Consideration of the manner in which the words are put forth leads us to the matter of the words themselves. It is difficult to find even a modicum of meaning, to say nothing of spirit, in much of the verse that achieves musical setting to-day. A critic in a London Daily some time back inquired if all our native poets were paralysed, the query being suggested by an examination of a representative batch of songs. But the poet is hardly to blame for the present state of affairs. In the wedding of words and music, the usual routine is for the author of the lyric to submit his effort to the composer for his consideration. The composer will neither select nor waste his time in setting the better class of verse because, as he says, the publishers will not look at it. The publishers will not print and issue it because, so they say, the public will not purchase it. The public might very well retort that they get precious little chance to listen to it, since royalty ballads come first: nor to come in contact with it, for the ordinary dealer does not stock it. There, then, is the vicious circle quite complete. But the poets are not paralysed, they are merely inarticulate by reason of this commercialisation of Art. At the best of times the average lyric author has a difficult and somewhat heart-breaking task to dispose of his wares, and we need not further harrow his artistic soul by suggestions of literary impotence.
It must, however, be admitted that on the whole there is an extraordinary poverty and bareness of idea and inspiration in the general run of songs: neither Nature nor Love are themes that can ever be finally exhausted while human nature remains as it is, but the treatment can be so stereotyped that it eventually wears threadbare. It is possible to become thoroughly weary of roses and gardens, and gardens of roses, gardens without roses, and gardens where we hope there will be roses. It is such a pity, too, that there are so few rhymes to "love." Yet even in dissatisfaction there exists the element of progress: if we are bored with the present style we shall demand something better, and the demand will create the supply. But to swing from bareness and boredom to the other extreme of abstruseness and complexity is no remedy: in these latter qualities there exists no special compensating virtue. Listening to a song as it is sung is very different to reading the verse at leisure. The sense of the song must be caught as it flies, the verse can be read and re-read if necessary, until its meaning be clear. It is no progress, therefore, to worship the turgid and obscure, whether in words or music, or both. We may pretend that we appreciate things because we cannot understand them, but that is only a concession to convention and a convenient way of smothering artistic conscience.
Of late an outcry has arisen, on the part of wise men in exalted station, about "beastly tunes," but surely if a tune can attain sufficient popularity to earn the picturesque adjectives of the academic, there must be some element in it which has escaped the attention of its detractors. The Southern Syncopated Orchestra, which played for some lengthy period in London a little while back, showed that popular music might yet be extremely clever and artistic in scope and performance. There were high-brow musicians who would not even go to listen to such, but preferred to condemn it unheard: the loss was emphatically that of the high-brows. Humour abounded in this little band of performers on such a strange array of instruments, and it appeared as if the players enjoyed their work no less, at any rate, than their audience. Yet their programme was full of "tunes." Is any tune in itself "beastly"? Or is it that the brain-recognition, to which we have alluded, decks out the tune in sordid or sweet trappings according to its own nature? We certainly know that in other directions we are apt to see things according to the colour of our own mental vision.
These tunes, however, that have become so popular, have the three essentials of music strongly marked: they have decided rhythm, attractive melody, and harmony at times quite good. Are we to try and attract the multitude to music by muddling up or emasculating rhythm, or by eschewing melody and banishing anything that intrigues the ear, and by supplying an harmonic scheme that awakens no brain-recognition and cannot in consequence be understood? Well, the conventional suburbanite may gush over such indeterminate and invertebrate music, saying, "Yes, isn't it just too lovely," but the rough and tumble individuals who make up most of the world will plump for the "tune" every time. Give him what he wants, and then induce him to want something better, but avoid the mistake of trying to turn him into a musical vegetarian while his meat-eating appetite has no liking for the diet.
The incongruity of some of the songs we hear sung is truly appalling: we find a charming maid, love for whom might honour any man yet born, singing "Less than the dust,... even less am I," and so on. Lies, all lies, even though she lie melodically with charm and with apparent conviction. We have passionate love-songs sung by guileless individuals who would be inexpressibly shocked if you explained to them the meaning of the sentiment to which they had been giving utterance. There are operatic scenas, dealing with abduction and all sorts of uncomfortable situations, and again youngsters declaim of their somewhat indecorous emotions with gusto and—let us hope—a sublime insensibility of all that they imply. They are warbling words to music, but they are not singing, for the meaning is not there. The fault, of course, lies in the traditional idea that all aspiring vocalists must learn certain things, just as that all pianists should go through a corresponding round of instrumental compositions. Why should they? Many of these classical examples that we accept as the right things to sing or play are hopelessly antiquated and out of date: they would not stand a chance as new compositions to-day. Antiquity itself is only a recommendation if we are collectors of curios. The literature of Art is far too comprehensive for anyone to study it all, we can but touch a fragment of the whole: why, then, should that fragment be determined by tradition and custom alone? Will anybody's clothes fit me: am I not likely to secure a better fit by being measured for my own? And why should not the same consideration apply to my mental outfit? It is the same desperate fear of originality and initiative, coupled with a certain unwillingness to take individual responsibility: it is the "ditto" idea again, and yet a writer has said "imitation is suicide." Let music be studied historically and in its development, by all means, this indeed is necessary: but to spend hours and hours learning to play or sing something just because "everybody does it" is the sheerest waste of time, unless the music so played or sung still bears a living message for the performer.
Protest might also be registered against the unadulterated rubbish that is put forward as a translation when a song or operatic excerpt of foreign origin is rendered in English. Of grand opera even the Daily Telegraph is moved to say that "the translations are in most cases literary nightmares." Mere baldness might be excused, and even doggerel overlooked, but one has only to turn to almost any of the current standard translations of foreign songs to see that the matter is worse than this. To expect a student to get up and participate in this verbal foolishness and ineptitude, by endeavouring to express as genuine the balderdash that poses as sentiment and sense, is an insult to his or her intelligence.
Finally there remains the "graveyard" school of composition. Here we have the author or composer, or both of them, seeing the world much worse than it is, and think that they do Art a service by putting their realistic conceptions on permanent record. We would join issue with all the various methods—song, literature, drama, and painting—of giving the unpleasant a wider and more effective publicity. The suggestive nature of all of these negative things cannot be overlooked, and should not be underestimated. The Biblical advice is to the point: "Whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good report: think on these." The graveyard and realistic schools reverse this sage precept, saying, in effect, "Whatsoever things are nasty, unwholesome, and disagreeable—make the most of them: they will always appeal to a certain section whose minds are correspondingly unpleasant." We prefer the "pure joy" gospel, as being nearer the truth: for spirit is ever pointing the vision upward to what we may become, instead of allowing it to grovel around in the very unpleasant circumstances in which some people are liable to find themselves. The outward vision is transient, the inner vision can build eternal realities. "Are we to beg and cringe and hang on the outer edge of life,—we who should walk grandly? Is it for man to tremble and quake—man who in his spiritual capacity becomes the interpreter of God's message,—the focus of Divine Light?"[19]
[Chapter IX]
MUSIC AND EDUCATION