This, then, is the highest type of structural development to which Music has yet arrived. The three clauses of the primitive ballad-tune have grown into three cantos, all different in character and function, all working together in the maintenance of a single economy. The first, technically known as the Exposition, presents two subjects or paragraphs, diverse in key, and connected by a short episodical link of modulation: the second, technically known as the Development Section, consists of a fantasia on themes or phrases of the first, with such freedom of key as the composer chooses to adopt: the third, technically known as the Recapitulation, repeats the two subjects with any minimum of change that may be implied in the transposition of the second to the tonic key. Finally, if the style of the movement require it, the whole may be introduced by a Prologue and summed up by an Epilogue.[15] It is hardly necessary to point out that the principle of perfect symmetry embodied in this form is precisely the same as that on which is constructed a great drama or a great novel. At the outset our attention is divided between two main centres of interest; as the work proceeds the plan is complicated by the introduction of new centres; at its close the complications are cleared away and the interests identified. For instance, the Alcestis of Euripides opens with the bare contrast of life and death, continues with those of youth and age, of mourning and hospitality, of vacillating weakness and genial strength, and finally returns to its two first themes, and unifies them by restoring its heroine from the grave. But the parallel is hardly a matter for further illustration. The exact balance and proportion of the structure will best be exhibited if we epitomise its three parts under their appropriate abstract names:—duality for the first, plurality for the second, unity for the third.
Omitting a few rare exceptions, such as the Finale of the Hammerclavier Sonata, we may say that all movements in so-called Classical form represent some definite stage in this line of evolution. No doubt experiments were tried by Schumann and Chopin and other composers of the Romantic School, but even these are not so much new discoveries as variants of the established type, sometimes due to carelessness or indifference, and sometimes to deliberate plan. It must be remembered that the generation which succeeded Beethoven paid much less attention to structure than to expression. The essays of Berlioz and Schumann, admirable in most respects, are almost entirely silent on the subject of musical form, and their work, considered from this standpoint, is not an advance but a retreat. Schumann, of course, was far the greater of the two; yet even with him we feel that deliberation has not always brought counsel. The introduction to his A minor Quartett, and still more the first movement of his C major Symphony, are really steps away from organism, condoned in part by undeniable beauties of style, but at the same time needing condonation as structural errors. Even in the shorter narrative forms of ballade and impromptu, of fantasia and novellette, the same rule holds good. Their structure will be found satisfactory in proportion as it is organic, it will be found organic in proportion as it conforms to this law of natural development.
There remains a word to be said about the combination of different numbers or movements into a continuous work. The complete sonata-form, like the Trilogies or Tetralogies of the classical drama, is a complex organism of which each part is itself organic, a corporate body composed of separate but interdependent members. Hence we should naturally expect that in the earliest examples there would be a comparative homogeneity of melodic style and key system, and that this homogeneity would be gradually differentiated as the form advanced towards perfection. This is precisely what has happened. In the first pianoforte sonata of Haydn all the movements are in the same key, as they were in the suites and partitas of a previous age; then, by steps which are readily traceable, the form progressed and developed until it reached its structural climax in Brahms. So also with the style of the work as a whole, by which is meant the selection of different organic types in its constituent members. Out of all possible alternatives—the minuet, the rondo, the air with variations, the fully-developed 'ternary' form—it is clearly the composer's business to choose specimens which will afford the most complete contrast and yet combine into the most organic unity. The gradual application of this rule is simply another name for the growth of the sonata form. One has only to compare Haydn's first quartett with one of the Rasoumoffskys to see the advance; one has only to compare the Eroica Symphony with Chopin's B-flat minor Sonata to see the retrogression. In this, as in other respects, Brahms has restored the balance and has adapted the traditions of Beethoven to the language of the present day.
Enough has been said to show that this principle of organic growth not only explains the style and structure of all great Music, but answers to a fundamental need in human nature. Its laws are not mere grammatical rules, framed in one generation to be broken in the next; it makes no transitory appeal to faculties that change with every mood and every condition: if there be anything permanent and abiding in the mind of man, it is here that it will find its counterpart. Not, of course, that the present stage of development is to be regarded as final: there is probably no such thing as finality in any art. But progress is not change, it is a kind of change, and one which, from its very nature, points to a fixed ideal. We, with our limited capacities of knowledge, and our limited appreciation of beauty, may still be far behind the position that is to be occupied in future ages. But, unless the teaching of History be wholly false, we may predict with some security the direction in which that position will lie. It is as inconceivable in art as it is in physical nature, that the process of organic evolution should revert or turn aside. No doubt there will be further modification of detail—some 'Shakspearian convention' abandoned, some scheme of artistic composition revised; but every step that brings greater freedom will bring greater responsibility, and will shift the issue from artificial laws to the great code of human intelligence. We cannot suppose that the generations which look back upon our own masters will ever rest satisfied with incoherence or shapelessness or monotony. There will be new methods in the days to come, but the principles of art will remain unaltered.
III
FUNCTION
A character in one of Mr Sturgis' delightful comedies propounds a recipe for beauty, and is met by the criticism that he has omitted one important element—the beauty itself. Some such objection may perhaps be brought against the analysis of the preceding chapter. It may be said that Music cannot be appraised in terms of law and method, that scientific theories can tell us nothing about inspiration, and that without inspiration art degenerates into a soulless and mechanical exercise. No discussion of balance and design, of diversity and coherence will ever explain why we are stirred to the depths of our being by the love-duet in Tristan, or the slow movement in the Fifth Symphony, or the Missa Papæ Marcelli. No account of proportion in phraseology or system in key-relationship can answer the question why we find Grieg piquant, or Schumann vigorous, or Chopin graceful. In short, our Ars Poetica is a mere Gradus ad Parnassum, containing, it may be, some hints for versification, but leaving the essentials of artistic conception entirely untouched.
This objection is only of force if it confines itself to the bare truism, that inspiration is not a matter which we can define. It breaks down if it goes on to infer that inspiration is not a matter which we can detect. For the artistic organism, which has hitherto been under consideration, necessarily requires life as its formative condition; and any attempt to produce it artificially must result either in total failure or in the mere copy of some existing scheme. Our academic composers who publish music on the ground that they have studied counterpoint, are, as a rule, only tolerable where they are imitative: as soon as they try to devise a new melody or elaborate a new cadence they are almost certain to become trivial or vulgar. Indeed, it would seem to be shown by experience that Music has no chance of surviving unless it arise spontaneously from a healthy state of emotion, and that, if it does so arise, it will naturally manifest itself, to a greater or less degree, in an organic shape. We may, therefore, fairly conclude that perfection of musical form, in its widest and deepest sense, is a mark or sign of genuineness in musical feeling, and that analysis, though it can never tell us whence inspiration comes, may at least direct us where we can look for it.
But as yet the analysis itself is incomplete. It has attempted to describe what Music is, not what Music does: in other words, it has investigated the problem of structure, but not that of function. There remains, therefore, the further question of the object for which the art exists, the place that it occupies in our æsthetic life, and the particular means of action by which its purpose is fulfilled. Some hints towards an answer have already been suggested: the sensuous pleasure communicated to the nervous system by certain air-vibrations: the emotional impulses which can be aroused by sense or association, or both: and the intellectual satisfaction which naturally answers to the spectacle of organic balance and symmetry. It follows, then, to arrange these premises, and to carry them, as far as possible, to their logical conclusion.