Tonality is something which cannot be magnificent or splendid; nor can it be attributed to a composer as being in the slightest degree a claim to admiration. Indeed, one composer can hardly possess it in a greater degree than another; and the writer of an ephemeral ballad, or of "Thou, thou reignest in this bosom," has it, although not more largely, with stronger manifestation than Mozart or Beethoven. And yet it so happens that Wagner is in his later works less governed by the law of tonality than any other known composer of the day.
Tonality is simply the relation of a musical phrase, or air, or longer composition, to a keynote or tonic chord. To this tonic chord the harmonies of the composition must bear a close and constantly felt relationship. The harmony almost always opens with this chord, and continually recurs to it; and either in its simple form or in some of its inversions, it, its dominant and subdominant, are the perceptibly ruling harmonies of the composition; and upon this tonic chord the composition always ends. That is tonality; nothing more nor less; and to the influence of this principle of tonality is due the distinctive character of modern music. Strange as it will probably seem to most amateurs, news as we have already seen it is to one professor, it was not until after Palestrina's time that the law of tonality asserted itself in music, and that compositions were clearly written with any tonic, that is, manifestly and strikingly in any particular key.[5 ] But it so happens that Wagner's method of composition has actually led him somewhat away from this principle of tonality. Any musical person will see that in recitative there is much less relation of harmony to the tonic than in airs or in choruses; and Wagner's prolonged, almost endless recitatives are wearisome partly from the very fact that we are so long at sea drifting hither and thither without the rudder of tonality. But what did this matter to the criticaster? He had heard the word tonality, and it was a round, mouth-filling word, somewhat new withal, and therefore good for use against an ignoramus. Perhaps he thought it meant sonority or something of the kind; or he connected it with that lovely phrase "tone-poem." Well, in any case, it has served his purpose astonishingly.
After the introduction of the principle of tonality music developed with remarkable rapidity. In one hundred and fifty years it made more progress toward an ideal beauty and as a means of emotional expression than it had made in the thousands of years that had passed since the first note was sung. For by this principle of tonality, melody and harmony as we know them became possible. All that went before was either the vague, formless, unsymmetrical production of popular mood and fancy, or the dry formula-work of musical pedants. And yet within a century we have such a result as Stradella's divine Aria di chiesa Se i miei sospiri, which, whether for its melody, its harmony, or its emotional expression, intense yet kept within the bounds of a lofty and almost serene dignity, is unsurpassed by any vocal work which has been since produced. It has been said by some that this air was not written by Stradella. M. Fetis, however, does not doubt it; and the result of the discussion is that it is assigned to the great Italian singer. The story of his having saved his life by singing it—two assassins who followed him into a cathedral to put him to death for having robbed a nobleman of his beautiful mistress having been disarmed and sent off repentant by the charm of his voice and of the music—is probably known to many of my readers. Did any of them ever hear in a composition by Wagner or Liszt, or any of that crew, a melody of which it could be believed or for a moment supposed that it would produce such an effect, even if it were sung by a seraph?
It was not, however, until the first quarter of the last century that what is in a large sense the modern school of music came to full growth. Then appeared Bach and Handel. They came suddenly; as suddenly as Marlow and Shakespeare into the field of dramatic poetry, as suddenly as Raphael and Titian into that of painting. Not indeed without roots in the past and a growth from them, but with a marvellously quick and strong development, and an unfolding of flower and fruit that seemed as if it were—as indeed it was—the blooming of a century plant. And as is ever the case in art, the utmost limit of attainment seems to have been reached at the first bound. What was dramatic poetry before the half century which began with Marlow and Shakespeare? What was painting before the like period of its glory? And what have either been since? This position may be claimed for Handel, with the fullest recognition of the genius of Mozart (Haydn, great, enchanting, truly inspired as he was, is yet out of the question), and even of the almost awful genius of Beethoven. But when we remember that the Hallelujah Chorus, Lascia chio pianza, the renowned Largo in G so grandly performed by Mr. Thomas's orchestra at his last subscription concert, are from the same hand, and that these are only examples (which I cite because they are so well known) of a creative power which seems to have been equally great and various in its manifestations—when we take into consideration the healthiness, the virility of Handel's tone of thought, there being, I believe, in all his known works, not a single passage marked by morbid feeling or even exaggerated sentiment, although of intensest feeling there is overpowering expression, as for example in the Largo just referred to, and when we give due weight to the copiousness of his production, he being the most voluminous of all the great composers, if we measure his works by their quantity and not by their numbers, in which an oratorio or an opera would count only one, we can hardly hesitate, except in favor of Beethoven, in reckoning him as the greatest creative mind in music. And as to Beethoven, deeply as he sunk his shaft into the profound of human emotion, mightily as he moves us, deftly as he expresses even the lighter moods of feeling (rarely, however, without some passing touch which, if pushed a little further, might become almost fierceness), is there not sometimes, and perhaps more than sometimes, a morbidness, noble, magnificent, but still morbidness, in his moods? We are overwhelmed by the grandeur, and are swallowed up in the gloom of his graver compositions; but when we emerge are we in as healthy a state of mind as that in which we find ourselves after listening to Handel or reading Shakespeare—even if we read such tragedies as "Hamlet," "Othello," and "King Lear"? Then, too, it must be remembered how carefully Beethoven nursed his genius; how regardless he was of every consideration except the expression of his own thought; and how comparatively limited was his productiveness, or certainly his production.
As to his moodiness, it must, on the other hand, be considered that it is the peculiar function of music to express moods. Man's soul is stirred by emotions which cannot be given utterance in words, and which would remain unexpressed but for music, which to the musically organized is a means of communication and of sympathy. There is a question at least whether an art whose function it is to give expression to inward feeling too subtle for words, an expression which is above all words, which gives form to the formless and utterance to the unspeakable, is not rightfully and of necessity at times morbid and moody; whether if it were not so it would not fail in doing that which is the very reason of its being. The supremacy lies between Handel and Beethoven; and we shall find ourselves inclined to assign it now to one and now to the other, according to the mood in which we are, which will depend greatly on which of the two we have just heard.
And yet, as to pure music, irrespective of psychological significance—that is, the expression of an ideal of beauty in musical form—Mozart stands first among all composers. Another mind so fertile in thoughts of the finest and highest kind of beauty is unknown in the history of any art, Shakespeare being of course always excepted. Writing, like Shakespeare, always for money, and not hesitating to put his hand to any task that would bring him a return, driven by sharp necessity almost to the prostitution of his genius, driven in his boyhood, by an exacting father, to write as an infant prodigy for the support of the family, dying at the early, and, as far as the mind is concerned, the immature, age of thirty-seven, he left behind him, in the mass of his compositions, much that was hastily produced merely to meet the needs of the moment. And yet in it all what transcendent beauty of form! He had rarely even a fitting occasion for the exercise of his faculties. Rarely is he not superior to the subject which he undertakes to illustrate. Like Shakespeare, he throws away beautiful thoughts upon mean and trivial subjects. Contrary to the supposition of the Roman Pope, with Mozart it was the jug that was begun to be made and the vase that issued from his hand.[6 ] "Don Giovanni" his greatest or at least his richest work, is full of examples of this incongruity between the occasion and the production. In a previous paper I pointed out an example in the andante of Leporello's catalogue song. Another is the trio in masks. Only elsewhere in his own works can be found examples of an equally enchanting beauty of musical form. In its thought, and in the elevation and finish of that thought, it reaches the highest attainable pitch of perfection. This single trio is of more worth than all that many composers of repute have written in all their lives. For example: If it were a question between the destruction of this brief passage and all of Mendelsohn's compositions, the trio should be preserved without a moment's hesitation. Just as the Madonna Sixtina is worth ten times over all the canvases of Giulio Romano; and as a single mutilated figure of the frieze of the Parthenon, or the Venus of Milo, outweighs all the perfect marbles of Canova and of Thorwaldsen. Such is the transcendent value of the supreme in art.
In all the works of the great composers of the modern school—the only real school—of music, from Bach to Beethoven, including Haydn, there is a supreme dominant feeling for beauty of form, shown chiefly in melody, but hardly less apparent in harmony. Indeed, without this feeling they would not have been great. The rule is absolute: no form, no art; for art is proportion, symmetry. Melody is a series of musical proportions; like a series of arches the lines of which are harmonious. These melodic ideas they elaborated with the utmost care. It is generally supposed that ideas in art come spontaneously; and of all this might seem truest of musical ideas, which are not, like those expressed in language, in painting, in sculpture, or in architecture, required to conform themselves to a type or a purpose. They do come indeed to the musical artist, but not spontaneously in the form in which he presents them. They would not come up if they were not in the soil; but the soil must be cultivated and the growth must be pruned and trained into seeming naturalness and spontaneousness of beauty. Milton's lines—
Where the bright seraphim in burning row
Their loud, uplifted angel trumpets blow—
seem like a splendid spontaneous outburst of poetical expression. But we know that their splendor and their spontaneous seeming is the result of elaboration, of erasure, of interlineation, of recasting. The thought we may believe came in a moment, but it was worked with consummate care and art into the form in which the poet gave it to the world. So it is even with melody, the most spontaneous-seeming part of music. We may be sure that even Mozart, most fertile of all composers in melody, the greatest master of instrumentation, elaborated his themes and his treatment of them, if not on paper, at least in his mind before he put his conceptions into score. And the reason, the occasion for this elaboration was the desired attainment of the highest possible perfection of form. I need hardly say to any musician that I am not speaking of technical form, either of harmonic progression or of the cast of a composition, as for example the sonata form, the symphonic form, the dramatic form, but of the form of intrinsic absolute value which appeals to the general craving for and appreciation of beauty. This beauty of form cannot be disregarded in any art without failure to attain the highest place in the world's estimation, no matter how marvellous and admirable the powers displayed in another direction. For lack of this excellence Rembrandt can never take the highest place, but must be content with the admiration of those who can appreciate his mastery of manipulation, a technical excellence. Of all great painters, Turner is most imperfect in this respect. But Turner can hardly be said to have dealt with form at all. Hence a certain weakness amid all his glory. He painted distance, light. Among painters he is the king of space, the prince of the powers of the air.