It is from this rhythmic movement that the symphony gets its quality of action, and the precursors of the symphony in this respect were the old folk-songs and dance-tunes the melodies of which are full of rhythmic diversity. The line from these early naïve compositions down to symphonic music was never broken, and there is hardly a symphony in existence that does not pay direct tribute to them.
I dwell on this point at some length because here lies a large part of the energy of music. The rhythmic figures to which I have already referred contain within themselves a primal force. They are capable of throwing off parts of themselves, and these, caught in the primary orbit, live as separate identities, until the too powerful attraction of the greater mass absorbs them again. As rhythm, then, a symphonic movement is like sublimated physical energy. As the first oscillations of its impulse strike our consciousness we are caught up into a world of movement which has the inevitability of star courses. We ourselves are all rhythm—rhythm imprisoned and awaiting release. In music we become one with all that ceaseless movement or vibration without which there would be no physical or spiritual world at all. I say, then, that rhythm is the very heart of music; that while we are all susceptible to it (though comparatively few people can move their hands or feet or bodies in perfect rhythm—they would be much better off if they could!) we do not altogether see what significance it has as an æsthetic property of music. When the heart of music stops beating (as in one of Beethoven’s scherzi) we are surprised, or perhaps disturbed, not answering to the marvelous silence; when two or even three rhythms are acting simultaneously we are confused and helpless before the most fascinating of æsthetic phenomena.
Let me next dwell briefly on that element in the evolution of symphonic music which consists in the use of several themes simultaneously. Should we trace this back to its original we should find ourselves in the ninth century. Now, while I know that this is not the place for a dissertation on any abstruse musical terms, I shall venture this much, not only because this method of writing is used in nearly all really fine music, but because a large part of the pleasure to be derived from listening to a symphony depends on our capacity to follow the varied strands of melody that constitute it. Is it not so, also, with the novel? The chief theme of Meredith’s “The Egoist” has numberless counter-themes running through and around it. It is not by any means to be found in Sir Willoughby alone, for you understand it through Vernon’s good sense, through Clara’s dart-like intuitions, through Mr. Middleton’s patient surprise at having such a daughter, through Letitia, and Crossjay, and Horace De Cray—all these are continually explaining and illuminating the theme for you. It is true that music asks you to listen to several melodies at once, but what does the episode of Crossjay’s unwitting listening to Sir Willoughby’s belated declaration to Letitia ask you to do? Is it enough merely to record the scene as it is unfolded to you? Or do you remember Crossjay’s father stumping up the avenue in his ill-fitting clothes? Clara’s intercessions for Crossjay? Vernon’s attempts to adjust himself to Sir Willoughby’s overbearing grandiloquence? And do you not have to remember, especially, that Crossjay had been locked out of his room by Sir Willoughby and had sought the ottoman as a refuge? These are all strands of the chief melody in that remarkable composition. (Not all the strands are there, for satire never tells the whole truth. “Tony” in Ethel Sidgwick’s “Promise” and “Succession” is also an egoist.) A novel, then, in this sense, is not successive, but simultaneous. All that has been and all that is to be exist in every moment of life, for that is all what we call “the present” means. The chief difference between such play of character around an idea and the movement of many musical themes around a central one lies in the detached and spiritualized quality of sound.
It is obvious that music, written for an orchestra containing some twenty or more different kinds of instruments and scores of performers, must have great variety of expression. Each instrument has its own tone color, its own range, and its own technique, and each must be given its own thing to say. In this sense symphonic music is an intricate mesh of melodies, each intent on its own purpose, each a part of the whole. In no other of its varied means of expression is the symphony more strictly and more fully an evolution than in this one of complex melodic textures. There has been no hiatus. From its first great moment of perfection in the time of Palestrina, through the madrigal and fugue, through dance-tunes conventionalized in the suite, through organ pieces, oratorios, and the like, this method of writing has persisted. Wagner bases his whole musical structure on the play and interplay of melodic lines in his leit-motifs. Bach is all melodic texture. Music written in this manner is called “polyphonic,” and the method of writing it is called “counterpoint.”
In direct contrast to this is “monodic” music which employs only one melody against an accompaniment of chords. A large part of the music we hear is monodic; an aria by Puccini, a popular song, most church music—these have one melody only. So has Poe’s “For Annie.” Polyphonic music has the great advantage of being intensive in its expression; it evolves out of itself. When I say that almost the whole of the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is evolved out of a few measures near the beginning, I mean that the melodic fragments of the theme take on a life of their own and by so doing illustrate and expound the significance of the original thesis from which they sprang. This quality, or property in music, upon which I have laid some stress, is, then, not so much a matter of technique as of æsthetics. The thing done and the manner of doing it is each the result of general laws, and I venture to dwell on them here, not for expert, technical reasons, but because I wish to offer the listener to symphonies one of his most delightful opportunities. Note should finally be made of the important fact that only those symphonic themes which have a varied and vibrant rhythm serve well the purpose of counterpoint, for the essence of instrumental counterpoint lies in setting against each other two or more melodic phrases in contrasting rhythms.
I do not mean to imply by the foregoing that symphonic music persistently employs counterpoint as against simple melody. There are whole passages in the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven where one tune is given out against an accompaniment of chords, and a lyric composer like Schubert employs counterpoint somewhat rarely. But in the greatest symphonies the predominating method of expression is through polyphony.
In writing about counterpoint I have dwelt on the rhythmic quality in melody, and have stated that a well-defined and varied rhythm is essential to contrapuntal treatment. I might almost have said that all good melody depends on rhythm. I do say—expecting many a silent protest from certain of my readers—that all the greatest melodies have a finely adjusted rhythm, and I apply this statement to all melody from the folk-song to the present time. I might enumerate beautiful melodies whose effect depends on other properties than rhythm,—as the second melody in Chopin’s Nocturne in G major, opus 37, number 2,—but I should add that, as melody, existing by itself, it is not fine and the reason is that its rhythm is monotonous.[10] And when I say it is not fine, I mean that it is not highly imaginative, and that it depends too much on its harmonization. And when, in turn, I say that, I mean, perforce, that it is too emotional. The difference between such a theme and one with a really fine rhythm is the difference between Poe’s “The Raven” and Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn.” In the former the mind is being continually lulled by the soft undulation of the rhythms and rhymes; in the latter the mind is being continually stimulated by their complexities. Yet Keats’s ode is as unified as Poe’s lyric. There are melodies for songs for the pianoforte, for the violin, and for the orchestra; there are sonata melodies and there are symphonic melodies just as there is a shape for a hatchet and a shape for a pair of scissors—which is only stating once again the old law that the style must suit the medium of expression, or that the shape must suit the uses to which a thing is put. Symphonic themes, in contradistinction to themes for songs or short pianoforte pieces, or dances, should be inconclusive; they are valuable for what they presage rather than for what they state, and they should indicate their own destiny. The four notes with which the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven begins are so,—in fact the whole theme is valueless by itself,—but they contain enough pent-up energy to vitalize not only the first movement, but the three which follow it. If it were possible for each reader of these words to hear—as an interlude to his reading—a series of great symphonic melodies, and if he would listen to them carefully, he would find almost every one to contain a finely adjusted rhythm.
Symphonic themes present certain difficulties to the listener whose understanding of melody is limited to a square-cut strophic tune. He is accustomed to a certain musical punctuation—a comma (so to speak) after the first and third lines of the music, a semicolon after the second, and a period at the end. And when he gets an extra period thrown in (as he does after the third line of the tune “America”) he is all the happier. When he hears the opening theme of the “Eroica” Symphony break in two in the middle and fall apart, he gets discouraged, for his musical imagination has not been sufficiently developed to see that that very breaking apart presages the tragic turmoil of the whole movement. When Brahms gives out, in the opening measures of his Third Symphony, two themes at once, he does not fathom the element of strife which is involved, and so cannot follow its progress to the final triumph of one of them.
But the symphony contains everything, and there is a place in it for lyric melody, provided the flight be long and sweeping. The “slow movement” of a symphony contains such themes, but they are not content to be merely fine melodies. They, too, must contain some potentiality which is afterwards realized. The best and most familiar example will be found in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, where the first rhythmic unit (contained in the first three notes) of the beautiful romantic theme detaches itself and pursues an almost scandalous existence full of delicate pranks and grimaces, and comic quips and turns, now gentle, now ironic, now pretending to be sentimental, until it finally rejoins the theme again. This piece is a romance touched with comedy—a romance great enough to suffer all the by-play without the least dilution of its quality.
Any attempt in a book like this to explain the intricacies of harmonic development as it is seen in the symphony must be inconclusive. Harmony is, in itself, less tangible than either rhythm or melody, for it lacks to a considerable extent the element of continuity. I mean by this that groups of harmonies do not possess coherence in relation to each other. They do not stay in the memory as a line of melody does; the impression we get from them is fleeting. It may touch with light or shade one brief moment in a piece of music (as it frequently does in Schubert’s compositions); it may produce a bewildering riot of color (as in ultra-modern music); or it may cover the whole piece with a subdued shadow (as in the slow movement of Franck’s quintette). But the real office of harmony is to serve melody. I mean by this that when two or more melodies sound together they make harmony at every point of contact, and this harmony, incidental to the movement of melodic parts, has a reality which chords by themselves cannot acquire. And the whole justification for many of the sounds in ultra-modern music lies in this one perfectly correct theory. Not that the laws must not be obeyed—as they frequently are not; not that a composer may violate nature, and do what he likes. He must, as of old, justify in reason all the dissonances arising from his melodic adventures. He should remember Bach, whose melodies clash in never-to-be-forgotten stridence, striking forth such flashes of strange beauty as can only come from a war of themes.