Musical art is the idealized art of the inner man as distinguished from the arts of painting and sculpture and their like which are the idealized expression of what is outside him. It is the result of the urgent impulses of certain peculiarly constituted human beings to express things which move them in ways which are favorable to permanence; which permanence proves attainable only through the controlling influence of the instinct for order.
The instinct for order and the impulse to gratify it in all directions seem to be present in all unperverted human beings; which is obviously the consequence of the fact that it has always ministered to the preservation of those who possessed it. The primitive savage who kept his weapons in some kind of orderly fashion, and knew where to lay his hands on them when wanted, easily survived the disorderly savage who could not find them soon enough to prevent being exterminated. The primitive savage who could dispose his means of existence in an orderly fashion was more likely to survive the savage who had no proper place for anything; and there were thousands of other ways in which this instinct favored its possessor; and favored him more and more as social and anti-social conditions progressed in complexity. Looked at from another point of view, that of experience, the lack of the sense of order betokens low mental power; and the possession of it in higher and higher degrees is a token of higher and higher capacities of mind.
The sense of order is the basis of organization; and out of organization comes permanence. The more perfect the organization the more lasting is the thing organized. What is well built is well organized for its purpose, and stands fast. What is ill built is badly organized for its purpose, and tumbles down. And so it is with a work of literature. It cannot be said that a noble thought ill-presented will soon be forgotten; but its being ill-presented makes it obscure. And it must be admitted that fascination is added to the utterance of a great thought by the perfect clearness and nicety with which it is expressed. The presentation is in that sense admirably organized and the mind welcomes it, and returns to it frequently with delight; whereas if it is clumsily expressed it gives the mind unnecessary trouble to understand what it means, and then there is a feeling of distaste and annoyance which prejudices the welcome that the great thought merits.
So it is with a work of art. Clumsiness and incoherence of structure beget discomfort, however great the intentions. Imperfections which may not be noticed at first grow more and more oppressive, till they become unbearable, and at last mankind is impelled to regard the good intentions as little better than opportunities wasted.
It may be justly argued that such imperfections are inevitable not only because art represents human efforts but because organization takes centuries to effect. It is also true that certain types of imperfection are pathetically attractive and afford a kind of interest in themselves where they suggest the kind of human condition and effort which is characteristic of the time and circumstances in which any individual work of art was produced. But in such case it is necessary that the motive shall be honorable. After ages will never be able to regard the deficiencies in modern church and chapel architecture, stained glass windows, modern tombstones and suburban villa residences with anything but disgust. Putting such aberrations aside for the present, it is pleasant to realize that one of the privileges of an instinct for style is to be able to recognize the stage of organization which has been reached, both in diction and structure, by the qualities of any work of art, and to locate the type of organization and balance its proportionate relation to what is expressed, and, more subtly still, to discern even the intention. Men who have any artistic instinct estimate the quality of a work of art by such an adjustment. They feel its nobility if it has any, even though the standard of organization is low, by estimating the quality of the thought in connection with the inevitable limitations of the means of expression. A work of art may inspire constant delight even though its form be obvious and its details crude, if the methods employed are sincere efforts to express with the best means available an inspiring idea. Limitations do not necessarily imply false construction. There is this to be remembered: that the progress of thought and the progress of organization proceed together and that a thought which clearly belongs to several generations ago will not be as complex or have to cover so much ground as the thought of later times of equal status; and that the limitation of the means of organization of the time to which the thought belongs will therefore be adequate and congenial to that thought, whereas, if a composer or artist use only the resources of diction and design of two hundred years ago to express a modern thought, the deficiency of the organization becomes at once apparent.
It is worth while to observe parenthetically that in primitive stages of art men did not attempt organization in order to give permanence to their artistic products. Their attitude was that of the unconscious child, and they merely sought to gratify their instinct for order, and arrived at the principle of organization in the process. So the beginnings of art were the direct result of the inevitable processes of the universe. Men found out the relation of organization to permanence long afterward, when they developed the capacity to analyze and consider what they were doing.
Mankind, like the individual, passes through three stages in his manner of producing and doing things. The first is unconscious and spontaneous, the second is self-critical, analytical, and self-conscious; and the third is the synthesis which comes of the recovery of spontaneity with all the advantages of the absorption of right principles of action. In the products of the first stage people delight in spite of crudity and clumsiness because they are fervent, genuine, essentially human. The products of the second are often ineffectual, occasionally suggestive, and for the most part more historically than humanly interesting. It is in the last phase that the greatest works of musical art are produced; and it is in such works of art that the approximation to perfection may be found, in which there is no part which has not some relation to every other part; nothing which does not minister to the fullness with which the inner idea of the artist is expressed; in which every curve of melody, every progression of harmony, every modulation, every rhythmic group, every climax and relaxation of stress, every shade of color, and every part of the inner texture at once ministers to coherent and cogent expression and at the same time fulfills its function in the general scheme of design or organization. From mere elementary orderliness art has progressed in such things to the very highest manifestations of the subtlest and most perfect organization which the human mind is capable of achieving. But it must be admitted that such an ideal is only reached in very rare cases, by masters whose complete absorption in the work of artistic creation is undisturbed by distracting influences; who can maintain their concentration through a prolonged and coherent effort; and who have the gift to apply their faculties and successfully call upon their minds to provide exactly the right methods and procedures whenever required, and at the same time to hold everything balanced by the requirements of proportionate relation which is indispensable to true artistic organization.
It is to such perfection that all true artists aspire, and it is only those who are absolutely true to themselves who can even approximate to it. In days when commercialism is rampant and the favor of such as are totally ignorant of the most elementary artistic principles is held to be the criterion of artistic worth, it practically becomes impossible.
There are two phases of organization. The first is the organization of terms, signs, methods, materials, some of which must be found before art begins, but most of which are found as it evolves. The second phase is the organization of the individual works of art. The parallel that springs to mind at the moment is the organization of units and supplies of an army, on the one hand, and, on the other, the organization of the campaign and the engagements for which the forces and their needs were organized. Upon the former kind of organization it is not necessary to dwell. It is an obvious necessity of art. But, though part of it, it does not illustrate or affect the quality of the art products except in a purely elementary and mechanical sense. Of the latter kind, which manifests itself inevitably in varying degrees in every musical work from the cheapest popular song to the highest instrumental symphony, it must be admitted that it is worth while to have some little understanding; especially of the relations to one another of the various branches and factors in the artistic scheme which the study of such things in detail is apt to miss.
At the outset the curious anomaly may be admitted that expression and organization appear to be antagonistic. This is only one way of recognizing that art, like everything else, is achieved by the accommodation of opposites. The very idea of human feeling being expressed in preconceived set terms sounds so preposterous as to be almost repugnant. Yet if it is not expressed in set terms how should it maintain its hold upon the mind? We know by experience that human feeling upsets organization (as, for instance, in the confusion of rhythm into which highly emotional performers and singers are driven), and that organization stifles human feeling (as, for instance, in the empty, inadequate words that are stuffed into poetry to make rhymes, and the ridiculous shams that are stuffed in architecture as in music to make a pattern complete). But, as a matter of fact, though language also might be described as antagonistic to feeling, yet feeling cannot definitely be conveyed to other beings without being formalized into words, and the words arranged according to the recognized rules of prosody. And, as a matter of experience, when language has become, as it does, a spontaneous means of expressing feeling, it very often intensifies the feelings that it is used to express. Many men are more excited by their own violent language than by the motives which caused them to give vent to it. So in art some men only begin to find out how strong their feelings are when they try to put them into shape. The mere fact of organizing effective climaxes according to settled principles causes them to believe in deep-set passion which they would not otherwise have suspected in themselves. Oratory is never in itself a proof of greatness or even sincerity of soul.