If you limited the number of colors that a painter might use on his palette, he might, if he were a great painter, produce masterpieces of art; but give him unlimited scope in the choosing of his pigments and you might reasonably expect the highest possible achievements.
The symphony orchestra as it is constituted today is the most ambitious and the most perfect musical “instrument” in the world. It combines all the existing types of instruments and so can readily achieve all the possible varieties and shades of tone colors. The analogy between the organist and the symphony orchestra conductor is fairly close, and to think of a symphony orchestra, consisting of a hundred or so of the most skillful players obtainable, as a single instrument, is quite permissible.
Here, again, a recent achievement of the Victor laboratories has opened up a vast field of musical satisfaction for the music-lover. Until recently it seemed impossible to make satisfactory records of a complete symphony orchestra. The tones and overtones developed in some measure by every one of the scores of instruments would persist in getting in one another’s way to such an extent that worthy reproductions could not be obtained. We have, however, just recently produced records of complete symphony orchestras, which represent one of the most far-reaching achievements in many years, and as time goes on we shall continue to produce more.
Thousands of honest souls despising cant in any form are continually asking, “How am I to listen to music in order to get the utmost out of it?” and since the symphony orchestra is the highest instrumental development of music, and consequently the most complex, it is in listening to the symphony orchestra that this need is most acute.
When all the splendid pageantry of opera is spread before one’s eyes, there are plenty of clues, and the emotional struggles of even fictitious humans can never be entirely beyond our ken. A symphony, however, has no recognizable background of creatures made in our own image and laboring under our own frailties, so necessarily it must be listened to in a more impersonal way.
A symphony has form and design and “color,” just as has a painting. The essential difference between them as works of art is that the picture “stands still” while you look at it, whereas the symphony does not. An even closer simile would be the moving picture, for in that just as in the symphony, you must know and remember what has gone before in order to realize the significance of what comes in the middle or at the end. At the “movies” you are dependent upon your eyes—at the symphony concert you must depend upon your ears.
The form of the symphony has been pretty thoroughly established. It consists of four movements. The first an allegro, or quick and energetic movement, the beginning of a psychological “picture”; the second, an andante, or slow movement which may represent hopes, fears, aspirations; a scherzo, or brisk, exhilarating movement of merriment, madness or strife; and a finale, the tragic or triumphant outcome.
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The theme of the entire Beethoven C Minor Symphony consists of three short notes of the same pitch and one longer note a little lower in pitch, and the “design” of that symphony is the manner in which this same theme is built up and elaborated by repetition in different keys, rhythms and speeds, and also in the manner in which it is contrasted with other themes.