conflicts of which it is equally able to calm, wholly confident in its ability to celebrate finally the grateful triumph of melodic tranquillity. We have in short here a battle waged between freedom and necessity; a conflict between the freedom of inventive genius, seeking to yield itself to its upward flight, and the necessary constraint of those harmonic conditions, which it is forced to acknowledge as the means of its expression, and in which its own ideal significance is reflected. On the other hand if the harmony, the employment, that is, of all its resources, the unrelenting nature of its conflict in the disposal of them and in its attitude to them is the main interest, the composition may very easily become heavy and overweighted with science, in so far at least as the freedom of movement is really impaired, or at least we are not allowed to feel the complete effect of its triumph.
(γ) To put the matter in other words, in every genuine melody a truly melodic, songful impulse, which is its essential type as music, must declare itself as predominant and independent, as something which it neither forgets nor loses in the plenitude of its expression. Thus regarded melody presents, no doubt, an infinite power of adaptation and co-ordination in the progressive motion of tones, but the mode or form of this must be such that throughout we are made aware of an essentially complete and self-subsistent whole. This totality contains, it is true, a varied complexity, and implies in itself a forward advance; but it must for all that, regarded as a whole, be beyond all doubt rounded off and secure. It must therefore have a distinct beginning and termination to the extent at least that the intermediate part of it may be simply presented as the mediating link between that beginning and end. Only as such a movement, asserted with unmistakable emphasis, itself self-differentiated and returning on its own unity, does the melody of music reflect the free self-consciousness[459] of soul-life, whose expression it ought to be; only as thus perfected can music, in its own peculiar medium of ideality, enforce expression in its pure immediacy, or avail itself of the ideal freedom of that mode of expression which is the untarnished reflection of the inner life, an expression which, despite its subordination to the necessary laws of harmony, enables the soul to perceive a more exalted vision.
3. THE RELATION BETWEEN MEANS OF EXPRESSION IN MUSIC AND ITS CONTENT
After passing in review the general nature of musical art we considered the particular aspects according to which notes and their duration in time secured their necessary form. Having now arrived in our discussion of melody at the confines of a world of free artistic invention and actual musical composition, what we have now to deal with is a content, which, under its rhythm, harmony, and melody, is capable of receiving an expression conformable to art's requirements. After fixing clearly in our minds general modes of this expression we shall as our conclusion be in an advantageous position to review the different provinces of musical composition. With these objects before us we may in the first instance advert to the following important distinction.
On the one side music may be, as already observed, in the nature of an accompaniment. This is the case where its spiritual content is not merely seized in the abstract ideality of its significance, or as individual emotion, but enters into the movement of the music subordinate to the significance it has already received from idea and words. As a type of music opposed to this we have the composition which is disconnected with any such content already prepared for it; music in this case establishes itself in its own proper sphere, so that it either, if it still is forced to deal with a definitely received content, resolves the same wholly in melodies and their harmonic development, or asserts its absolute independence in the medium of musical tone simply and its harmonic or melodic configuration. We have already seen that a similar distinction is apparent in a wholly different section of our inquiry. I refer to the case of architecture considered either as an independent art, or in the service it renders to that of building generally. But in music the mode of its accompaniment is of an essentially freer type than that of our illustration; it is far more intimately united with its content than is ever possible in the case of architecture.
In the actual domain of art this distinction marks the difference between vocal and instrumental music. We are not, however, entitled to accept it in the purely external interpretation of it, as though in vocal music it was merely the sound of the human voice, while in instrumental music it was the more varied tones of the many distinct instruments which were made serviceable. We must not in other words overlook the fact that the voice expresses at the same time in its song deliberate speech, presenting us the ideas of a specific content, so that music, regarded as the word that is sung, if the twofold aspect of the same in tone and human speech is not to fall into a condition of indifference or absence of relation, is obviously bound, so far as the art enables it to do so, to supply its musical expression to this content, which as such content is brought before the receptive faculties in its nearest approach to definition, and no longer is left unrelated in more indefinite feeling. In so far, however, as the presented content, as libretto, is, despite of the above union, independently ascertainable in legible form, and is also consequently distinguishable in the mind itself from its musical expression, to this extent the music attached to a libretto is an accompaniment, whereas in sculpture and painting the unfolded content does not already attain to any presentment independently of its artistic form. At the same time we must be careful not to go to the other extreme and entertain an idea of such accompaniment, as though its entire purpose were one solely of subordination; the truth is precisely the reverse. The libretto is written in the interest of the music, and has no further importance save in so far as it brings home to the mind a more intimate knowledge of the actual subject the artist has selected for his work. Music maintains this freedom pre-eminently by virtue of the fact that it does not apprehend the content in the manner the libretto may be assumed to make it intelligible. Rather it exhibits its mastery of a medium, to which sense-perception and imaginative idea do not belong[460]. In this respect I have already, when discussing the general characteristics of music, pointed out that music expresses the principle of ideality in its intrinsic quality. The ideality of soul-life, however, may be of a twofold type. That is to say, to accept an object in its ideal presentation[461] may, in the first place, mean that we do not conceive it in its actual appearance in the phenomenal world, but relatively to its ideal significance. We may, however, mean by this, secondly, that a content is expressed as we find it realized in the experience of personal emotion. Both forms of idealization are represented in the art of music. I will therefore endeavour to explain in more detail how this comes about.
In old church music, take the movement of a crucifixus est for example, we find that the profound meanings unfolded in the central idea of the Passion regarded as Christ's suffering, death, and burial, are severally so conceived, that it is not simply one merely personal feeling of sympathy or individual pain over these facts that is expressed, but along with this the very facts themselves, or in other words the depth of their significance is motived by the harmony of the music and its melodic progression. It is, of course, true that even here the impression is one which acts upon the emotion of those who hear it. We do not actually perceive the pain of the crucified, we do not merely receive a general idea of it; the aim is throughout that we experience in the depths of our being the ideal substance of this death and this divine suffering, that we absorb with heart and soul its reality, so that it becomes as it were a part of ourselves, permeating our entire conscious life to the exclusion of everything else. And in like manner must the soul of the composer, if his work is to disclose such a power of impress upon others, entirely lose itself in these facts and only in them. It must not merely have experienced a personal emotion of them. It must accept as its aim the task of making in its music the facts themselves live again for the ideal sense.
Conversely, I may read a text, a libretto, which narrates an event, places before me an action, gives to feelings the impress of speech, and thereby become moved even to tears in my profoundest being. This effect of personal emotion, which may attend all human action and conduct, every expression of inner life, and further may be excited by the perception of every such event and by participation in the presentment of such, the art of music is able to regulate; by so doing it ameliorates, tranquilizes and idealizes by its influence the fellow-feeling in the listener who finds himself attuned to it. In both cases, therefore, the content rings through the inner life, in which music, for the very reason that it subdues consciousness in the simple attitude of rapt attention[462], is able to restrain the unfettered range of thought, imagination, sensation, and passage beyond the true boundary-line of the subject on hand. Music, in short, keeps the soul absorbed in a particular content, fructifies its energy therein, and moves and fills the life of feeling up to the brim within these limits.