(ββ) The essential significance of this melodic quality and its bearing on the human spirit is best apprehended if we view the latter as a whole. The fine arts of sculpture and painting give an objective existence to the ideality of soul-life; moreover, they liberate the mind from this externality of their presentation in so far as, from a certain point of view, it discovers itself therein as an ideal, spiritual work, and from another everything which partakes of adventitious singularity[465], of capricious idea, opinion, and reflection, is rejected, the content thereof being placed before us in its entirely appropriate individuality. The art of music, on the contrary, as we have repeatedly pointed out, possesses as a means to such objectivity merely the element of the soul-life itself, by means of which that which purely belongs to this enters into conversation with itself, and as expressed in the utterance of emotion itself returns, as it were, upon itself. Music is spirit or soul, which ring forth in their untrammelled immediacy, and derive satisfaction in this record of their self-knowledge. As a fine art, however, it is its necessary function to regulate the expression of such life no less than its effects. It ought not to permit that expression to be whirled away in bacchantic thunder and tumult, or be left in the distraction of despair, but retain the blessed freedom of its deliverance in the extremity of sorrow no less than the jubilant outburst of delight. And this is the character of truly ideal music, the utterance of melody such as we find it in Palestrina, Durante, Lotti, Pergolese, Glück, Haydn, and Mozart. Tranquillity of soul is never lost in the compositions of these masters. Grief is no doubt often expressed, but the resolution is always there; the luminous sense of proportion never breaks down in extremes: everything finds its due place knit together in the whole; joy is never suffered to degenerate into unseemly uproar and even lamentation carries with it the most benign repose. I have already, when discussing Italian painting, emphasized the fact, that a spirit of reconciliation is not wanting even in extreme examples of sorrow and distraction of soul; by virtue of this, even where we have tears and suffering, some trait of tranquillity and assurance is preserved; the tenderness and grace which assert themselves in the harlequin's rôle illustrates the same truth. In like manner a feeling for nature and the endowment of musical expression is pre-eminently a characteristic of the Italians. In their earlier church music we find that, along with the deepest devotional feeling, the sense of reconciliation is expressed in its purity; and though grief may stir the soul most profoundly, yet beauty and rapturous joy, the simple greatness and impress of an imagination which discovers delight in its own varied expatiation, is equally present. It is a beauty of an apparently sensuous type, so that it is not unusual to refer to such melodious contentment as a purely sensuous enjoyment. But it is sometimes overlooked that it is precisely in this realm of the senses that art discovers its life and movement, and thereby transfers Spirit to a sphere in which, as in the world of Nature, this essential wave of self-satisfaction is throughout the fundamental tone.
(γγ) Albeit, therefore, particularity of emotional content must be duly represented, yet it is right that music, while permitting passion and imagination to stream forth in its harmonies, should at the same time lift the soul that is absorbed in such emotion over the same, enable it to hover around such content, and in short create an atmosphere wherein the recovery from such an absorption, and the pure reflection of itself is possible. This it is which gives us in fact the really melodious character to song-music. The important feature of it is not merely the progression of determinate emotion such as we indicate by the words love, yearning, jollity, and so forth; it is rather that inward sense, which presides over it, which expatiates in its suffering no less than its delight, and finds satisfaction in doing so. Precisely as the bird in the brake, the lark on high sings its glad and touching song for the mere sake of singing, an outburst of Nature herself, having no further thought or intention whatever, it is just the same with human song and the expression of its melody. Consistently with this not infrequently Italian music, in which this truth is pre-eminently emphasized, will, just as poetry will, pass into mere melodious sound simply, and can readily appear to part company with the emotional stimulus and its particular mode of expression, or even in fact do so, for the very good reason that its object is the enjoyment of art by itself, and the contentment of all who thus are able to enjoy themselves. And apart from the Italians this is more or less the characteristic of all right melody. The specific nature of the expression, albeit present also, passes away, in so far as our hearts are absorbed in what we appropriate rather as our own, than in that which belongs to another, a something beyond us. By reason of this and this alone—it is much as we receive the impression of pure light—we are admitted to the most intimate conception of ideal blessedness and attuned spirits.
(β) In the art of sculpture the predominant impression is ideal beauty or self-repose. Painting, on the other hand, already presents a movement in the direction of specific characterization, and the emphasis it attaches to articulate expression is an essential feature of its executive purpose. In a similar fashion the art of music is unable to rest satisfied with melodious expression as above indicated. The purely emotional grasp by the soul of its intrinsic nature, and the play in musical sound of this apprehension is, regarded as the mere atonement of mood, when we take it strictly, too general and abstract. It is inseparable from the danger not merely of an alienation from the more careful interpretation of the content expressed in the libretto, but of that of becoming generally empty and trivial. If sorrow, joy, yearning, and so forth are to find adequate reflection in melody, the soul that is actual and concrete only comes by such emotions in the downright reality of the same as involved in a veritable content, that is, in particular situations, events, actions, and so on. If, for example, a song arouses the emotion of mourning, the lament at a loss, we inevitably ask ourselves, what is the nature of that loss. Is it, shall we say, the loss of life with all its many interests? Is it a loss of youth, happiness, wife, beloved, children, friends, or anything else? For this reason it is further incumbent upon music that it should of itself differentiate in like manner its mode of expression when dealing with a specific content and the various relations and situations, which the soul has experienced, and the more ideal or intimate life of which it seeks to reflect in its harmonies. Music in short is not primarily concerned with the bare form of the inward soul, but with that innermost life as replenished, the specific content of which is most closely related to the particular character of the emotion roused, so that the mode of the expression will, or should, inevitably assert itself with essential differences, according to the varied nature of the content. In a similar way the soul, precisely in the degree that it takes a headlong plunge into any distracting experience, proceeds through an accumulating series of effects, and, in opposition to our previously described state of benign self-contentment, passes through conflicts and distraction, wrestlings with passions, and in short reaches an extreme of division, for which the mode of expression hitherto observed is no longer adequate.
Now what we mean by the detail of the content is just that which is supplied by the libretto or words. In the case of a simple melody, which is less concerned with this specific character, the more defined characteristics of the libretto are appreciably of less importance. A song, for instance, although it essentially implies as a poem and text a whole of variedly motived moods, perceptions, and ideas, none the less as a rule asserts throughout one fundamental progression of emotion; it is primarily one chord of the soul that it emphasizes. To grasp this, and to reflect the same in the language of music, this is what such song-melody is mainly called upon to do. Consequently we may have identically the same music through all the verses of our poem, although the meaning they carry admits of much variety; and what is more, this very repetition, so far from proving injurious to the effect, may serve to enforce and enhance it. We may see the same thing in a landscape, where, too, the most varied objects confront the vision, and yet for all that the prevailing mood and aspect of Nature, which animates the whole, is one and the same. It is just such a prevailing tone that ought to assert itself in the song, and this, though it only applies strictly to some of the verses, but does not so apply to others; and the reason of this is that here the specific sense of the words is not to be taken as of most importance. What comes first is the simple melody that floats freely over all variety of content. In the case of many compositions which infringe this principle, and which start every fresh verse with a novel melody, which not unfrequently varies from the preceding one in beat, rhythm, and even scale, it is quite impossible to understand why, if such essential modifications were really inevitable, the poem itself ought not to have been altered in metre, rhythm, and rhyme, through all its verses.
(αα) What is, however, appropriate for the song, which is a genuine melodious utterance of the soul, is not applicable to every kind of musical expression. It is necessary, therefore, to draw attention to a further aspect in contrast to pure melody as such, one of equal importance, and by virtue of which alone song is really brought into line with accompanying music. We find this in that mode of expression which is dominant in the recitative. Here we have no independently exclusive melody, which at the same time reflects the fundamental mood of the content, in the elaboration of which soul-life, as at home with itself, receives back in musical sound some portion of its ideal activity; rather in the case before us the content of the words, to the full compass of its specific character, is imprinted upon the musical expression, the import of which no less than the course it determines; and this is so whether we regard it from the point of view of the elevation or profundity which distinguishes it, or the prominence or subordination of its particular features. By such means music, as contrasted with melodic expression, approximates to an emphatic declamation, one accurately corresponding with the movement of the words, whether the view we take of them be that of their meaning, or that of their syntactical arrangement. And in so far as it adds also, as a novel element, the aspect of a more exalted emotion, it stands midway between the pure melody and poetical speech. Conformably to such a station, therefore, we have a free accentuation, which adheres strenuously to the specific sense of particular words. Moreover it is not necessary for the libretto in this case to be written in any particular metre, nor need the musical exposition, as the pure melody does in a like case, follow beat and rhythm with absolute precision; rather the music under this condition of it, that is in its acceleration, suspension, or pause in particular progressions, or rapid passage over such, is entitled to adapt itself freely to the emotion aroused by the meaning of the words. For the same reason the modulation is not so restricted as in the case of melody. Precisely as the text which it attempts to express may suggest, it may begin, proceed, pause, break off, begin again, or stop with absolute licence. Unexpected accents, progressions only partially mediated, sudden transitions and resolutions are equally permissible; and, in direct contrast to the continuous stream of melodious music, provided always that the libretto's content requires it, this latter mode of expression is equally in its place, though delivered in fragments, and torn asunder by passionate emotion.
(ββ) Being of this character this form of declamatory expression, known as recitative, is suitable for tranquil statement of situation, or facts, no less than the presentment of the entire compass of the emotions, under which the distraction of the soul in exceptional circumstances is depicted, and which in its soul-full harmonies stirs the heart sympathetically with its every movement. The recitative is first mainly applicable to the oratorio, either as the declamed narration, or the more vivacious presentment of instantaneous occurrence; or, secondly, we find it in dramatic song, in which case it can appropriately express every shade of parenthetical statement, no less than every sort of passion, it matters not whether the result be expressed in abrupt, curtailed, or fragmentary variation, or with aphoristic violence, or in a dialogue of rapid lightning flashes and counter flashes, or in a more continuous stream. In both these provinces of epic or dramatic poetry, we may add that instrumental music is a possible accompaniment. Its function in either case is either quite simply to emphasize the pauses in the harmonic progression, or to interrupt the course of melody with incidental music, which, agreeably to the general import of the former, depicts in musical language other aspects and movements of the situation.
(γγ) What, however, we find defective in this declamatory recitative is just the qualities which are essentially characteristic of the pure melody; these are the definite articulation and unification of its parts, the expression of that spiritual homogeneity or unity of which we have spoken, that which, it is true, is confined in a particular content, but at the same time asserts its own sense of unity in that content, being enabled to do this through its refusal to be distracted or broken up by its absorption in particular aspects of it, or rather, instead of this, still retaining in them as predominant its ideal coalescence. For this reason the art of music cannot rest satisfied, even where we are dealing with the more sharply defined features of the libretto proposed, with such recitative of declamation; nor in general can it remain content with the unmediated difference between the pure melody, which, in comparison with it and as above explained, floats over the particularity of the words, and the recitative, whose task it is so far as possible to identify itself with it. On the contrary we must look for some mode of mediation between these extremes. We may compare with this new type of unity a constituent which entered into our consideration of the distinction between harmony and melody. This harmony was acknowledged as being not merely the general, but to a like extent the essentially specific and particularized foundation of melody; and far from the latter being thereby deprived of its freedom of movement, we found that it only thus secured for the same a power and definition comparable to that the human organism secures by virtue of its consistent bone-structure, which only impedes inappropriate postures and movements, while it adds stability and security to the right ones.
This brings us to the final point of view of our discussion of music as an accompaniment.
(γ) This third mode of expression consists in this that the melodic song, which accompanies words, is also involved in their particularized substance, and thereby is not permitted to remain wholly indifferent to the principle of most force in recitative; rather it appropriates this with the result that while it repairs its own defects in clear definition, it confers on the characteristic recitative an organic articulation and a unified self-consistency. For, as already observed, even that which is throughout melody is impossible without a certain defined content. When, therefore, I mainly emphasized the fact that in all and every mode of it the tranquil self-reflection of the soul's own essential substance and ideal unity is the mode of expression peculiarly that of simple melody, inasmuch as, musically considered, it presents a similar unity and a similarly complete return upon itself, I did so because I then had in view this aspect as the distinctive point of contrast between the pure melody and the recitative. It is, however, further incumbent on the melodic phrase to bring it about that its mode come into actual possession of that which in the first instance appears necessarily to have its movement outside it, and by means of this replenishment, in so far as it then is equally of a declamatory or a melodic character, for the first time attain to a truly concrete expression. It follows also from the converse point of view that the declamatory part of it is no longer independently aloof from it, but finds its own one-sidedness supplemented in like manner by the accretion of melodic expression. This is what constitutes the necessary condition of such concrete unity. In order to examine this more closely we had better keep distinct the following points of view.
First, it will be as well to glance at the kind of libretto, or text, which is adapted to musical composition, and for this reason that it has been now proved that clear definition in the content of words adapted to music and its expression is of essential importance.