This lyric spirit is obviously seldom to be found in the ‘art’ music of the eighteenth century. It is not too much to say that music in that age was regarded as dignified in proportion to its length. The clavichord pieces of Rameau or Couperin were hardly more than after-dinner amusements; and the fugues and preludes of Bach, for all the depth of the emotion in them and despite their flexible form, were primarily technical exercises. The best creative genius of the latter half of the century was expended upon the larger forms—the symphony, the oratorio, the opera, the mass.
All the qualities which are peculiar to the lyric in poetry we find in the song—the Lied—of the nineteenth century. A definition or description of the one could be applied almost verbatim to the other. The lyric song must be brief, emotional, direct. Like the lyric poem, it cannot waste a single measure; it must create its mood instantly. It is personal; it seeks not to picture the emotion in general, but the particular emotion experienced by a certain individual. It is unique; no two experiences are quite alike, and no two songs accurately expressive of individual experiences can be alike. It is sensuous; emotions are felt, not understood, and the song must set the hearer’s soul in vibration. It is intimate; one does not tell one’s personal emotions to a crowd, and the true song gives each hearer the sense that he is the sole confidant of the singer. Musical architecture, in the older sense, has very little to do with this problem. Individual expression goes its own way, and the music must accommodate itself to the form of the text. Abundance of riches is only in a limited way a virtue in a good song. The great virtue is to select just the right phrase to express the particular mood. Fine sensibilities are needed to appreciate a good song, for the song is a personal confession, and one can understand a friend’s confession only if one has sensitive heart-strings.
Thus the song was peculiarly fitted to express a large part of the spirit of the romantic period. This period, which appreciated the individual more than any other age since the time of Pericles (with the possible exception of the Italian Renaissance), which sought to make the form subsidiary to the sense, which sought to get at the inner reality of men’s feelings, which longed for sensation and experience above all other things—this period expressed itself in a burst of spontaneous song as truly as the drama expressed Elizabethan England, or the opera expressed eighteenth century Italy.
I
Lyrical song begins with Schubert. Before him there was no standard of that form which he brought almost instantaneously to perfection. It is hard for us to realize how little respect the eighteenth century composer had for the short song. His attitude was not greatly unlike the attitude of modern poets toward the limerick. Gluck set his hand to a few indifferent tunes in the song-form, and Haydn and Mozart tossed off a handful, most of which are mediocre. These men simply did not consider the song worthy of the best efforts of a creative artist.
If we take a somewhat broader definition of the word song we find that it has been a part of music from the beginning. Folk-song, beginning in the prehistoric age of music, has kept pretty much to itself until recent times, and has had a development parallel with art music. From time to time it has served as a reservoir for this art music, opening its treasures richly when the conscious music makers had run dry. Thus it was in the time of the troubadours and trouvères (themselves only go-betweens) who took the songs of the people and gave them currency in fashionable secular and church music. So it was again in the time of Luther, who used the familiar melodies of his time to build up his congregational chorales (a great part of the basis of German music from that day to this). So it was again in the time of Schubert, who enjoyed nothing better than walking to country merry-makings to hear the country people sing their songs of a holiday. And so it has been again in our own day, when national schools—Russian, Spanish, Scandinavian and the rest—are flourishing on the treasures of their folk-songs. And when we say that song began with Schubert we must not forget that long before him, though almost unrecognized, there existed songs among the people as perfect and as expressive as any that composers have ever been able to invent. But these songs are constructed in the traditional verse-form and are, therefore, very different from most of the art songs of the nineteenth century, which are detailed and highly flexible.
Of the songs composed before the time of Schubert, mostly by otherwise undistinguished men, the greater part were in the simple form and style of the folk-song. A second element in pre-Schubertian song was the chorale. The Geistliche Lieder (Spiritual Songs) of J. S. Bach were nothing but chorales for solo voice. And the spirit and harmonic character of the chorale, little cultivated in romantic song, are to be found in a good part of the song literature of the eighteenth century. A third element in eighteenth century song was the da capo aria of the opera or oratorio. Many detached lyrics were written in this form, or even to resemble the more highly developed sonata form—as, for instance, Haydn’s charming ‘My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair,’ which is otherwise as expressive and appropriate a lyric as one could ask for. The effect of such an artificial structure on the most intimate and delicate of art forms was in most cases deadly, and songs of this type were little more than oratorio arias out of place.
It will be seen that each of these sorts of song has some structural form to distinguish it. The folk-song, which must be easy for untechnical persons to memorize, naturally is cast in the ‘strophic’ form—that is, one in which the melody is a group of balanced phrases (generally four, eight, or sixteen), used without change for all the stanzas of the song. The chorale or hymn tune is much the same, being derived from the folk-song and differing chiefly in its more solid harmonic accompaniment. And the da capo aria is distinguished and defined by its formal peculiarity.
Now it is evident that for free and detailed musical expression the melody must be allowed to take its form from the words and that none of these three traditional forms can be allowed to control the musical structure. And the Lied of the nineteenth century is chiefly distinguished, at least as regards externals, by this freedom of form. Such a song, following no traditional structure, but answering to the peculiarities of the text throughout, is the durchkomponiertes Lied, or song that is ‘composed all the way through,’ which Schubert established once and for all as an art-type.