ON THOUGHTS OR IDEAS IN MUSIC.
(From the French of Gretry.)
AS from instinct we love and admire all that is beautiful in nature, so a feeling for, and love of the fine arts may exist without a knowledge of their principles. One day, when a party of professors and myself were discussing the question as to the ideas best adapted to express our sensations in music, an amateur interrupted us by asking what an idea in music could possibly be? As his question was abruptly put, we all looked at him for some moments without answering; he prided himself upon the idea that he had pozed us, and laughing, repeated several times over, “An idea in music, how singular!” A musical idea, said I to him, is nothing more than the sound, the inflexion of words employed to communicate an idea, whether verse or prose. If you agree that, with respect to accent, it is indifferent, however it may be placed, I am ready to allow that music has no fixed principle.—No, replied he, I will not agree to that; on the contrary, I think that improper accents, or misplaced punctuations, may spoil the most elegant prose, and disguise the finest poetry.—In the same manner, said I, sounds at variance with the sentiment of the words make bad music.—But, added he, there is such a thing as music without words; and when it is good and well executed, I like it much. What say you of such music?—It is, said I, a discourse of sounds, a song from which the words have been withdrawn. Have you never seen a woman on the point of fainting? she has only strength sufficient left to make herself understood by the signs of those words which she is incapable of uttering.—Very well.—Still you comprehend her?—Yes, I understand that she complains; that she says to her children, her husband, the friends who surround her, ‘I feel better now, do not be frightened.’—Well, in this instance, and in a thousand others, we see exemplified the principle of music without words.
The Italians, in public places, either from indolence, or from a fear of openly declaring their opinions, speak little and much at the same time; that is, by articulating some solitary words, preceded and followed by one of the vowels a, e, i, o, u, all enforced by an expressive pantomime, they make their thoughts understood without the aid of speech. Go, for example, and tell a composer that such a man spoke very freely in the coffee-houses against his work:—What did he say?—i, a, u, o, of such an air, e, i, a, u, of another, he will perfectly comprehend you: this is another instance of the principle of instrumental music. Men of more northern latitudes are but little acquainted with this species of dissimulation, but it is natural to Italians. If therefore a musician is unable to discover any meaning in a sonata, rest assured the reason is that the sonata has no meaning; and if Fontenelle could not understand a good sonata, you may take it for granted that it was owing to his possessing more wit than imagination and feeling. A fine piece of instrumental music has always a reference to some sentiment or passion, which has its characteristic accent, its peculiar movement: one is expressed in acute sounds; another in grave; another, between the two, consists of long-drawn tones.
Again, if it be said that a sound is not an idea, yet it must be allowed that a tone is; at the very instant I utter mi, I argue that mi is the third of ut, re precedes, and fa succeeds it. To be a good musician, an idea both can and ought to be attached to every musical phrase of a different character: for example, such a phrase is only composed of grave sounds, sustained and lengthened without any rhythm or measure; immediately, and by analogy, I picture to myself darkness, and the horrors which it inspires. But if the sound of a reed is heard breaking this gloomy harmony, I imagine the awakening of a shepherd, I look in the sky for the morning star, and the phantoms of night are dispersed.
Cùm durant noctis tenebræ,
Cuncta videntur horrida;
Ad nova profert gaudia,
Si cœlo surgat lux.
I was not eight years old when I went to the wise man of our neighbourhood[85], and said to him, ‘Give me some words, I want to compose music,’ and he gave me the above four Latin verses, first translating them to me in the Liégois dialect.