J. L. M. Curry.
THREE PERIODS OF MODERN MUSIC.
In "Punch's Almanack" for this year is an illustration, in three compartments, of the subject "Music at Home." The first is called "Drawing-room Music of the Past." A young lady sits at one of those little spindle-legged piano-fortes, hardly larger than a large washstand, and somewhat shaped like one, with which our grandmothers and great grandmothers, and the men who composed music for them, were not only satisfied, but delighted. Her hands are moving, light and level, over the little key-board, and the dainty turn of her head shows that she is captivated by the sounds that she is eliciting. Around her is gathered a family group of some dozen people, old and young, from the grandfather to the little grandchild who sits upon a hassock at her lovely mother's knee. They are all entranced by the music. Plainly there is not a sound in the room but that which is produced by the fair performer. The souls of all that company are enchained; their hearts if not their eyes are brimming with emotion. A spell of tenderness and grace has been cast upon them; and they have given themselves up to him who has woven it. The faces of all are lightly tinged with sadness, but it is an elevated and elevating sadness; a sadness that is mingled with a joy silent, deep, and strong, a joy far above hilarity. The most impressive figure of the group is the grandfather, who sits with his arm lying listlessly across the instrument and his head slightly bowed, as, we may be sure, he is carried back by the sweet strains to a time when one who does not appear in the group was by his side in all the charms of early womanhood. The composition is so touching, so filled with purest, sweetest sentiment, that it is impossible to look at it long without being moved almost to tears by the tender and serene pathos with which it is pervaded. The legend tells us that the music which has wrought this spell is "A Melody by Mozart."
In the second compartment of the triptique, which is labelled "Drawing-room Music of the Present," a young lady also sits at a piano-forte. It is a grand, a very grand piano-forte; a tremendous institution, the invisible end of which stretches far into infinitude. Plainly it is one of those awful instruments which have received a gold medal at all the expositions. The lid is propped up so that it looks like a gigantic trap set to catch some gigantic bird or vermin. The performer's shoulders and arms, which emerge in a somewhat alarming manner from their scanty covering, are in violent agitation. Her hands are flung into the air as they poise for an instant over the upper part of the long key-board, ready to pounce down upon the shuddering notes below, and from the great gaping instrument a flock of startled and affrighted quavers, semiquavers, and demisemiquavers is pouring out pell-mell over the assembled hearers. Hearers! No. The great drawing-room is filled with a crowd of people who have evidently been bidden to listen to the music. But they are undergoing it with stolid indifference as they talk or try to talk, either almost shouting or whispering into each other's deafened ears and bewildered brains. The only person who takes any interest in the performance is the performer herself. The motive power here is "A brilliant fantasia for the piano by Signor Rumblestominski."
The third compartment is entitled "Drawing-room music of the Future." Here five performers are laboring at and around the piano-forte, the top of which has been taken off. They are all men; tough-brained-looking fellows: one a violinist, one a violoncellist; two are at the key-board, and one stands music in hand and mouth wide open. They are toiling as if at day's work by the piece; and all are singing. They are engaged upon "Twenty-four consecutive interdependent Logarithmic studies for Violin and Violoncello, with Double Differential and Integral accompaniment for the Piano-forte, supplemented by Unisonal Descriptive and Corroborative vocal exposition in five modern languages." They have evidently got well into harness, and have dragged their hearers some distance over their rugged road, which is a "hard road to travel." The mass of the assembled company are rushing madly for the door. On an ottoman in the foreground sit five victims, four young ladies and a bald-headed old gentleman, who are all fast asleep. At one side a determined fellow sits with his elbows on his knees grasping his head with both hands, resolved to endure unto the end. Not even in the faces of the performers is there the slightest manifestation of the soothing, the elevating, or even the pleasurably exciting influence which belongs peculiarly to music. With dogged determination they are working out a knotty intellectual problem. They do not exhibit even the tickled vanity of musical virtuosity; they are there—to use a cant phrase of musical criticism—to "interpret" what the composer has with infinite toil and trouble put upon paper; and very tough work they find it; somewhat like reading mathematics written in the Basque language. And their souls are unmoved. The musical sounds go through their ears straight to their brains, leaving their hearts untouched. They are engaged in an intellectual process.
Of these designs, the last two, although they are laughable caricatures, express with very little exaggeration (allowing for the notes made visible in the second) the character, the quality, and the effect of certain schools of musical composition. The first is not a caricature, as any one will see; but although it is quite the contrary, it is not on the other hand idealized. It merely represents with skilful touch and felicitous arrangement what might have actually occurred and what doubtless did many times occur in drawing-rooms at the end of the last century and the first years of this; indeed, what might happen and even does happen now. There has been a change in costume and in manners; but there is none in the effect upon musical souls of a melody by Mozart.
And these designs illustrate three periods in modern music: two through which it has passed and one upon which it seems now to be entering. By modern music I mean music since the days of Palestrina. What was written before that time, nearly or remotely, although it may have historical importance and interest, is of little or no value as music. Indeed, it hardly is music as we know and feel it. Not that I would imply that Palestrina invented modern music, or even that he alone of contemporary composers was a gifted and accomplished master of his art. Roland de Lattre, called Orlandus Lassus, chief of the Gallo-Belgic school, might dispute the palm with him.[4 ] But this conceded, it remains that in Orlandus Lassus we have the best product of the ancient school, adhering to the ancient style and bringing it to its highest perfection; while in Palestrina we have the beginning of the modern school and style, the distinctive trait of which may broadly be said to be the use of melody and harmony of independent value under constant governance of the principle of tonality. Before the time of Palestrina—say A.D. 1550, he having been born about 1524 and having died about 1594, which year closed the life of Orlandus Lassus, who was born in 1520—before that time music was polyphonic. But it was not merely, as that term implies, many-voiced, or in several parts; for that it is now; but the parts moved without any æsthetic relation to each other, and with the same independence of the æsthetic effect of the whole. Their progression was according to certain rules; but these conformed to, the object of the composer seemed to be to make his work as intricate as possible. Certain figures—for they could hardly be called melodies—one or two or three or more—were repeated again and again and again by the various voices, each one going or seeming to go its own way, entirely regardless of the others—regardless of anything except the rules of the counterpoint of the day. The combining result was a tangled skein of sound which could be unravelled only as it had been put together, by rule. Instead of an emotional expression it was an intellectual puzzle in sound. Moreover the whole composition was without any bond of unity; it was, so to speak, and in its effect it was really, in no particular key.
Upon music in this condition there came about three hundred years ago a great change. Polyphonetic writing gave way, gradually but with some rapidity, to the movement of parts in a harmony of independent absolute beauty—that is, beauty, in the simple succession of its chords—and to the union with this harmony of a leading melody, also valuable for its independent, absolute beauty. Thus came into being what I have heretofore called "absolute music," which has been known to the world only about three hundred years, and in its full and complete development only about one hundred and fifty. At the same time, with this use of harmony and melody of absolute beauty and value, came in a great controlling principle or law, upon the operation and influence of which, in fact, the æsthetic effect of the new music chiefly if not entirely depended. This law or principle was tonality. I have been told that in a publication which I have never seen—although most probably it has been sent to me, to go, with the greater part of the printed matter and not a few of the letters that I receive, unread into my waste-basket—I have been held up as a dreadful example of musical incompetence on the ground that I cannot "appreciate Wagner's magnificent [or splendid, or something of that sort] tonality." Of course it cuts me to the heart to show that my criticaster was thoroughly ignorant of the very meaning of the word that he used—a word which is the name of a principle of paramount importance and significance in the art of music, which, I believe, he in some sort professes. But the demands of truth are inexorable.