The Rise of national schools in the nineteenth century—Growth of national expression in Scandinavian lands—Music in modern Denmark—Sweden and her Music—The Norwegian composers; Edvard Grieg—Sinding and other Norwegians—The Finnish Renaissance: Sibelius and others.

The most striking characteristic of the music of the nineteenth century has doubtless been its astonishing enrichment in technical means. Its next most striking characteristic is easily its growth in national expression. National art-music in the modern sense was almost unknown before the nineteenth century. The nearest thing to it was a 'Turkish march' in a Mozart operetta or sonata, or an 'allemand' or 'schottisch' in a French suite. The national differences in eighteenth century music were differences of school, not of nationality. It is true that Italian music usually tended to lyricism, French to dexterity of form, and German to technical solidity; it is true further that these qualities corresponded in a rough way to the characteristics of the respective nations. But all three used one and the same musical system; they differed not so much in their music as in the way they treated their music.

In the nineteenth century the national feeling found expression as it never had before. The causes of this were numerous, but the most important were two of a political nature: First, the spread of the principles of the French Revolution made democracy a far more general fact than it had ever been before; political authority and moral influence shifted more and more from the rulers to the people and the character of the ordinary men and women became more and more the character of the nation. Second, the resistance called forth by Napoleon's wars of aggression aroused national consciousness as it had never been aroused before. Napoleon, with a solid national consciousness behind him, was invincible until he found a national consciousness opposed to him—in Spain in 1809, in Russia in 1812, and in Germany in 1813. Only the sense of nationality had been able to preserve nations; and it was the sense of nationality that thereafter continued to maintain them.

To these two political causes we may perhaps add a third cause—one of a technical-musical character. With the early Beethoven the old classical system of music had reached its apogee. When this was once complete and firmly implanted in people's consciousness contrasting sorts of music could be clearly apperceived. Once the logical course of classical development was finished, men's minds were free to look elsewhere for beauties of another sort. So when a political interest in the common people led men to investigate the people's folk-songs, musical consciousness was at the same time prepared to appreciate the striking differences between art-music and folk-music.

Now all the national music of the nineteenth century is based in a very real sense on the folk-music of the people. The music of the eighteenth century could not be truly national, because it was supported chiefly by the aristocracy, and an art will inevitably tend to express the character of the people who pay its bills. The differences between the aristocracy of one nation and that of another are largely superficial. The court of Louis XV was distinguished from that of Frederick the Great chiefly by the cut of the courtiers' clothes. But the France of 1813 was distinguished from the Germany of 1813 by the mould of the national soul. And the national soul can be seen very imperfectly in the official art of a nation; it must be sought for in the popular art—in the myths, the fairy tales, the ballads, and the folk-songs. So when the newly awakened national consciousness began to demand musical expression, it inevitably sought its materials in the music of the people.

I

In the eighteenth century this popular music was thought too crude to be of artistic value. The snobbishness of political life was reflected in the prevailing attitude toward art. Because the people's melodies were different from the accepted music they were held to be wrong. Or rather, one may say that cultivated people hardly dreamed of their existence. Gradually, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, scholars became aware of the value of popular art. Herder was the first important man to discover it in Germany, and he passed his appreciation of it on to Goethe. By the opening of the nineteenth century the appreciation of folk-art was well under way. Collections of folk-songs and folk-poetry were appearing, and their high artistic value was being recognized. With the first decade of the century the impulse reached the Scandinavian lands, and their national existence in art began.

These countries had of course been free from the immediate turmoil of the Napoleonic wars. They had suffered, as all Europe had suffered, but they had not been obliged to defend their nationality with their blood. Denmark and Norway-Sweden had been for centuries substantially independent, and Finland, which had been in loose subjugation alternately to Sweden and Russia, was practically independent for some time until a political pact between Napoleon and the Czar Alexander made her a grand duchy of Russia; but even as a part of the Russian Empire she suffered no violation of her national individuality until late in the nineteenth century. Political independence and geographical isolation had left the northern nations somewhat turgid and provincial. Their artistic life had been largely borrowed. The various courts had their choirs and kapellmeisters, usually imported from Germany. Native composers were infrequent; composition was largely in the hands of second-rate musicians from Germany who had migrated that they might be larger fish in a smaller puddle. And the composition was, of course, entirely in the foreign style. Stockholm and Copenhagen had their opera in the latter half of the eighteenth century, but the works performed were chiefly French and Italian. These imported works set the standard for most of the native musical composition. Toward the end of the eighteenth century German influence began to predominate, especially in Denmark, where the German Singspiel took root and enjoyed a long and prosperous career. The German influence was much more proper to the Scandinavian lands than that of France or Italy, but it had not the slightest relation to a national art. Danish stories occasionally appeared in the subject matter, but the music was substantially that of Reichardt and Zelter in Germany. In Sweden the course of events was the same. Occasionally national subject matter appeared in operatic librettos, but in the music never. Sweden, which up to the beginning of the nineteenth century continued to be a force in European political affairs, had naturally enjoyed a considerable degree of intercourse with other nations, and was all the more influenced by them in her art. Norway and Finland, however, were completely isolated, and received their musical ministrations not at second hand but at third. In all these countries there was a considerable degree of musical life (choirs, orchestras, and dramatic works), but this was almost wholly confined to the large cities. Yet all these nations had the possibilities of a rich artistic life—in national traditions, in folk-song, and in a common sensitiveness of the racial soul. All four nations are distinctly musical, and in Denmark and Finland especially the solo or four-part song was cultivated lovingly in the home and in the smaller communities.

From their isolation and provincialism the Scandinavian countries were awakened, not by direct, but by reflex impulse. The vigorous national life of other European lands gradually stimulated a sympathetic movement in the two Scandinavian peninsulas. Denmark saw its first good collection of folk-songs in 1812-14, Sweden in 1814-16. In 1842 came A. P. Berggreen's famous collection of Danish songs, and about the same time the 540 Norse folk-songs and dances gathered and edited by Ludwig Lindeman. Doubtless this interest had some political significance. But far more important than these was the appearance in 1835 of the first portion of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, which has since taken its place beside the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied as one of the greatest epics of all time. This remarkable poem seems to have been genuinely popular in origin. It remained in the mouths and hearts of the people throughout the centuries, almost unknown to the scholars. A Finnish physician, Elias Lönnrot, made it his life work to collect and piece together the fragments of the great poem. In 1835 he published thirty-five runes, and in 1849 a new edition containing fifty—all taken down directly from the peasants' lips. This work had a decided political significance. It intensified and solidified the national consciousness, tending to counterbalance the influence of the Swedish language, which until then had been unquestionedly that of the cultivated classes; later it formed a buffer to the Russian language which the Czar attempted to force upon the Finns by imperial edict. It served to arouse the national feeling to such a pitch that Finland has in recent years been the chief thorn in the Czar's side. And this fact, as we shall see, helped to give the Finnish music of the last three decades its intense national character.

The distinctly national movement in Scandinavian countries began, as we have said, in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Its growth thereafter was steady and uninterrupted and was aided by the generous spread of choral and symphonic music. In the first stage the music written was based chiefly on German models, but it was written more and more by native Scandinavians. In the second stage (roughly the second third of the century) the native composers wrote music that was based on the national folk-music, but timidly and vaguely. In the third stage, the folk-tunes were frankly utilized, the national scales and rhythms were deliberately and continuously called into service, and the whole musical output given a character homogeneously and distinctively national. It was in this stage that the Scandinavian music became known to the world at large. Grieg, a man of the highest talent, possibly of genius, made himself one of the best loved composers of the nineteenth century, and awakened a widespread taste for the exotic. Together with Tschaikowsky the Russian he made nationalism in music a world-wide triumph. After his success it was no longer counted against a composer that he spoke in a strange tongue. The very strangeness of the tongue became a source of interest; and if there was added thereto a strong and beautiful musical message the new composer usually had easy sailing. The outward success of Grieg doubtless stimulated musical endeavor in Scandinavian lands, and enabled the world at large to become familiar with many minor talents whose reputations could otherwise not have passed beyond their national borders. Finally, there has arisen in Finland the greatest and most individual of all Scandinavian composers, and one of the most powerful writers of music in the modern world—Jean Sibelius. In him the most intense nationalism speaks with a universal voice.