Genuine beauty in music consists, under the aspect now being discussed, in this, that while there is no doubt a movement towards characterization out of that which is simply melodic, yet within the sphere of this more defined articulation[469], the melodic aspect is still maintained as the sustaining soul and unity, much as we find in what is most characteristic in the paintings of Raphael the fundamental tone of beauty is throughout conserved. Melody is then not without definite significance, but in all such definition betrays a coalescing and suffusing principle of life, and more characteristic detail presents itself merely as the emphasized prominence of certain aspects, which are none the less always and essentially fused again in this medium of unity and animation. To hit off the just mean in this respect is, however, a more difficult task for music than the other arts, for the reason that music surrenders itself more readily to such antagonistic modes of expression. For this reason criticism over musical composition is almost always divided into two camps. The one attaches most importance to the melodic structure, the other prefers further advance in characterization. Handel, for example, who frequently in his operas insisted on having certain lyrical episodes emphasized acutely, had to face many a tussle on this head with Italian singers, and was finally compelled, when the public ranged itself on the side of the Italians, to confine himself wholly to the composition of oratorios, in which field his genius pre-eminently asserted itself. In the time of Glück also the long and vehement controversy between the supporters of Glück and Piccini is famous. Rousseau also in his turn insisted on the superiority of the more melodious Italian music as compared with the deficiency in this respect of the earlier French composers. We have in our own days the same old controversy waged for or against Rossini and the more modern Italian school. The opponents of the former condemn his music as if it were so much empty ear-tickling; if we, however, assimilate his melodies more generously we shall find that there is much in this music of real feeling and genius; it is not without a real message to our faculties, although it does not make any claim to the characteristic effects, which are more especially dear to our severe German musical sense. And indeed it must be admitted that only too often Rossini says good-bye to his libretto, and gives free vent to his melodies, precisely as his mood dictates, so that we have nothing left us but the alternative either to stick to the subject-matter and grumble over the music that is indifferent to it, or abandon the former and take our hearty delight in the inspired irrelevances of the composer and the soul which they reveal[470].
(γγ) I will now in conclusion briefly summarize the most notable forms of music regarded as accompaniment.
First, in the order of our classification we may mention ecclesiastical music. Music of this type, in so far as it is not concerned with the personal emotion of individuals, but with the substantive content of emotion in its widest compass, or shall we say the universal emotion of the community viewed collectively, is in a large measure throughout of epical consistency, even though it instructs us in no events in so many words. How an artistic conception is able to be epical in significance, though we have in it no narrative of event, we shall endeavour to explain at a later stage when we come to deal more closely with epic poetry. This fundamentally religious music is among the profoundest and most impressive creations that Art can bring into being in any sphere whatever. Its true position, in so far, that is, as it is associated with the sacerdotal petition for the community, we find in the cult of Roman Catholicism, conjoint with the Mass, and more generally as a means of musical devotion attendant to the most varied ecclesiastical functions and festivals. Protestants can also boast of musicians of the profoundest gifts not merely as religious men, but also in the sterling character and opulence of their imaginative resource or executive ability. Sebastian Bach here stands before us as the master of masters. For the first time in our own day we have been taught to appreciate at something like its value the great genius of this man, his truly protestant, robust temper, and withal his profound erudition. Of first importance we may observe in this connection, and in contrast to the direction followed by the music of Catholicism, the emergence in complete form of the oratorio, in the first instance out of the Passion music. Nowadays, of course, music for Protestantism is no longer so closely associated with the cult of religion, nor so essentially a part of its services; and indeed it is often more a matter of exercise in musical scholarship than a really vital creation.
Second in order we have lyrical music, which expresses in melody isolated moods, and for the most part should be disjoined from the wholly characteristic or declamatory mode, although it may rightly undertake to combine with its expression the specific content of the words illustrated, whether their import be religious or otherwise.
Tempestuous passions, however, which neither issue in repose or finality, the unresolved division of the heart, emotional distraction destitute of all relief, such experiences are more suitably reproduced as an integral part of dramatic music; they are out of place in the harmonious consistency of the lyrical mode.
This dramatic form is then our third and final division. The tragedy of the ancients was associated with music; but this aspect was not emphasized, and for this reason that in truly poetical works precedence must necessarily be given to human speech and the poet's own exposition of ideas and emotion; the only way music could in these times assist—which in its harmonic and melodic expression had not as yet reached that of a subsequent Christian era—was mainly from the rhythmical point of view by heightening with increased animation the musical sound of the poetical language, and thereby bringing the same more home to the heart.
Dramatic music, however, receives a really independent position when once the form of church music is essentially complete, and in lyrical expression some degree of perfection has been attained. We find this in our modern operas and operettas. It must be admitted that from the point of view of song the operetta is a halfway house of less importance, one which mixes together with no vital connection speech and song, what is musical and unmusical, the language of prose and that of melody. It is a common objection no doubt that song in the drama is without exception unnatural. Such an objection cannot be pressed, and would be far less open to argument as against the opera, in which from the first line to the last every idea, emotion, passion, and resolve is accompanied by and expressed in song. On the contrary, it is rather the operetta which still requires justification in so far as it introduces music in which we have a more animated presentment of the emotions and passions, or the latter are adapted for such presentment, while in the juxtaposition of a confused melody of prosaic dialogue with these artistically treated interludes of song we have what is a perpetual embarrassment. In other words, the emancipation of art is incomplete. In genuine opera, however, in which the action throughout receives its musical analogue, we are once and for all transported into an ideal world of art, the atmosphere of which is throughout the work maintained in so far as the music accepts for its fundamental content the ideal aspects of emotional stress, the particular phases of such in specific situations, and the conflicts of passion, that it may, by virtue of the more complete effects of its expression, add the final emphasis they would otherwise have lost. Conversely in the vaudeville, where airs already popular and well known are set to the more pointed and arresting rhymes, singing is merely a self-imposed kind of irony. The fact that there is singing at all is intended to be taken rather as parody or amusement: here the main point is the meaning of the text and its fun, and the singing has no sooner ceased than we laugh that it should ever have commenced.
(b) Independent Music
We may compare melody, as an essentially self-contained and self-supported whole, to plastic sculpture; in the more detailed characterization of painting we shall find an analogous type to that of musical declamation. And inasmuch as in the latter case we have an aggregate of specific differentia unfolded such as the more simple movement of the human voice is unable in all its variety to express, the more all these many aspects of life enter into the movement of the music, to that extent instrumental music is a necessary accompaniment. In addition to this, as a farther point of view, whether in its relation to the music that accompanies a libretto, or the characteristic expression of the words, we have to recognize in its freedom a content of definite ideas, which is, as transmitted, wholly independent of musical sound.
Now what constitutes the essential principle of music is the ideality of the soul-life. But this innermost, or ideality of the concrete self is the subjective state in its bare simplicity, that is, as defined by no assured content, and for this reason not forced into motion either one way or another, but reposing on its unity in unfettered freedom. And if this subjective principle is to come entirely to its own in music also it must rid itself of a traditional text, and in all purity, out of its own resources, master its content, the movement and the kind of expression, the unity and development of its creation, the carrying out of a main conception, no less than all episodical or incidental matter; and in doing this, for the reason that the significance of the whole is not expressed in language, it must restrict its means to those exclusively of musical value. And this is what does take place in the sphere I have already described as independent music. Music, as an accompaniment, possesses that which it undertakes to express outside its own domain; to this extent it is associated in its expression with that which does not belong to it as music, but to an alien art, poetry. If music is to be nothing but music simply, it must disengage itself from this factor, which it has only borrowed elsewhere, detach itself absolutely from the definite substance of language. Thus alone it becomes entirely free. And this is the point we have now to examine more closely.