Nature in Music, by Lawrence Gilman. [John Lane Company, New York.]
Its thin divine kinkiness ...
I felt it undulate my soul—
Lavender water, pitted and heaved to huge, uneasy circles.
The readers of The Little Review may remember these lines: they were meant to interpret Debussy. I challenge Llewellyn Jones to “object” to this gem and to question its “sense”! The staunchest conservative will agree that of all arts music presents the widest liberty for subjective interpretation, especially for such an autonomous artist as a poet. “There is some music which should be described by poets rather than exposed by inquisitive aestheticians. Of such is the magical music of Debussy.” This from Lawrence Gilman’s latest book. Mr. Gilman evidently considers himself a good member in both categories, for he follows up the quoted remark with unrestrained effusions of colorful descriptions of Landscape-music, Sea-music, Death-music. It is charming reading, though at times the unbridled Pegasus causes you dizziness; not that you are encountered with daringly-new views or dazzling ideas: Mr. Gilman is too much of an American for such extravagance. It is the manner of his exposition, the ravishing richness of his style, that endangers your mental equilibrium. Judge for yourself:
Debussy, when he wrote this delectable and adorable music (Rondes de Printemps), sent his spirit into the woods and fields, through gardens and orchards and petal-showered lanes, and upon the moors and hills; he trod the brown soil of the earth, but he also looked long up into the green branches and the warm, gusty sky of May, and savored the fragrant winds.
Is it not enchanting? But when you are treated to such nectar on nearly every page, you sigh for the elegant, reserved Romain Rolland, who expresses his enthusiasm for Debussy in a cooler, yet by no means less convincing, way.
Aside from this purely external characteristic the book contains very interesting remarks on the treatment of natural elements and phenomena by various composers. The invention of new instruments, the development of the art of orchestration, and general new conceptions of our age, have drawn a sharp line of distinction between the old and the new interpretations of nature in music. While the old composers (among the old the author places not only Hayden and Beethoven, but also Wagner and Grieg) approached Nature either as a subject to be faithfully rendered, or as a provocator of direct emotional reactions in themselves, to the new composers (Debussy, d’Indy, Loeffler, MacDowell) Nature “is a miraculous harp, an instrument of unlimited range and inexhaustible responsiveness, upon which the performer may improvise at his pleasure,” to quote the inimitable original. The classification is rather hazardous; the importance of Loeffler is greatly exaggerated, but as a purely subjective view the work of Mr. Gilman is interesting.
K.