Absolutely essential as beauty of form is in music, the reason of it, unlike that of the same quality in other arts, is beyond our apprehension. I at least find it so. I have heard it, and seen it upon paper, and considered it all my life. I have taken it in at eye and ear together. I have read and have pondered; but I never have been able to detect musical genius in its working, as I have, or have fancied that I have, done in other arts. I can find no reason for the existence of this beauty except that it is beautiful. I can see clearly, and I have sometimes thought that I could with some satisfactory approach to clearness tell in words, what the composer has done; but the how, and above all the why, is as much hidden from me as it was from him. For that it was unknown to him I am sure, not because I could not discover it, but from the very nature of the case.
Beauty of form in music is absolute, independent, self-existent. This is true of all natural beauty. There is no obligation upon beauty as there is, for instance, upon mathematical truth or moral goodness. But in all imitative art there is an obligation of conformity at least to an ideal type of what is represented. But music the moment it becomes imitative becomes ridiculous; it steps out of the proper limits of the art. For example, Haydn's "cheerful roaring lion" and "flexible tiger" in the "Creation." But it should be remembered that what is imitative and false in that aspect may have an essential beauty given by the genius of the composer. For example, the second and the fourth movements of the "Pastoral Symphony," and Haydn's own illustration of the passage, "softly purling glides through silent glades the limpid brook," in Raphael's song, "Rolling in foaming billows."
Music in its higher forms—I will not say its highest, but those which bring it within the pale of consideration in æsthetics—is without relations of any kind, except those which it bears to the soul of the composer and to that of the hearer. Even words are only the occasion of it, the suggestion. An embroidery of music with words is like the semi-pictorial explanatory addition to the Egyptian temples. The hieroglyphics tell us the story indeed, but if we are near enough to distinguish them, they only mar the effect of the architecture. So if in song the words are for any reason sufficiently salient to attract attention to themselves, they mar the music. In sacred music innumerable foolish and canting verses have become associated with fervor of feeling and sublimity of aspiration because of the music of which they have been made the vehicle. We do not really think of the words. And so in "Don Giovanni," in "Fidelio," we overlook the childishness of the poetry, if it must be called poetry, and regard it only as affording suggestions and occasions for the music.
Modern music was presented under these conditions until about half a century ago, when beauty of form and emotional expression began to be disregarded in favor of finish and brilliancy of execution. This was brought about in a great measure by the mechanical improvement of the pianoforte and the extension of its scale. This improvement and extension were made, it is true, in part to meet the demands of performers; but on the other hand, they made performance possible. I believe that there has been no more pernicious influence upon music than the transformation which the piano-forte has undergone since Beethoven's time, and its diffusion over all the world. I do not refer to the cruelties which it is daily the means of inflicting upon inoffensive families and true lovers of music, but to the effect that it has had upon composition and upon performance. The former it has helped to be at once flashy, dull, intricate, and shallow; the latter it has led to be astonishing. Brilliancy, a crowd of notes, sonority, all without beauty of form or emotional suggestiveness—this is the music which the modern grand piano-forte has brought upon us. Not only piano-forte music, but in a measure all music, has become a brilliant fantasia by Signor Rumblestominski. We do not sit in passive silence to listen to it; we talk, or are tempted to talk, against it; and the praise we give it is not a look of serene joy, with that tinge of sadness which Shakespeare had in mind when he made Jessica say, "I'm never merry when I hear sweet music," but a clapping of the hands and congratulation upon a brilliant triumph. And then we turn aside and go on again with our society gabble. Orchestral leaders and performers are not content unless they have a very full score to "interpret." They must have a big brilliant noise. The pitch has been raised until singers shriek, in order that the tone of the instruments may be brilliant. Our ears must be shot through and through with piercing shafts of sound. The time is quickened until allegro has become presto, and presto a maddened, indistinguishable rush. Even Theodore Thomas loses some of the majesty of the final movement of the "Fifth Symphony" by too quick a movement; and in the Trio of the Scherzo he drives the basses into a headlong scramble up and down the scale. When the clear succession of notes becomes indistinguishable, musical form, and with it musical beauty, is lost; and the performance becomes a mere victory over musical difficulties. And this quickening of the time is exactly what should not have taken place. Our orchestras have increased in size and in volume of sound since the days of Mozart and Beethoven. As larger bodies, therefore, their movement should be a little slower to produce the effect which the great composers had in mind. But in our rage for brilliancy we have hastened the movement; as if we should make an elephant gallop like a horse. Moreover we have fallen into the fatal error of making the finish, if not the difficulty of execution, superior to the presentation of beauty in form and in expression.
This condition of musical taste has been accompanied or followed—we cannot surely say as effect from cause—by a withering of the creative musical faculty in all its fairest, highest branches. After Weber's death, which deprived the world of the only musician who promised to be worthy to follow Beethoven, came Schubert and Mendelssohn, neither of them very strong men; the latter decidedly weak, and deficient in creative faculty; the former far more fertile and original. Since their time there has been a blank in the annals of music of the higher kind. The creative faculty seems to be dead. It is not so; for nature is exhaustless, and in his due time the new composer will come. But new conceptions of beautiful musical forms are unknown to the present generation—indeed, were so to the foregoing. There is Schumann; but Schumann is only the strongest and best of the non-creative composers. He writes very elegantly, with harmonies unexceptionable and pleasing; his taste is generally exquisite; his handling of his themes masterly. But to what great end? None. He could not create a melody; and his harmony is plainly contrived, not conceived. All of Schumann's music that I ever heard, from symphony down to piano-forte music, is not worth Beethoven's Sonata in C sharp minor, or Mozart's quartet in C.[7 ] They have a certain sort of beauty and charm while you are hearing them, but you don't hanker after them; passages from them don't come to you when you are alone with troubled thoughts, and comfort you, hearten you, and build you up, as the remembered strains of Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven do. Simply, they are without real melody: they have only a well manufactured imitation of melody. Such enjoyment as they give is in a great measure intellectual. We admire the composer's skilful musical processes. Hence he is admired by professional musicians. And I remark, in passing, that professional criticism in any art, although it has a certain value, has not valid, determining power, and is not very trustworthy as a guide. It too generally runs on methods, processes, technicalities. If you would learn to paint, listen to the criticisms of a well instructed, capable painter; but if you would know and feel the highest things in art, remain an amateur and study nature and Raphael and Titian and Tintoretto.
As to the other composers who were Schumann's contemporaries, they wrote in a condition of hopeless incapacity, except as to their acquired mastery of their craft. They are ever uncertain themselves what they would be at. Compare them with the real composers. Those men knew they had something to do, and they did it. They felt that they had something to say, and they said it. These are always about doing something; they are ever entangled in some complicated toil of sound, out of which they cannot find their way; they are hanging by the very eyelids upon some discord that they are afraid to resolve; they are always sounding a note of preparation, announcing that they are about to do something, which they never do. Their music is written in the paulo-post-future tense.
Under such circumstances it is not surprising that music, ceasing to be merely beautiful and emotional, has, in its decay, sprouted a fungus and monstrous intellectuality. Wagner's musical figures have become as intricate, and often as ugly, as those of a Chinese puzzle; and the entertainment is to see how they fit each other and the words to which they are adapted. In his orchestral work we have the most masterly instrumental coloring; a knowledge and an elaboration which is unsurpassed, and also uninspired. It is great technical work, and no wonder that professional musicians admire it. But what is its real value? Take, for example, the finale to the overture to the "Meistersinger." It is very impressive materially, and as a work of instrumental art. It becomes tremendous from mere muscular activity and accumulation of physical force. The violins rush frantically up and down the finger-board; the violoncellos are ready to jump over their bridges; the trumpets blow blood out of their eyes; and there is general frenzy. But what is all this hurly-burly about? What are the ideas? Look at them. There are, after all, but three, or it may be four, notes in a chord, and a melody is—well, a melody; an unmistakable sort of thing, one would think, although so hard to define. What is there here of harmony or of melody that would be valuable for its own sake? Strip this music of all its instrumental elaboration, tone down its noisy self-assertion, and look at the bare ideas as they can be played with two hands upon a piano-forte, or with four strings in a quartet, and what are they worth? Would a circle of cultivated musical people sit entranced by them if they were played upon an old harpsichord! No, I take it. And if not, their worth is little.
Instrumentation, and all manner of elaboration—orchestral and choral—is of value only when it enhances and sets forth ideas, melodies, harmonies—in a word, musical forms which in themselves have the value which belongs to beauty and expression. Else, like the gift of tongues without the spirit of love, it is literally sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. There is in some of this work—notably in Wagner's—an evidence of sustaining power which deserves and commands a certain respect. But such sustaining power, so applied, is like figures of caryatides supporting some poor decadent frieze. They bend and strain and keep it up. But why, we are tempted to say to them, do you strain to keep up that poor, commonplace stuff, which would not be looked at if it stood not upon your heads? Let it fall! You are all that keep it from tumbling into a dust-heap and seeming the rubbish that it is. It seems to be a consciousness of their deficiency in melody and in emotional expression which drives such composers of the present day as aim to write in the higher style to make their music "interdependent, logarithmic, differential, integral, and corroborative," and to strive to make up in intellectual elaboration what they lack in inspiration.
This condition of things in music is not to be bettered by endeavor. Genius alone can do that, when brought into contact with the power of appreciating genius. And genius, although conscious of its power, is ever ignorant of its tendency, and never works but for its own ends; while those who hear and understand its utterances do so with no higher purpose than the delight they bring them. When I hear a man talk of doing something to elevate his art, however much I may respect his taste, his acquirements, or his aims, I then begin to doubt, if I have not before doubted, his ability to write a sentence worth reading, to make a picture worth looking at, or a song worth hearing.
Richard Grant White.